Despite himself, the psychiatrist felt his eyebrows arch. Well, this was certainly a new one. "You say the baby turned into a full-grown woman. Er—ah—clothed?"
Moore reddened and stared at the floor. "No," he said. "I was scared. And embarrassed. Here I am a bachelor, and there was a nude woman in my apartment. How could I explain that to the landlady? Anyway, I threw open the door again, but this time the hall was different. It was like it was before—on Earth, I mean, instead of on Mars."
"Very interesting," the psychiatrist said, mentally picturing the situation and temporarily forgetting chicken farms. He wondered how Miss Austin would look au naturel. "Did you do anything? That is, anything—ah—well, anything at all?"
"I didn't know what to do," Moore said. "She looked about as surprised as I was, but not nearly as embarrassed. I closed the door again and tried to figure out what to do."
Despite himself, the psychiatrist was interested. "And did you?"
"I had to do something. She didn't know where she was, who she was, or how she'd gotten here. I told her that I thought she came from the planet Mars, and that there was evidently some sort of time stress in the field I'd constructed accidentally since she appeared to be only a child a few minutes before, and that it was my fault, and I'd try to help her.
"I tried to bring back Mars," he went on, "but I found I couldn't. In fact, I discovered that these things were evidently accidental, depending upon a frame of mind or something. Anyway, I slept on the couch that night, went out the next day and bought her some clothes at a store in town."
"Was she—er—constructed like Earth women," the psychiatrist asked, at a sudden thought.
Moore blushed. "Yes," he said, "very definitely like Earth women. Except for one thing—she had six fingers on each hand."
The psychiatrist had been toying with the pencil. At that revelation he froze briefly. Then he tried to laugh it off mentally. No, it couldn't be.