"I've been to twelve different doctors, including eight specialists.
I've thought and thought until I'm half crazy, and there just isn't
any other answer," the pixie said.
She stared at us and clenched her fists and beat on the shiny table.
"You've got to believe me! There just isn't _any_ other answer.
Atummion is responsible for my condition, and all twelve doctors
agreed on my condition."
Still standing, Madame Elaine Templeton grabbed the back of her chair
until her knuckles turned white. "Don't tell me the stuff brings on
hives or something!"
The pixie threw back her head and a near-hysterical laugh throbbed
from her lovely throat. "Hives, hell. I'm pregnant!"
* * * * *
Well, we were all very sorry for her, because she was unmarried, and
that sort of thing is always clumsy. At that moment, however, none of
us believed the connection between her condition and Atummion.
Being a distant relative of the Madame, she was humored to the extent
that we had the lab get some guinea pigs and douse them with Elaine
Templeton's After Bath Powder, and they even professed to make a daily
check on them.
Meanwhile, production ground to a halt on all Atummion-labelled
products, which was everything, I think, but the eyebrow pencils.
With every drug-store and department store in the country screaming to
have their orders filled, it was a delicate matter and took a lot of
string-pulling to keep the thing off the front-pages. It wasn't the
beautician's open charges that bothered us, because everyone knew they
were just disgruntled. But if it leaked out that the AEC was disturbed
enough to cut off our fission products, every radio, newspaper and TV
commentator in the business would soon make mince-meat of us over the
fact that Atummion had not been adequately tested before marketing.
And this was so right!
We took our chances and submitted honest samples to the Bureau of
Weights and Measures and the Pure Food and Drug labs. And held our
breath.
The morning the first report came back in our favor there was great
rejoicing, but that afternoon our own testing lab sent up a man to see
Jennings, and he called me instantly.
"Sanford, get up here at once. The guinea pigs just threw five litters
of babies!"
"Congratulations," I told him. "That happens with guinea pigs, I
understand."
"You _don't_ understand," he thundered at me. "This was test group
F-six, all females, and every one has reached maturity since we bought
and segregated them."
"There must be some mistake," I said.
"There better be," he told me.
I went to his office and together we picked up the Madame from her
penthouse suite. She followed us into the elevator reluctantly.
"Absurd, absurd!" was all she could say.
We watched the lab man check the ten adult pigs one by one. Even as
inexpert as I am in such matters, it was evident that all ten were
females, and the five which had not yet participated in blessed events
were but hours from becoming mothers.
We went our separate ways stunned. Back in my office I pulled out a
list of our big wholesale accounts where the Atummion products had
been shipped by the carloads. The warehouses were distributed in every
state of the union.
Then I ran my eye down the list of products which contained the
devilish Atummion. There were thirty-eight, in all, including a
complete line of men's toiletries, shaving lotion, shampoo, deodorant
and body-dusting powder. I thanked God that men didn't have ovaries.
Dolores Donet--that was the pixie's name--opened my door and deposited
herself gingerly in a chair opposite me.