There aren't any babies in first class and not many children of any age. Second class has quite a few kids, but third class is swarming with them and every family seems to have at least one young baby. It's why they
are there, of course; almost all of third class are Earth people emigrating to Venus. With Earth so crowded, a man with a big family can easily reach the point where emigration to Venus looks like the best way out of an impossible situation, so he signs a labor contract and Venus Corporation pays for their tickets as an advance against his wages.
I suppose it's all right. They need to get away and Venus needs all the people they can get. But I'm glad Mars Republic doesn't subsidize immigration, or we would be swamped. We take immigrants but they have to pay their own way and have to deposit return tickets with the PEG board, tickets they can't cash in for two of our years.
A good thing, too. At least a third of the immigrants who come to Mars just can't adjust. They get homesick and despondent and use those return tickets to go back to Earth. I can't understand anyone's not liking Mars, but if they don't then it's better if they don't stay.
I lay there, thinking about such things, a little bit excited and a little bit bored, and mostly wondering why somebody didn't do something about those poor babies.
The lights had been dimmed and when somebody came up to my shelf I didn't see who it was at first. "Poddy?" came Girdle's voice, softly but clearly. "Are you in there?"
"I think so. What's up, Girdie?" I tried to keep my voice down too.
"Do you know how to change a baby?"
"I certainly do!" Suddenly I wondered how Duncan was doing ... and realized that I hadn't really thought about him in days. Had he forgotten me? Would he know Grandmaw Poddy the next time he saw her?
"Then come along, chum. There's work to be done." There certainly was! The lowest part of the shelter, four catwalks below my billet and just over the
engineering spaces, was cut like a pie into four quarters-sanitary units, two sick bays, for 'men and for women and both crowded~~L~and jammed into a little corner between the infirmaries was a sorry pretense for a nursery, not more than two meters in any dimension. On three walls of it babies were stacked high in canvas crib baskets snap-hooked to the walls, and more overflowed into the women's sick bay. A sweeping majority of those babies were crying.
In the crowded middle of this pandemonium two harassed stewardesses were changing babies, working on a barely big enough shelf let down out of one wall. Girdle tapped one of them on the shoulder. "All right, girls, reinforcements have landed. So get some rest and a bite to eat."
The older one protested feebly, but they were awfully glad to take a break; they backed out and Girdle and I moved in and took over. I 'don't know how long we worked, as we never had time to think abut it-there was always more than we could do and we never quite got caught up. But it was better than lying on a shelf and staring at another shelf just centimeters above your nose. The worst of it was that there simply wasn't enough room. I worked with both elbows held in close, to keep from bumping Girdie on one side and a basket crib that was nudging me on the other side.
But I'm not complaining about that. The engineer who designed that shelter into the Tricorn had been forced to plan as many people as possible into the smallest possible space; there wasn't any other way to do it and still give us all enough levels of shielding during a storm. I doubt if he worried much about getting babies changed and dry; he had enough to do just worrying about how to keep them alive.
But you can't tell that to a baby.
Girdle worked with an easy, no-lost-motions efficiency
that surprised me; I would never have guessed that she had ever had her hands on a 'baby. But she knew what she was doing and was faster than I was. "Where are their mothers?" I asked, meaning: "Why aren't those lazy slobs down here helping instead of leaving it to the stewardesses and some volunteers?"
Girdle understood me. "Most of them-all of them, maybe-have other small children to keep quiet; they have their hands full. A couple of them went to pieces themselves; they're in there sleeping it off." She jerked her head toward the sick bay.
I shut up, as it made sense. You couldn't possibly take care of an infant properly in one of those shallow niches the passengers were stacked in, and if each mother tried to bring her own baby down here each time, the traffic jam would be indescribable. No, this assembly-line system was necessary. I said, "We're running out of Disposies."
"Stacked in a cupboard behind you. Did you see what happened to Mrs. Garcia's face?"
"Huh?' I squatted and got out more supplies. "You mean Mrs. Royer, don't you?"
"I mean both of them. But I saw milady Garcia first and got a better look at her, while they were quieting her down. You didn't see her?"
"Sneak a look into the women's ward first chance you get. Her face is the brightest, most amazing chrome yellow I've ever seen in a paint pot, much less on a human face."
I gasped. "Gracious! I did see Mrs. Royer-bright red instead of yellow. Girdle-what in the world happened to them?"
"I'm fairly sure I know what happened," Girdle answered slowly, "but no one can figure out how it happened."
"I don't follow you."
"The colors tell the story. Those are the exact shades of two of the water-act vated dyes used in photography. Know anything about photography, hon?"
"Not much," I answered. I wasn't going to admit what little I did know, because Clark is a very accomplished amateur photographer. And I wasn't going to mention that, either!
"Well, surely you've seen someone taking snapshots. You pull out the tab and there is your picture-only there's no picture as yet. Clear as glass. So you dip it in water and slosh it around for about thirty seconds. Still no picture. Then you lay it anywhere in the light and the picture starts to show... and when the colors are bright enough to suit you, you cover it up and let it finish drying in darkness, so that the colors won't get too garish." Girdie suppressed a chuckle. "From the results, I would say that they didn't cover their faces in time to stop the process. They probably tried to scrub it off and made it worse."
I said, in a puzzled tone-and I was puzzled, about part of it-"I still don't see how it could happen."
"Neither does anybody else. But the Surgeon has a theory. Somebody booby-trapped their washcloths."
"Huh?"
"Somebody in the ship must have a supply of the pure dyes. That somebody soaked two washcloths in the inactive dyes-colorless, I mean-and dried them carefully, all in total darkness. Then that same somebody sneaked those two prepared washcloths into those two staterooms and substituted them for washcloths they found there on the stateroom wash trays. That last part wouldn't be hard for anyone with cool nerves-service in the staterooms has been pretty haphazard the last day or two, what with this flap over the radiation storm. Maybe a fresh washcloth appears in your room, maybe it doesn't-and all the
ship's washcloths and towels are the same pattern. You just wouldn't know."
I certainly hope not! I said to myself-and added aloud, "I suppose not."
"Certainly not. It could be one of the stewardesses-or any of the passengers. But the real mystery is: where did the dyes come from? The ship's shop doesn't carry them ....ust the rolls of prepared film