take some mining projects, it wouldn't begin to
defray expenses, once you consider the transportation factor."

"But if they improve the rockets, manage to make room for a bigger
payload, wouldn't it be cheaper?"

"It would still cost roughly a billion dollars to equip a flight and
maintain a personnel of twenty men for a year," the President told
him. "I've checked into that, and even this estimate is based on the
most optimistic projection. So you can see there's no use in
continuing now. We'll never solve our problems by attempting to
colonize the moon or Mars."

"But it's the only possible solution left to us."

"No it isn't," the President said. "There's always our friend
Leffingwell."

* * * * *

The Secretary of State turned away. "You can't officially sponsor a
thing like that," he muttered. "It's political suicide."

The gray smile returned to the gray lips. "Suicide? What do you know
about suicide, Art? I've been reading a few statistics on _that_, too.
How many actual suicides do you think we had in this country last
year?"

"A hundred thousand? Two hundred, maybe?"

"Two million." The President leaned forward. "Add to that, over a
million murders and six million crimes of violence."

"I never knew--"

"Damned right you didn't! We used to have a Federal Bureau of
Investigation to help prevent such things. Now the big job is merely
to hush them up. We're doing everything in our power just to keep
these matters quiet, or else there'd be utter panic. Then there's the
accident total and the psycho rate. We can't build institutions fast
enough to hold the mental cases, nor train doctors enough to care for
them. Shifting them into other jobs in other areas doesn't cure, and
it no longer even disguises what is happening. At this rate, another
ten years will see half the nation going insane. And it's like this
all over the world.

"This is race-suicide, Art. Race-suicide through sheer fecundity.
Leffingwell is right. The reproductive instinct, unchecked, will
overbalance group survival in the end. How long has it been since you
were out on the streets?"

The Secretary of State shrugged. "You know I never go out on the
streets," he said. "It isn't very safe."

"Of course not. But it's no safer for the hundreds of millions who
have to go out every day. Accident, crime, the sheer maddening
proximity of the crowds--these phenomena are increasing through
mathematical prog