“You assume a lot. How do you know those hundreds or thousands of diverse types will work together? They’re less like each other than like humans, even. They could be played off against each other.”

“Maybe. But that would be going back onto the old road of treachery and violence, the road to Hell. Conversely, if every not-quite-human is called a ‘mutant,’ like a separate class, he’ll think he is, and act accordingly against the lumped-together ‘humans’. No, the only way to sanity—to survival—is to abandon class prejudice and race hate altogether, and work as individuals. We’re all…well, Earthlings, and sub-classification is deadly. We all have to live together, and might as well make the best of it.”

“Yeah…yeah, that’s right too.”

“Anyway, I repeat that all such attempts would be useless. All Earth is infected with mutation. It will be for a long time. The purest human stock will still produce mutants.”

“Y—yes, that’s true. Our best bet seems to be to find all such stock and withdraw it into the few safe areas left. It’ll mean a small human population, but a human one.”

“I tell you, that’s impossible,” clipped Drummond. “There is no safe place. Not one.”

Robinson stopped pacing and looked at him as at a physical antagonist. “That so?” he almost growled. “Why?”

Drummond told him, adding incredulously, “Surely you knew that. Your physicists must have measured the amount of it. Your doctors, your engineers, that geneticist I dug up for you. You obviously got a lot of this biological information you’ve been slinging at me from him. They must all have told you the same thing.”

Robinson shook his head stubbornly. “It can’t be. It’s not reasonable. The concentration wouldn’t be great enough.”

“Why, you poor fool, you need only look around you. The plants, the animals—Haven’t there been any births in Taylor?”

“No. This is still a man’s town, though women are trickling in and several babies are on the way—” Robinson’s face was suddenly twisted with desperation. “Elaine’s is due any time now. She’s in the hospital here. Don’t you see, our other kid died of the plague. This one’s all we have. We want him to grow up in a world free of want and fear, a world of peace and sanity where he can play and laugh and become a man, not a beast starving in a cave. You and I are on our way out. We’re the old generation, the one that wrecked the world. It’s up to us to build it again, and then retire from it to let our children have it. The future’s theirs. We’ve got to make it ready for them.”

Sudden insight held Drummond motionless for long seconds. Understanding came, and pity, and an odd gentleness that changed his sunken bony face. “Yes,” he murmured, “yes, I see. That’s why you’re working with all that’s in you to build a normal, healthy world. That’s why you nearly went crazy when this threat appeared. That…that’s why you can’t, just can’t comprehend—”