Month followed month. To Alice it was a period of rushing from kitchen to hypodermic injections to vacuum cleaner to hypodermic injections, her key to the study in constant use.
Paul, nine years old now, took to spring baseball and developed an indifference to TV, much to the relief of both his parents.
In the garage workshop Dr. MacNare made parts for the robot, and kept a couple of innocent projects going which he worked on when his son Paul evinced his periodic curiosity about what was going on.
Spring became summer. For six weeks Paul went to Scout camp, and during those six weeks Dr. MacNare reorganized the entire research project in line with what it would be in the fall. A decision was made to use only white rats from then on. The rest of the animals were sold to a pet store, and a system for automatically feeding, watering, and keeping the cages clean was installed in preparation for a much needed two weeks' vacation at the cabin.
When the time came to go, they had to tear themselves away from their work by an effort of will--aided by the realization that they could get little done with Paul underfoot.
September came all too soon. By mid-September both Dr. MacNare and his wife felt they were on the home stretch. Parts of the robot were going together and being tested, the female white rats were being bred at the rate of one a week so that when the robot was completed there would be a supply of newborn rats on hand.
October came, and passed. The robot was finished, but there were minor defects in it that had to be corrected.
"Adam," Dr. MacNare said one day, "will have to wear this robot all his life. It has to be just right."
And with each litter of baby rats Alice said, "I wonder which one is Adam."
They talked of Adam often now, speculating on what he would be like. It was almost, they decided, as though Adam were their second child.
And finally, on November 2, 1956, everything was ready. Adam would be born in the next litter, due in about three days.
The amount of work that had gone into preparation for the great moment is beyond conception. Four file cabinet drawers were filled with notes. By actual measurement seventeen feet of shelf space was filled with books on the thousand and one subjects that had to be mastered. The robot itself was a masterpiece of engineering that would have done credit to the research staff of a watch manufacturer. The vernier adjustments alone, used to compensate daily for the rat's growth, had eight patentable features.