He saluted her and moved toward the door that led to the delivery rooms.
"Guess what was just born," he said.

"I can't," she said.

"Triplets!" he said.

"Triplets!" she said. She was exclaiming over the legal implications of
triplets.

The law said that no newborn child could survive unless the parents of
the child could find someone who would volunteer to die. Triplets, if
they were all to live, called for three volunteers.

"Do the parents have three volunteers?" said Leora Duncan.

"Last I heard," said Dr. Hitz, "they had one, and were trying to scrape
another two up."

"I don't think they made it," she said. "Nobody made three appointments
with us. Nothing but singles going through today, unless somebody
called in after I left. What's the name?"

"Wehling," said the waiting father, sitting up, red-eyed and frowzy.
"Edward K. Wehling, Jr., is the name of the happy father-to-be."

He raised his right hand, looked at a spot on the wall, gave a hoarsely
wretched chuckle. "Present," he said.

"Oh, Mr. Wehling," said Dr. Hitz, "I didn't see you."

"The invisible man," said Wehling.

"They just phoned me that your triplets have been born," said Dr. Hitz.
"They're all fine, and so is the mother. I'm on my way in to see them
now."

"Hooray," said Wehling emptily.

"You don't sound very happy," said Dr. Hitz.

"What man in my shoes wouldn't be happy?" said Wehling. He gestured with
his hands to symbolize care-free simplicity. "All I have to do is pick
out which one of the triplets is going to live, then deliver my maternal
grandfather to the Happy Hooligan, and come back here with a receipt."

* * * * *

Dr. Hitz became rather severe with Wehling, towered over him. "You don't
believe in population control, Mr. Wehling?" he said.

"I think it's perfectly keen," said Wehling tautly.

"Would you like to go back to the good old days, when the population of
the Earth was twenty billion--about to become forty billion, then eighty
billion, then one hundred and sixty billion? Do you know what a drupelet
is, Mr. Wehling?" said Hitz.

"Nope," said Wehling sulkily.

"A drupelet, Mr. Wehling, is one of the little knobs, one of the little
pulpy grains of a blackberry," said Dr. Hitz. "Without population
control, human beings would now be packed on this surface of this old
planet like drupelets on a blackberry! Think of it!"

Wehling continued to stare at the same spot on the w