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They’re still recovering from the war, of course; that may be it. Or they may have scouted the moon and decided it’s not what they want, that theecology is too foreign to their biology. Here.” He held a door open and she entered, finding herself facing seated homeopape reporters, fifteen or sixteen of them, some with pic-cameras.
    Taking a deep breath she walked to the lectern which McRae pointed out; it was equipped with a microphone.
    McRae, speaking into the mike, said, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Dr. Mary Rittersdorf, the renowned marriage counselor from Marin County who as you know has volunteered her services for this project.”
    A reporter at once said, lazily, “Dr. Rittersdorf, what is this project called? Project Psychotic?” The other reporters laughed.
    It was McRae who answered. “
Operation Fifty-minutes
is the working name we’ve applied to it.”
    “Where do the sickies on the moon go when you catch them?” another reporter asked. “So maybe you sweep them under the rug, is that it?”
    Mary, speaking into the mike, said, “At first we will be involved in research, in order to fathom the situation. We know already that the original patients—at least some of them—and their progeny are alive. How viable the society they’ve formed is we don’t pretend to know. I would guess it’s not viable at all, except in the bare, literal sense that they do live. We will attempt corrective therapy with those we can. It’s the children, of course, that we’re most concerned with.”
    “When do you expect to be on Alpha III M2, Doctor?” a reporter asked. The pic-cameras ground away, whirring like distant flights of birds.
    “I’d say within two weeks,” Mary said.
    “You’re not being paid for this, are you, Doctor?” a reporter asked.
    “No.”
    “You’re convinced, then, that this is in the public good? It’s a Cause?”
    “Well,” Mary said, hesitantly. “It—”
    “Terra, then, will benefit by our meddling with this culture of ex-mental hospital patients?” The reporter’s voice was sleek.
    Turning to McRae, Mary said, “What should I say?”
    McRae, into the mike, said, “This is not Dr. Rittersdorf’s area; she’s a trained psychologist, not a politician. She declines to answer.”
    A reporter, tall, lean, experienced, rose to his feet and said drawlingly, “Has it occurred to TERPLAN just to leave this moon alone? To treat its culture as you would any other culture, respecting its values and customs?”
    Haltingly, Mary said, “We don’t know enough yet. Perhaps when we know more—” She broke off, floundering. “But it’s not a subculture,” she said. “It has no tradition. It’s a society of mentally ill individuals and their offspring that came into existence only twenty-five years ago… you can’t dignify that by comparing it with, say, the Ganymedean or Ionian cultures. What values could mentally ill people develop? And in such a short time.”
    “But you said yourself,” the reporter purred, “that at this point you know nothing about them. For all you know—”
    McRae, speaking into the microphone, said sharply, “If they’ve developed any kind of a stable, viable culture, we’ll leave them alone. But that determination is up to experts such as Dr. Rittersdorf, not to you or to me or the American public. Frankly, we feel there’s nothing more potentially explosive than a society in which psychotics dominate, define the values, control the means of communication. Almost anything youwant to name can come out of it—a new, fanatical religious cult, a paranoiac nationalistic state-concept, barbaric destructiveness of a manic sort—these possibilities alone justify our investigation of Alpha III M2. This project is in defense of our own lives and values.”
    The homeopape reporters were silent, evidently convinced by what McRae had said. And certainly Mary agreed.
    Later, as she and McRae left the room, Mary said, “Was that actually the