leaked out that the AEC was disturbedenough to cut off our fission products, every radio, newspaper and TVcommentator in the business would soon make mince-meat of us over thefact that Atummion had not been adequately tested before marketing.And this was so right!
We took our chances and submitted honest samples to the Bureau ofWeights and Measures and the Pure Food and Drug labs. And held ourbreath.
The morning the first report came back in our favor there was greatrejoicing, but that afternoon our own testing lab sent up a man to seeJennings, and he called me instantly.
"Sanford, get up here at once. The guinea pigs just threw five littersof babies!"
"Congratulations," I told him. "That happens with guinea pigs, Iunderstand."
"You _don't_ understand," he thundered at me. "This was test groupF-six, all females, and every one has reached maturity since we boughtand segregated them."
"There must be some mistake," I said.
"There better be," he told me.
I went to his office and together we picked up the Madame from herpenthouse suite. She followed us into the elevator reluctantly."Absurd, absurd!" was all she could say.
We watched the lab man check the ten adult pigs one by one. Even asinexpert as I am in such matters, it was evident that all ten werefemales, and the five which had not yet participated in blessed eventswere but hours from becoming mothers.
We went our separate ways stunned. Back in my office I pulled out alist of our big wholesale accounts where the Atummion products hadbeen shipped by the carloads. The warehouses were distributed in everystate of the union.
Then I ran my eye down the list of products which contained thedevilish Atummion. There were thirty-eight, in all, including acomplete line of men's toiletries, shaving lotion, shampoo, deodorantand body-dusting powder. I thanked God that men didn't have ovaries.
Dolores Donet--that was the pixie's name--opened my door and depositedherself gingerly in a chair opposite me.
I said, "You look radiant."
She said, "Don't rub it in, and I'll have a shot of that." I shared myHaig and Haig with her, and we drank to the newly departed bottom ofthe world.
* * * * *
My secretary tried to give me a list of people who had phoned and astack of angry telegrams about back-orders, but I waved her away."Dolores," I said, "there must have been a boy guinea pig loose inthat pen. It's just too fantastic!"
"Are you accusing me of turning one loose just to get off the hookmyself?" she snapped.
"What you've got, excuses won't cure," I told her, "but we've got toget facts. My God, if you're right--"
"We've sworn everyone to secrecy," she said. "There's a $10,000 bonusposted for each employee who knows about this. Payable when thestatute of limitations runs out on possible litigation."
"You can't swear the public to secrecy," I said.
"Think a minute," she said, coldly. "The married women don't needexcuses, and the single girls--who'll believe them? Half of them orbetter, have guilty consciences anyway. The rest? They're in the sameboat I was--without a labful of guinea pigs to back them up."
"But--how did it happen in the first place?"
"Bob has been consulting the biologist we retained. He keeps askingthe same question. He says parthenogenesis in higher lifeforms isvirtually impossible. Bob keeps pointing at the little pigs, andthey're going round and round. They're examining the other eleven testpens now, but there's no question in my mind. I have a personal stakein this experiment, and I was very careful to supervise thesegregation of males and females."
My sanity returned in one glorious rush. _There was the buggerfactor!_ _Dolores, herself._
In her eagerness to clear her own skirts, Dolores had tampered withthe integrity of the experiment. Probably, she had arranged forartificial insemination, just to be sure. The tip-off was the hundredpercent pregnancy of one whole test-batch. Ten out of ten. Even if onebuck had slipped in inadvertently, and someone was covering up themistake, why you wouldn't expect anything like a 100% "take".
"Dolores," I said, "you are a naughty girl in more ways than one."
She got up and refilled her glass shaking her head. "Theever-suspicious male," she said. "Don't you understand? I'm nottrying to dodge my responsibility for my condition. The whole mess ismy fault from beginning to end. But what kind of a heel will I be ifwe get clearance from the AEC and start shipping out Atummyc productsagain--knowing what I do? What's more, if we let the stuff floataround indefinitely, someone is going to run comprehensive tests onit, not just allergy test patches like they're doing at the governmentlabs right now."
"Yeah," I said, "so we all bury the hottest promotion that ever hitthe cosmetics industry and live happily ever after."
She hit the deck and threw her whiskey glass at me, which did nothingto convince me that she wasn't telling the tallest tale of thecentury--to be conservative.
We sat and glared at each other for a few minutes. Finally she said,"You're going to get proof, and damned good proof any minute now."
"How so?" Nothing this experiment revealed would be valid to me, Ifigured, now that I was convinced she had deliberately fouled it up.
"Bob and the biologist should be up here any minute. I told them I'dwait in your office. I know something you don't, I'm just waiting forthem to verify it."
She was much too confident, and I began to get worried again. Wewaited for ten minutes, fifteen, twenty. I picked up the phone anddialed the lab.
The woman assistant answered and said that the two men were on the wayup right now. I asked, "What have they been doing down there?"
She said, "They've been doing Caesarian sections on the animals intest-pen M-four."
"Caesarian sections?" I repeated. She affirmed it, and Dolores Donetgot a tight, little, humorless smile on her face. I hung up and said,"They're on their way up, and what's so funny?"
She said, "You know what I think? I think you've been using Atummycproducts on you."
"So what?" I demanded. "I was responsible for this campaign, too. I'vebeen waiting for a rash to develop almost as long as you have."
She said, "When Bob comes in, look at his complexion. All three of ushave been guinea pigs, I guess."
"I still don't see what's so damned amusing."
She said, "You still don't tumble, eh? All right, I'll spell it out.Caesarians performed on test batch M-four."
"So?"
"The 'M' stands for male," she said.
She timed it just right. The hall door opened and Bob trailed in witha dazed look. The biologist was half holding him up. His whitelab-smock was freshly blood-stained, and his eyes were blank andunseeing.
But for all his distress, he was still a good looking young fellow.His skin had that lovely, radiant, atomic look--just like mine.
... THE END
* * * * *
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