teeth yet. I'm taking her to a speech specialist.
September 13.
•.. We have a prodigy for real! Now that all her front teeth are in, her speech is perfectly clear and—a new talent now—she can sing! I mean really carry a tune! At seven months! Darling my world would be perfect if you could only get home.
November 19.
• •. at last. The little goon was so busy being clever, it took her all this time to learn to crawl. The doctor says development in these cases is always erratic ...
SPECIAL SERVICE TELEGRAM
December 1, 1953 08:47 LK59F
From: Tech. Lieut. H. Marvell
X47-016 GCNY
To: Mrs. H. Marvell Apt. K-17 504 E. 19 St. N.Y. N.Y.
WEEK'S LEAVE STARTS TOMORROW STOP WILL ARRIVE AIRPORT
TEN OH FIVE STOP DON'T MEET ME STOP LOVE LOVE LOVE HANK
Margaret let the water run out of the bathinette until only a few inches were left, and then loosed her hold on the wriggling baby.
'I think it was better when you were retarded, young woman,' she informed her daughter happily. 'You can't crawl in a bathinette, you know.'
'Then why can't I go in the bathtub?' Margaret was used to her child's volubility by now, but every now and then it caught her unawares. She swooped the resistant mass of pink flesh into a towel, and began to rub.
'Because you're too little, and your head is very soft, and bathtubs are very hard.'
'Oh. Then when can I go in the bathtub?'
'When the outside of your head is as hard as the inside, brainchild.' She reached toward a pile of fresh clothing. 'I cannot understand,' she added, pinning a square of cloth through the nightgown, 'why a child of your intelligence can't learn to keep a diaper on the way other babies do. They've been used for centuries, you know, with perfectly satisfactory results.'
The child disdained to reply; she had heard it too often. She waited patiently until she had been tucked, clean and sweet-smelling, into a white-painted crib. Then she favored her mother with a smile that inevitably made Margaret think of the first golden edge of the sun bursting into a rosy pre-dawn. She remembered Hank's reaction to the color pictures of his beautiful daughter, and with the thought, realized how late it was.
'Go to sleep, puss. When you wake up, you know, your Daddy will be here.'
'Why?' asked the four-year-old mind, waging a losing battle to keep the ten-month-old body awake.
Margaret went into the kitchenette and set the timer for the roast. She examined the table, and got her clothes from the closet, new dress, new shoes, new slip, new everything, bought weeks before and saved for the day Hank's telegram came. She stopped to pull a paper from the facsimile, and, with clothes and news, went into the bathroom, and lowered herself gingerly into the steaming luxury of a scented tub.
She glanced through the paper with indifferent interest. Today at least there was no need to read the national news. There was an article by a geneticist. The same geneticist. Mutations, he said, were increasing disproportionately. It was too soon for recessives; even the first mutants, born near Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1946 and 1947 were not old enough yet to breed. But my baby's all right. Apparently, there was some degree of free radiation from atomic explosions causing the trouble. My baby's fine. Precocious, but normal. If more attention had been paid to the first Japanese mutations, he said ...
There was that little notice in the paper in the spring of '47. That was when Hank quit at Oak Ridge. 'Only two or three percent of those guilty of infanticide are being caught and punished in Japan today...'
But MY BABY’S all right.
She was dressed, combed, and ready to the last light brush-on of lip paste, when the door chime sounded. She dashed for the door, and heard, for the first time in eighteen months the almost-forgotten sound of a key turning in the lock before the chime had quite died away.
'Hank!'
'Maggie!'
And then there was nothing to say. So many days, so many months, of small news piling up, so many things to tell him, and now she just stood there, staring at a khaki uniform and a stranger's pale face. She traced the features with the finger of memory.
The same high-bridged nose, wide-set eyes, fine feathery brows; the same long jaw, the hair a little farther back now on the high forehead, the same tilted curve to his mouth. Pale ... Of course, he'd been underground all this time. And strange, stranger because of lost familiarity than any newcomer's face could be.
She had time to think all that before his hand reached out to touch her, and spanned the gap of eighteen months. Now, again, there was nothing to say, because there was no need. They were together, and for the moment that was enough.
'Where's the baby?'
'Sleeping. She'll be up any minute.'
No urgency. Their voices were as casual as though it were a daily exchange, as though war and separation did not exist. Margaret picked UP the coat he'd thrown on the chair near the door, and hung it carefully ui the hall closet. She went to check the roast, leaving him to wander through the rooms by himself, remembering and coming back. She found him, finally, standing over the baby's crib.
She couldn't see Iiis face, but she had no need to.
'I think we can wake her just this once.' Margaret pulled the covers down, and lifted the white bundle from the bed. Sleepy lids pulled back heavily from smoky brown eyes.
'Hello.' Hank's voice was tentative.
'Hello.' The baby's assurance was more pronounced.
He had heard about it, of course, but that wasn't the same as hearing it. He turned eagerly to Margaret. 'She really can—?'
'Of course she can, darling. But what's more important, she can even do nice normal things like other babies do, even stupid ones. Watch her crawl!' Margaret set the baby on the big bed.
For a moment young Henrietta lay and eyed her parents dubiously.
'Crawl?' she asked.
'That's the idea. Your Daddy is new around here, you know. He wants to see you show off.'
'Then put me on my tummy.''
'Oh, of course.' Margaret obligingly rolled the baby over.
'What's the matter?' Hank's voice was still casual, but an undercurrent in it began to charge the air of the room. 'I thought they turned over first.'
' This baby,' Margaret would not notice the tension, ' 'This baby does things when she wants to.'
This baby's father watched with softening eyes while the head advanced and the body hunched up propelling itself across the bed.
'Why the little rascal,' he burst into relieved laughter. 'She looks like one of those potato-sack racers they used to have on picnics. Got her arms pulled out of the sleeves already.' He reached over and grabbed the knot at the bottom of the long nightie.
'I'll do it, darling.' Margaret tried to get there first.
'Don't be silly, Maggie. This may be your first baby, but / had five kid brothers.'
He laughed her away, and reached with his other hand for the string that closed one sleeve. He opened the sleeve bow, and groped for an arm.
'The way you wriggle,' he addressed his child sternly, as his hand touched a moving knob of flesh at the shoulder, 'anyone might think you are a worm, using your tummy to crawl on, instead of your hands and feet.'
Margaret stood and watched, smiling. 'Wait till you hear her sing, darling—'
His right hand traveled down from the shoulder to where he thought an arm would be, traveled down, and straight down, over firm small muscles that writhed in an attempt to move against the pressure of his hand. He let his fingers drift up again to the shoulder. With infinite care, he opened the knot at the bottom of the
