Are we babes-in-the-woods? Or i should say, babes-in-space. I don't mean beating the Russians to a manned moonbase or setting up a space hospital or making Mars adaptable to our survival there to ease the population explosion here. Our problem is more basic than that: can man survive as Homo sapiens or a reasonable facsimile thereof. In that department, are we wetting our spacesuits!

I know what I'm talking about. Only I can't talk. Not yet, since my evidence hasn't come to light, so to speak. It's due soon and, as an ambulance chaser from way back, I've got to be there. I'd rather know right off what the competition makes out as.

We—that is, mankind, Earth-type—are in for one helluva jolt and this is one therapeutic pill that has no sugar coating—unless it's an LSD cube. I'm not the only one in the medical fraternity to realize that there's something queer in the conversion chamber. Some of us tumbled to it six months ago. The research is not the stuff of which AMA citations are made, but it will be handy when I-told-you-so time comes.

For me it started when my perennial maternity case phoned up and asked for an appointment.

"Buzzy-boy says I must be pregnant again," Liz Lattimore said with understandable grimness in her voice. She has six under six—well, one set of twins.

Buzz is a guy on a single track, business and monkey business. As a kind of moral justice, he has sympathetic reactions to each of Liz's pregnancies in the form of violent morning nausea. Oh yes, it happens. Liz may develop varicose veins, hemorrhoids, boils, hot flashes, heartburn, and high blood pressure during her gestations. Buzz gets the morning sickness. "How long since you missed a period, Liz?" I asked her.

"That's just it, Ted. This time he must be sympathetic to someone else because I came regular as clockwork last week."

"On a possible sixth pregnancy, you'd better see me."

She did. She wasn't pregnant.

"We had a fight a while ago," she told me after she'd dressed. "Buzz flounced out of the house like an injured Cub Scout. When he came home, he wore that merchandise-better-than-thou expression. Sometimes, Ted, it's a pure relief to me when Buzz cats around so I don't whinge."

She paused, about to add something more but hesitated. Even if she had voiced her suspicion then, I doubt it would've made much difference.

"Anything I can do, Liz?"

"Outside of helping to suppress a paternity suit if the case arises, I don't think so. We made up our differences." She rolled her eyes with droll expressiveness.

"Seriously, Liz, I'm glad you're not freshening again. You're run ragged now. Send Buzz in for a checkup. He may need it."

Buzz came in the next day at noon, which proved that he was now worried about himself.

"How come you said Liz wasn't pregnant?"

"Because she isn't. Praise be!"

"Then how come I got this damned morning nausea? I only get it when she's got buns in the oven."

"Nausea is a symptom not necessarily exclusive to pregnancy. Especially in the male of the species."

As I mentioned, we're such babes-in-space.

"Off the record, Buzz, could you be sympathetic to someone else?"

Buzz flushed.

"Ted, I'm nuts about Liz no matter what I do or say. I only go catting when we've had a fight or she's too pregnant to screw. Hell, Ted, if I didn't love her so much, d'you think I'd go home every night to a house full of squalling brats?"

"Well, that was quite an imagination you projected the other afternoon at Casey's."

"At Casey's?" Buzz swallowed. "I didn't know you were there."

"Buzz, your voice'd carry to your funeral. Was it the girl at Lady Linda's?"

A strange look crossed Buzz's face and I could see him about to evade the question with some Lattimorian verbal embroidery. "She was the damnedest woman I ever screwed, Ted. Once was, by God, enough. But that once…" Buzz whistled slowly, shaking his head.

Something in his attitude inhibited further questions, so I changed the subject by getting him to strip. After a thorough physical I found only a little hard lump near the large intestine, but not situated where it could cause pressure that might result in nausea. I sent him to the hospital for a gastrointestinal series but the results were inconclusive. I saw no cause for alarm, so I told him that the nausea was caused by overwork—with a wink—and to give up smoking.

In the next few weeks I examined four more seriously nauseated males with small intestinal lumps. I also heard of seventeen more around town. Then I had a visit from the leading local Boy Scout and our little unprepared Explorer gave me my first definite lead.

"Doc, can I see you for a minute? I mean, you're not too tired or anything?"

When six feet two inches and 185 pounds of Explorer Boy Scout Horace Baker comes sneaking around after my nurse has left, I'd better not be too tired to see him.

"Now, what's wrong with you, Hoke? You look mighty pale for Glen Cove's answer to a maiden's prayer?"

The boy literally cringed away from my buddytype arm.

"Hey, feller, did I strike too close to home?" I led him to the surgery table.

"Aw, Doc, I'm in awful trouble." He groaned and averted his head.

"You mean," and I put on my best Ben Gazzara pose, "you've got some girl in trouble?"

"Naw," and he was momentarily indignant, "I wear my pants too tight. No, Doc, it's me. Ever since I went… to… Mrs. Linda's…" His voice failed him.

A kaleidoscope of impressions overwhelmed me for a moment at this confession. Kids grow up so fast. A few flashes of the red squally baby I'd delivered from Mrs. Baker merged into Explorer Hoke complete with merit badge sash, approaching in best Indian fashion Lady Linda's modestly situated house of seven delights. I wasn't sure whether I was glad or sorry that Hoke had taken his lustiness to Linda's. I was relieved that his experiments hadn't taken root, as it were, in any of his peers. Hoke needn't worry about VD: Linda's girls were clean. I had no remedy for his conscience, however.

"Well, now, Hoke, I don't think you have anything more to worry about than overactive sex glands. Linda's girls are—"

"Oh, it's not that. Doc. It's just that I can't eat. Nothing stays down. It's worse in the mornings, and Mom notices that I don't pack it away—hey!"

Past the first sentence I had dropped the TV medic pose and stretched him out flat. My fingers dug into his big gut and, sure enough, the precocious Explorer had joined the Group.

I gave him some dramamine and told him it was indigestion caused by a guilty conscience and to eat spaghetti for breakfast. He fortunately didn't argue because I had no more quick answers. I hurried him out, locked up, and went on a professional call.

Linda herself opened the door.

"Dr. Martin! You're psychic," she said by way of greeting. "I hate to mix pleasure with business and I'll expect your bill…"

"You won't get one because I am here on business, Linda," I said, trying not to be too brusque. "I'd appreciate seeing you? new girl for a brief professional inquiry."

Linda looked stunned, an expression I never thought to see on her face.

"She's who I was calling you for." And Linda gestured me to follow her up the stairs. "She's been losing weight steadily. She's skin and bones and you know that doesn't bed easy."

"Nausea?"

"Doesn't mention it. Until three days ago she had the appetite of an elephant, but you'd never guess it to look at her." Linda was slightly jealous.

"How long's she been with you?"

"About five weeks. A friend sent her to me from Chicago. She's got a sister in the business there. She's good but funny, no one wants her steady. She's educated, too: speaks very good English."

"She's foreign?"