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more than a thousand years the balance had been maintained with a fine accuracy.

There had, of course, been little progress in the sense of absolute research; indeed, certain fields of technological investigation had even retrogressed. Astronautics, for example, was a dead subject. Rockets were no longer made apart from a few small projectiles used for meteorological purposes. Aircraft design had not altered within living memory, perhaps not even in millennia. The high-powered stratojets that could circle the earth in twenty-four hours without refueling were adequate for all purposes. In the field of atomic engineering, research had halted once the production of nuclear power had been established on an economic basis. It was the female viewpoint, essentially practical and in no way visionary, using techonology for what it could give with no interest in abstract research for its own sake, that prevailed.

The same practical attitude had resolved the major problems of power politics. Although womankind was still split by geographical divisions into independent continental groups, there was close liaison at every level of life and work. The separate governing bodies were co-ordinated by a central committee which was franchised to act in an advisory capacity on all questions of governing policy and local administration. It was recognized that government was part of the regulating machinery of society, an enormous ductless gland controlling the basic functioning of the organism as a whole, but it was the organism which was important, not the gland.

Nor had women bothered to theorize about their science or society. Some called it a scientific democracy, others a technocracy, and still others a controlled anarchy. The names meant nothing: The mechanism functioned just as efficiently whatever the label applied to it.

This state of relative Utopia had materialized slowly during the past five thousand years. There was a feeling, which