Hallam chuckled and then said seriously, "If we sit and do nothing the population will drop off drastically as the old folks die but eventually, in a normal situation, the race would renew itself. It might be a good thing too, we have too many people now, except for one thing ... we need continuing manpower to beat the Communists."
He stopped to consider his next point. "To me, the logical solution is legal artificial insemination, voluntary of course, with sperm from carefully selected donors. In that way we would have less of a population drop and, I believe, improve the quality of the race; but it's a highly controversial question from scientific, legal and religious points of view. The committee will take some time and a lot of hearings before making even tentative decisions."
He stopped, and for a moment we were silent, thinking about our problems. Pat spoke first, "I keep remembering how we became aware of the S. factor ... I mean when that ferret aborted. I wonder if we could use that as our weapon. If all the farm animals and women in Russia were unable to conceive, or miscarry when they did, it would do the trick ... and it's a lot harder to determine whether a female is sterile than it is in a man."
"You have a possibility," I admitted. "Sometimes it's better to hit an enemy with a variation of his own favorite trick than to have an entirely new approach. If we could do that, we might fool the Reds into thinking something had gone wrong with their own S-Flu virus, such as another mutation. The difficulty is to avoid cross-immunity. We might do better to alter the measlepox so it would turn on them and kill them."
"Then you have lost the element of uncertainty that made the S-Flu so valuable a weapon," Polly said. "They could rally in time to stop it."
"A very good point." Harry spoke for the first time.
Again there was silence. I got up quietly to refill the glasses. Harry was staring at the fire; his face in the flickering light seemed tired and sad. I caught Polly watching him and saw the look of concern in her face and the faint wrinkle of perplexity between those artistically darkened eyebrows. The Chief was sunk down in his chair, in a daze partly of thought and partly of satiety. Absently he lifted his glass for a refill and then, looking through the deep red port to the firelight, he said to the room,
"The U.S. Navy is sending a special research team out to Formosa and the Army one to Japan, to study measlepox. Years ago they established well equipped research laboratories in those countries. The Canadian government wants one to go to Hong Kong."
Pat threw a quick glance at me but said nothing as he went on.
"They asked me for suggestions and I told them I'd take the team, but the Premier put his veto on that. He won't let me go. I objected to married men because it's likely to be dangerous work, at least until we get enough of the Russian vaccines to inoculate our men."