"About three in the morning," Moore said. "I got up, put on a robe and
went to answer it, wondering who it could be at that time. I opened the
door and there in the hall was a baby in a basket."
"A baby?" queried the psychiatrist. "In a basket? Are you sure?"
Moore nodded. "And I noticed something else unusual. Out there it was
Mars!"
"Out there? Out where?"
"Out in the hall. It wasn't the hall in my apartment building, it was
some other hall, and through a window I could see a red desert and
canals. There isn't a red desert where I live, or any desert at all.
There are no canals either. It was Mars."
"I see," the psychiatrist said, and he drew a thick ellipse around the
word on his pad. "Then what happened?"
"I was scared, but I couldn't leave a baby out there in the hall like
that. So I picked it up, basket and all, and took it into my room and
closed the door. And then--" He gulped and looked out the window at the
sky and the tops of buildings. "Here's where the part comes in that's
hard to believe."
"Yes? Go on," the psychiatrist prompted.
"The baby turned into a full-grown woman," Moore said.
Despite himself, the psychiatrist felt his eyebrows arch. Well, this
was certainly a new one. "You say the baby turned into a full-grown
woman. Er--ah--clothed?"
Moore reddened and stared at the floor. "No," he said. "I was scared.
And embarrassed. Here I am a bachelor, and there was a nude woman in my
apartment. How could I explain that to the landlady? Anyway, I threw
open the door again, but this time the hall was different. It was like
it was before--on Earth, I mean, instead of on Mars."
"Very interesting," the psychiatrist said, mentally picturing the
situation and temporarily forgetting chicken farms. He wondered how
Miss Austin would look _au naturel_. "Did you do anything? That is,
anything--ah--well, anything at all?"
"I didn't know what to do," Moore said. "She looked about as surprised
as I was, but not nearly as embarrassed. I closed the door again and
tried to figure out what to do."