y secretary tried to give me a list of people who had phoned and a stack of angry telegrams about back-orders, but I waved her away. "Dolores," I said, "there must have been a boy guinea pig loose in that pen. It's just too fantastic!"
"Are you accusing me of turning one loose just to get off the hook myself?" she snapped.
"What you've got, excuses won't cure," I told her, "but we've got to get facts. My God, if you're right—"
"We've sworn everyone to secrecy," she said. "There's a $10,000 bonus posted for each employee who knows about this. Payable when the statute 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 need excuses, and the single girls—who'll believe them? Half of them or better, have guilty consciences anyway. The rest? They're in the same boat 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 asking the same question. He says parthenogenesis in higher lifeforms is virtually impossible. Bob keeps pointing at the little pigs, and they're going round and round. They're examining the other eleven test pens now, but there's no question in my mind. I have a personal stake in this experiment, and I was very careful to supervise the segregation of males and females."