"The Board is giving you a blank check. Do anything you think will pay
off. We have to stay within the letter of the law, of course, but not
necessarily the spirit."
"When do they have to have a solution?"
"As soon as possible. At least within the year. By that time the
situation will be very serious. The psychologists say that what will
happen then won't be good."
"All right, by then we'll have the answer."
MacDonald stopped at the door. "There's another reason why they want it
worked out. The number of men applying to the Colonization Board for
emigration to the colony planets is falling off."
"How come?"
MacDonald smiled. "On the basis of statistics alone, would you want to
emigrate from a planet where the women outnumber the men five to three?"
When MacDonald had gone, Escher settled back in his chair and idly
tapped his fingers on the desk-top. It was lucky that the Colonization
Board worked on two levels. One was the well-publicized, idealistic
level where nothing was too good and every deal was 99 and 44/100 per
cent pure. But when things got too difficult for it to handle on that
level, they went to Escher and MacDonald's department. The coal mine
level. Nothing was too low, so long as it worked. Of course, if it
didn't work, you took the lumps, too.
He rummaged around in his drawer and found a list of the qualifications
set up by the Board for potential colonists. He read the list slowly
and frowned. You had to be physically fit for the rigors of space
travel, naturally, but some of the qualifications were obviously silly.
You couldn't guarantee physical perfection in the second generation,
anyway.
He tore the qualification list in shreds and dropped it in the disposal
chute. That would have to be the first to go.
There were other things that could be done immediately. For one thing,
as it stood now, you were supposed to be financially able to colonize.
Obviously a stupid and unappealing law. That would have to go next.
He picked up the sheet of statistics that MacDonald had left and read
it carefully. The Board could legalize polygamy, but that was no
solution in the long run. Probably cause more problems than it would
solve. Even with women as easy to handle as they were nowadays, one was
still enough.
Which still left him with the main problem of how to get people to
colonize who didn't _want_ to colonize.
The first point was to convince them that they wanted to. The second
point was that it might not matter whether they wanted to or not.
No, it shouldn't be hard to solve at all--provided you held your nose,
silenced your conscience, and were willing to forget that there was
such a thing as a moral code.