off,
while younger people worked. But when science improved the Seniors'
health, they got tired of sitting in corners on pensions and, besides,
a lot of them died soon after they stopped working. When it got so
that more than half of all voters were between forty and seventy years
old, the Seniors voted their pensions to the young, to get educated
and raise families on, and nobody's allowed to work till he's forty.
Now do you see?"

"Forty is awful old," said Sophie.

* * * * *

Howard had meanwhile taken his mother's hand. "_You're_ not going to
work, are you, Mommy?" he asked.

"Not for ten years, dear. I'll be here when you want me, so why don't
you go play on the balcony? I've got to get Daddy off and give Ralph
his bath."

"I'll bathe him," Sophie volunteered. "You help, Howie. We can make
like we're young."

"Don't drop him," Kate warned.

"Clean up the bathroom afterward," added Bozzy.

"Yes, sir," said Howard, for the first time in his life.

The children left, and Kate came close to pour Bozzy his cup of
Daystart. He slipped an arm around her waist and squeezed
convulsively.

"Darling!" she said, stroking his bald spot. "You're positively
trembling!"

"Wouldn't you be, if you had to take over from somebody you like as
well as I like Mr. Kojac? And for no good reason, except he's
seventy-five and I'll soon be forty."

Kate pushed away from him, frowning. "Sometimes you're so silly, it
scares me. You know perfectly well that if you don't take Mr. Kojac's
job, someone else will. He'd rather have it in your hands than in a
stranger's, and I'd rather live on his income than on a laborer's. So
stop moping and drink your Daystart, while I call a cab."

No help in that quarter, Bozzy decided as she left. All Kate could
think of was that she'd soon be the wife of a big-shot: the
manager--that is, controls setter--of a furniture factory.

Bozzy had never told her how simple the job really was, though he
supposed she knew.

You first ordered designs, and then you ordered a poll taken on the
designs. A computer tabulated the poll's results and pointed out the
design most likely to sell.

You then fed economic data into the same computer, and found out how
many units the market could take. You called in the engineers to set
up the machines, and the maintenance men to keep them running. In
brief, you were errand boy to a bunch of gadgets, with nothing to do
but look impo