---

Since none of the servants was left in the house—those who were still alive had fled to the country, where there was less chance of contagion—he took her body to the crematorium himself. Other people were there, consigning their grisly burdens to the automatic fires—thin, sickly creatures they were, who would soon be carrion for the firebirds themselves. Whereas he—if he had an emotion left, it would be shame—shame for the radiant youth and health that he saw mirrored in their dully wondering eyes.

Outside, the street was clamorous with the taped importunities of the empty vehicles—so many machines, because there were so few people left. But he chose to walk.

The air was sweet and clean, because the Dyall machines came and took away the bodies of those who fell in the street, and then cleaned those streets as carefully and tenderly as they had done when the walks and gutters had abounded with the vibrant slovenliness of the living. Emrys could, of course, have thrown the woman's body out into the gutter, and the machines would have carried her in their steel maws to the crematorium. But some remembered emotion had kept him from doing such a thing, and had made him give her to the flames with what small ceremony he could muster.

She had been the last mistress remaining to him, and probably, he thought, to any man in the city. Perhaps, out in the country, there might be women with life and lust in them still, but such women as were left here could no longer be considered women. This last one had not been even human for the past week; yet he had tended her—why, he could not say, except that he had nothing better to do. For one thing, she had been quieter when he was near her, and he could not bear her cries.

He was glad when she did die, because playing the good Samaritan had grown tedious as, in their turn, all other roles had palled. Even though he knew there would be no more women for him, he was glad. During the first few weeks of the plague, when everyone who had been alive had known that soon they would be dead, all the people on Earth had rushed to squander the life which suddenly seemed to fill them to bursting. Then a man could have had all the women he wanted, all of anything he wanted, for the asking, except the one thing he really wanted—the assurance of life.

---

Not everyone had plunged into an orgy of joyless pleasure. There were some who took refuge in prayer—addressed either to the traditional Deity or to the recent importations from the other planets. But, in the end, it was the same for all, prayerful and profligate alike. The only exceptions were the lucky few who seemed to be immune, like Emrys Shortmire, and those who escaped from the cities—to the country or, if they were rich, the other planets. So, even if Emrys had craved women before, he would have had enough of them by now.

As he passed through the streets, he heard a man who walked alone and talked to himself curse the name of Jan Shortmire. They would tear me to pieces if they knew I was his flesh and blood, Emrys thought, and smiled to think how once he had feared to be engulfed by Jan Shortmire's reputation, and now he feared to be destroyed by it.

For it had been a starship equipped, like all starships, with the Shortmire engines that had brought back the plague—a starship probing the distant corners of the Galaxy which were all that Man's insatiable curiosity had left undiscovered.

Far out, even beyond Morethis—outermost of the discovered planets—in the middle of the dead and dying stars that were all there was in this chill, cold sector of space, the ship had come upon three dead planets, dark and lifeless. But when it returned to Earth to report the end of Man's ambitions for further conquest, it turned out that one planet had not been quite as lifeless as they had fancied. And the ship had brought back its life—a virus against which terrestrial medicine was powerless.

Emrys could have fled the city; he could have fled the planet. But somehow, after three years on Earth, he had not wanted to. He had spent those years fulfilling the dreams that all young men dream in the murky part of their souls but seldom have the chance to gratify.

As soon as the inheritance was his, he had bought the most lavish mansion that was available at the instant of his desire, furnished it extravagantly, and prepared to enjoy himself. His pleasures were many and, some of them, strange. At first his mistresses were human, then non-human. Females of all the intelligent species, save the Morethan, were to be found on Earth, and although consorting with extraterrestrials was illegal, still a wealthy man had never been too much troubled by laws.

But women—females—represented only a fraction of his pleasures, as did the terrestrial vices. He indulged heavily in rrilla, zbokth, mburrje, and all the other outworld pursuits that had been imported from the planets where the native life had been intelligent enough for decadence.

