“Put them in the box? What box? Why?”
Marconi was nudging him fiercely in the ribs. He ignored it.
They laughed amiably at his ignorance and explained that the box was the box, and that you put your newborn babies into it because you put your newborn babies into it.
A beep tone sounded from the ship.
Ma said, “We have to go back now, The Representative of the Haarland Trading Corporation Marconi.”
“What for?”
Ma said, “At regular intervals signaled by a tone of six hundred cycles and an intermittent downward shifting of the ship lights from standard illumination frequency to a signal frequency of 420 millimicrons, ship’s operating personnel take up positions at the control boards for recalibration of ship-working meters and instruments against the battery of standard masters. We’ll be right back.”
They trooped through the hatch, leaving Ross and Marconi staring at each other in the decontamination tank.
“Well,” Ross said slowly, “at last I know why the Longliner Departments have their little secrets. ‘The box.’ I say it’s murder.”
“Be reasonable,” Marconi told him—but his own face was white under the glaring germicidal lamps. “You can’t let them increase without limit or they’d all die. And before they died there’d be cannibalism. Which do you prefer?”