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that she's sterile, but sometimes there can be a slight physical impediment which can be corrected."

"She's sterile enough, and there's nothing you or anyone else can do about it. You'd better come over and examine her right now."

The doctor hesitated an instant, as if he had detected some strange and convincing inflexion in Gorste's voice. Then he said: "I'll be there without delay, Mr. Gorste. Give me five minutes."

Gorste hung up dejectedly, then lifted the phone again and dialed the police.

The big flame-colored letters of the neon sign spelled Sterilin. Each letter was a convoluted glass tube fifty feet tall, and the word was clamped high on the wall of the Wasserman building, glaring its message into the night like a danger beacon. It dominated Piccadilly Circus, swamping all the other neon lights in its vicinity. You could see it from across the river, and on a clear night the letters of the word could be made out from the top of the Microwave Tower in Highgate, nearly six miles away.

But tonight visibility was not good. The sign peered harshly through a semi-opaque curtain of persistent drizzle, frustrated and confined, but seeking compensation in the wet surface of the road where the reflection, broken and shimmering