Page:Astounding Science Fiction (1950-01).djvu/98

 chicken began to change form. The feathers vanished, the shape vanished and within ten minutes there was nothing under the jar but a blob of cellular matter. Ole Doc grunted in satisfaction and tipped the mass into a huge graduate. He stuffed a rayrod into the middle of the mass and left it.

"Another chicken," he said. O'Hara closed his mouth and ran into the yard to scoop up another one. It squawked and beat its wings until a rayrod was aimed at it. Then, like its relative, it went under the belljar, became jellylike, turned into a translucent mass and got dumped into another graduate.

Five chickens later there were seven graduates full of cells, each with a different kind of rayrod sticking out.

"Now," said Ole Doc, "we take that first baby. The boy."

O'Hara repressed a shudder. He knew that medicine could not make scruples when emergency was present, but there was something about putting a baby, a live, cooing little baby—if a trifle energetic—under a belljar and knocking it into a shapeless nothingness. But at that instant a howl sounded from the pens and O'Hara was happy to assist the now returned Hippocrates in slapping the vigorous infant on the face of the operating table.

O'Hara expected to see the belljar come down and a rayrod go to work. He was somewhat astonished when Ole Doc began to strap the baby to the board and he began to fear that it was going to be a knife job.

But Ole Doc didn't reach for a scalpel. He picked up a big hypo syringe, fitted an antisepticizing needle to it and took two or three cells out of the first graduate. Ide checked it and then turned to the child.

He made a pass with a glowing button and then plunged the needle into the baby's spine. He withdrew it and made a second pass with the button. Rapidly, in six separate places, he injected cells into the infant anatomy. And then O'Hara's eyes bulged and he went a little sick. For the seventh shot was rammed straight into the child's eye and deep into its brain.

Ole Doc pulled out the needle, made a pass with the button again, and stood back. O'Hara expected a dead baby. After all it had had needles stuck in the back of its head, its spine, its heart and its brain. But the baby cooed and went to sleep.

"Next one," said Ole Doc.

"There isn't going to be a next one," said a cool voice behind them. They whirled to find a leathery-faced, short-statured character in leather garb who stood indolently leaning against a porch post with an undoubtedly lethal weapon aimed in their general direction.

"And who are you?" said Ole Doc.

"The name is Smalley. Not that you'll be very interested for long. All done playing with the kids? 98