"No, let me finish. Really, there isn't much new. The old Romans practiced a crude form of artificial dwarfing, but for their own sadistic amusement. And we've always had natural midgets and some very famous ones. Philetas, the tutor of Ptolemy; Richard Gibson, the painter; Count Borulwaski of Poland. They were all tiny, extremely intelligent, and lived good long lives.
"What the early endocrinologists found was that a deficiency of growth hormone in the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland caused the condition. They corrected it by injecting the right pituitary extracts so the midgets grew normally.
"Charlie, what I've done is merely reverse the process by a proper manipulation of glandular balance. It's nothing they couldn't have done a century ago. And there's your result: a new and better breed of human in which nothing is omitted but size."
Hackett sat heavily down on a rock and stared at the group.
"Good Lord, man, why did you do it?"
Justin replied with another question.
"Honestly now, Charlie, how long since we first suspected the Space Program would fail?"
"I don't know, twenty years maybe."
"Yes, which was when I began work on the problem. The goal, of course, was to regain our high standard of living. And we thought there were only two answers: move half the population off the planet, or—kill 'em. Those were the only alternatives.