What did Genetics and Hansen's Folly have
in common? Why, everything ... Genetics
was statistical and Hansen's Folly impossible!

I

The living room reflected wealth, position, good taste. In size it wasa full ten feet by fourteen, with nearly an eight-foot ceiling. Lightwas furnished by glow panels precisely balanced in color to producelight's most flattering tint for the woman who sat in a delicate chairof authentic, golden-veined blackwood.

The chair itself must have cost a fortune to ship from Tau Ceti Five.It was an ostentation in the eyes of the visitor, who viewed it asevidence of a self-indulgent attitude that would certainly make his jobmore difficult.

The air in the room was fresh and very faintly aromatic, pleasing. Itcame draftlessly refreshed at a temperature of seventy-six degrees anda relative humidity of fifty per cent and permitted the entry of nomore than one foreign particle (dust) per cubic foot.

The coffee table was another ostentation, but for a different reasonthan the imported chair of blackwood. The coffee table was ofmahogany—terrestrial mahogany—and therefore either antique, heirloom,or both, and in any combination of cases it was priceless. It gavethe visitor some dark pleasure to sit before it with his comparisonmicroscope parked on the polished mahogany surface, with the ease ofone who always parked his tools on tables and stands made of treasurewoods.

There were four persons. Paul Hanford swirled brandy in a snifterwith a series of nervous gestures. Mrs. Hanford sat in the blackwoodchair unhappily, despite the flattering glow of the wall-panels. Theirdaughter, Gloria, sat in such a way as to distract the visitor bypresenting a target that his eyes could not avoid. Try as he would, hisgaze kept straying to the slender, exposed bare ankle and the delicate,high-arched foot visible beneath the hem of the girl's dress.

Norman Ross, GSch, was the visitor, and he subvocalized his tenthself-indictment as he tore his gaze away from Gloria Hanford's ankle tolook into Paul Hanford's face. Ross was the Scholar of Genetics for thelocal division of the Department of Domestic Tranquility and he shouldhave known all about such things, but he obviously did not.

He said, "You can hardly blame yourselves, you know," although he didnot really believe it.

"But what have we done wrong?" asked Mrs. Hanford in a plaintive voice.

Scholar Ross shook his head and caught his gaze in mid-stray before itreturned all the way to that alluring ankle. "Genetics, my dear Mrs.Hanford, is a statistical science, not a precise science." He wavedvaguely at the comparison microscope. "There are your backgrounds forseven generations. No one—and I repeat, no one—could have foreseenthe issue of a headstrong, difficult offspring from the mating ofcharacteristics such as these. I checked most carefully, most minutely,just to be certain that some obscure but important conflict had notbeen overlooked by the signing doctor. Doctors, however, do makemistakes."