Page:World Without Men (HT osu.32435053364535).pdf/53

ment scientist and a member of a subversive group. She is hiding from the Department of Mortic Revenue."

The pink face remained expressionless. "Stay where you are. We shall be there within the minute."

Aubretia switched off the videophone with a sigh of relief.

They kept the monkey for two years, during which time they injected some two gallons of estrogen derivative into it. Then they killed it and cut it open. Rinehart came into the laboratory to watch. He was a small shrunken man with a bristling black beard and dark birdlike eyes that gleamed restlessly. The monkey was small and brown, of the Rhesus type, with sleek fur and beady eyes glazed in death.

Slade removed the ovaries, waxed them, made microtome sections, stained them, then passed the finished slides to Gorste. He slipped them under the microscope and focused the binocular eyepiece.

"Hopeful," he said presently.

"Any sign of follicular tissue?" That was Rinehart.

"No."

"Or degeneration of the active surface?"

"I never saw a monkey with finer ovaries."

"Try the transverse sections."

Gorste changed slides. The pattern of the cells was clean and crisp, and regular as a honeycomb. He adjusted the light minutely and made a measurement with a luminance meter.