“Then Dr. Patterson started in. He’s a diagnostician, and he’s got a wicked logical mind. He said, ‘Look here, Ray. Figuring in the Prime group and the backups, your chance of survival is fifty-to-one. Don’t do this to your mother, Ray.’ I was polite with him for as long as I could, but finally I told him to just kiss off. I said I figured the odds on him ever marrying my mother were pretty long, but I never noticed him backing off because of that.”
