Thy Name Is WOMAN
By Kenneth O'Hara
Illustrated by Zimmerman
[Transcriber Note: This etext was produced from IF Worlds of ScienceFiction March 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence thatthe U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
There wasn't a woman left on earth. They had just packed their bags and left.
After the Doctor gave him the hypo and left the ship, Bowren layin absolute darkness wondering when the change would start. Therewould be pain, the Doctor had said. "Then you won't be aware ofanything—anything at all."
That was a devil of a thing, Bowren thought, not to be aware of thegreatest adventure any man ever had. He, Eddie Bowren, the first toescape the Earth into space, the first man to Mars!
He was on his back in a small square steel cubicle, a secretlyconstructed room in the wall of the cargo bin of the big spaceshipcradled at the New Chicago Port. He was not without fear. But before theship blasted he wouldn't care—he would be changed by then. He wouldstart turning any minute now, becoming something else; he didn't knowexactly what, but that wouldn't matter. After it was over, he wouldn'tremember because the higher brain centers, the cortex, the analyticalmind, would be completely cut off, short-circuited, during thealteration.
The cubicle was close, hot, sound-proofed, like a tomb. "You willprobably make loud unpleasant noises," the Doctor had said, "but no onewill hear you. Don't worry about anything until you get to Mars."
That was right, Bowren thought. My only problem is to observe, compute,and get back into this dungeon without being observed, and back toEarth.
The idea was to keep it from the women. The women wouldn't go for thisat all. They would object. The women would be able to bring into effectseveral laws dealing with spaceflight, among them the one againststowaways, and especially that particular one about aberrated malessneaking into space and committing suicide.
A lot of men had tried it, in the beginning. Some of them had managedit, but they had all died. For a long time, the men's egos hadn't beenable to admit that the male organism was incapable of standing therigors of acceleration. Women had had laws passed, and if the womencaught him doing this, the punishment would be extreme for him,personally, and a lot more extreme for Earth civilization in general. Ifyou could call it a civilization. You could call it anything, Bowrengroaned—but it didn't make sense. A world without women. A birthratereduced to zero.
A trickle of sweat slid past Bowren's eyes, loosening a nervous flushalong his back that prickled painfully. His throat was tense and hisheart pounded loud in the hot dark.
A sharp pain ran up his body and exploded in his head. He tried toswallow, but something gagged in his throat. He was afraid of retching.He lay with his mouth open, spittle dribbling over his lips. The painreturned, hammered at his entrails. He fought the pain numbly, like aman grappling in the dark.
The wave subsided and he lay there gasping, his fists clenched.
"The pain will come in increasingly powerful waves," the Doctor hadsaid. "At a certain point, it will be so great, the analytical mind willcompletely short-circuit. It will stay that way enroute