Drummond slapped him, hard. He drew a shuddering breath, sat down, and began to cry, and somehow that was the most horrible sight of all. “You’re crazy,” said the aviator. “You’ve gone nuts and with brooding alone on this the last six months, without knowing or being able to act. You’ve lost all perspective.

“We can’t use violence. In the first place, it would break our tottering, cracked culture irreparably, into a mad-dog finish fight. We’d not even win it. We’re outnumbered and we couldn’t hold down a continent, eventually a planet. And remember what we said once, about abandoning the old savage way of settling things, that never brings a real settlement at all? We’d throw away a lesson our noses were rubbed in not three years ago. We’d return to the beast—to ultimate extinction.

“And anyway,” he went on very quietly, “it wouldn’t do a bit of good. Mutants would still be born. The poison is everywhere. Normal parents will give birth to mutants, somewhere along the line. We just have to accept that fact, and live with it. The new human race will have to.”

“I’m sorry.” Robinson raised his face from his hands. It was a ghastly visage, gone white and old, but there was calm on it. “I—blew my top. You’re right. I’ve been thinking of this, worrying and wondering, living and breathing it, lying awake nights, and when I finally sleep I dream of it. I…yes, I see your point. And you’re right.”

“It’s O.K. You’ve been under a terrific strain. Three years with never a rest, and the responsibility for a nation, and now this— Sure, everybody’s entitled to be a little crazy. We’ll work out a solution, somehow.”

“Yes, of course.” Robinson poured out two stiff drinks and gulped his. He paced restlessly, and his tremendous ability came back in waves of strength and confidence. “Let me see—Eugenics, of course. If we work hard, we’ll have the nation tightly organized inside of ten years. Then…well, I don’t suppose we can keep the mutants from interbreeding, but certainly we can pass laws to protect humans and encourage their propagation. Since radical mutations would probably be intersterile anyway, and most mutants handicapped one way or another, a few generations should see humans completely dominant again.”

Drummond scowled. He was worried. It wasn’t like Robinson to be unreasonable. Somehow, the man had acquired a mental blind spot where this most ultimate of human problems was concerned. He said slowly, “That won’t work either. First, it’d be hard to impose and enforce. Second, we’d be repeating the old Herrenvolk notion. Mutants are inferior, mutants must be kept in their place—to enforce that, especially on a majority, you’d need a full-fledged totalitarian state. Third, that wouldn’t work either, for the rest of the world, with almost no exceptions, is under no such control and we’ll be in no position to take over that control for a long time—generations. Before then, mutants will dominate everywhere over there, and if they resent the way we treat their kind here, we’d better run for cover.”