“At your old salary?” she whispered. “Seven thousand territs a year?”

“Yes. Two thousand less than I’m getting now. Two thousand less than the minimum for four children.”

Marian’s hands crept up to her eyes, which filled, abruptly, with tears. “I’m not going to do it!” she sobbed. “I’m not! I’m not!”

“Honey,” he said. “Honey-baby, it’s the law. What can we do?”

“I absolutely—I absolutely refuse to decide which—which one of my children I’m going to—to give up!”

“I’ll get promoted again. I’ll be making nine thousand territs in no time. More, even. You’ll see.”

She stopped crying and stared at him dully. “But once a child is put up for adoption, the parents can’t reclaim it. Even if their income increases. You know that, Stewart, as well as I. They can have other children, but they can’t ever have the superfluous child back.”

Of course he knew that. That regulation had been framed by the FPB to protect the foster-parents and encourage adoption into higher-bracket families. “We should have waited,” he said. “Damn it, we should have waited!”

“We did,” she reminded him. “We waited six months, to make certain your job was secure. Don’t you remember the night that we had Mr. Halsey to dinner and he told us that you were working out very well and were definitely on your way up in the organization? ‘You’ll have ten children yet, Mrs. Raley,’ he said, ‘and my advice is to get started on them as soon as possible.’ Those were his exact words.”

“Poor Halsey. He couldn’t meet my eyes all through the executive conference this afternoon. Just before I left the office, he came up and told me how sorry he was, how he’d look out for me in the very next promotion list. But he pointed out that practically everybody’s retrenching these days: it’s been a bad year for extra-terrestrial products. And when I move back into my old job in Ore Shipments, I bump back the man who took my place. He moves down and bumps back somebody else. It’s hell all around.”