---

However, though he pushed his body a thousand times beyond what should have been the limits of his endurance, the distress he had suffered during the first hours of his landing on Earth did not recur. He remained as clear of eye and trim of form as ever; each physical excess seemed only to improve his splendid health.

Oddly, he did not seem to enjoy these pleasures as much as he had anticipated. Something seemed lacking. It was always like this when you dreamed too long about something, he told himself; no result ever equaled its expectation. And he took another one of the sparkling pills from Morethis. They provided the only satisfaction he seemed able to get.

Emrys had been wrong about Uvrei's indifference. He apparently did consider Emrys his responsibility, over and above the material details of the bargain. The Morethans regarded all those of alien species as enemies, and all those outside the clan as unfriends. Therefore, Emrys began to realize the ceremonies of adoption he had gone through were more than merely honorific or ritual—they had been genuine. It was an uncomfortable conclusion.

"Well, son of my spirit," Uvrei would keep asking, "is this what you wanted?"

"This is what I wanted, father of my soul," Emrys would agree. And it was what he had asked, what he had thought he wanted.

The ancient one would smile and say, "Then I am content," and recombine into fog. And Emrys would wonder whether the Morethans had not known before they granted him his heart's desire that it would turn to dust and ashes when he had it. Then he would dismiss the thought, telling himself maybe he'd been too impatient for pleasure. After all, how could he, sprung full-blown into a quasi-alien society, hope to become an integral part of it all at once?

So he had waited ... one year, two years, three years. At the end of the fourth, the plague had struck. And he had stayed on Earth, because going to another planet somehow did not seem worthwhile. He was able to take care of his house alone, since the servants had been primarily for show, and the great Dyall machine—which was all the house, essentially, was—could run itself. Whenever a part of it broke down, he repaired it himself, glad of the opportunity to have something to do with his hands.

Finally he realized that he must be immune; hence a lifetime waited ahead of him. So he turned to learning, for the vast libraries of tapes and books remained changeless amid the disaster. He read and he learned a great deal, and if he could not derive pleasure from this, at least there was a deep intellectual appreciation that almost took its place.

The doctors on Ndrikull, the most advanced of the other planets, at last managed to find a serum that would kill the plague—that is, they maintained it was their serum that had killed it. Some suggested that the virus had died because Earth's environment had eventually proved hostile to it. But Earth did not die, even though most of its people had, because the great machines that took care of it—the Dyall machines—had kept functioning.

Gradually, most of the people who had fled to the other planets came back, and those who had survived in the country returned to the cities. Earth was restored to its former splendor as the social and political capital of the Galaxy, though Ndrikull now was the financial center and rivaled Earth for artistic honors. But still Emrys stuck to his books. Once in a while, he would sink himself for a week or a month in what would be, for other men, physical pleasure, just to see if his reactions had changed, but they had grown even more impersonal.

---

When Emrys Shortmire had been ten years on Earth, he eventually ran into Nicholas Dyall, at the opening of a scientific exposition. As soon as he saw Dyall in the crowd, he turned to go, but Dyall had seen him at the same time, and hurriedly limped across the room.

"You must be Emrys Shortmire," he declared, in a voice of surprising resonance for so old a man. "You look so much like Jan, I couldn't be mistaken." Grasping his stick with one hand for support, he extended the other to Emrys, who could not refuse it. "But you are so young...."

"I'm older than I look," Emrys said uncomfortably; then remembered to add, "You were a friend of my father's, sir?"

"A hundred years ago, yes. My name is Nicholas Dyall."

"I've heard of you; you're the man who—who invented all those machines," Emrys said, trying not to sound too ingenuous. "I've heard people say you revolutionized our technology as much as—"

"As much as your father revolutionized our civilization? Yes, both of us are responsible for a great deal. Luckily, your father is dead."

"Luckily?" Emrys echoed.

"Luckily for him, I mean." The old man sighed. "But you are too young to understand." Then his dark face relaxed into a smile. "I won't ask if you received the letter I sent when you first arrived on Earth. I can understand that a young man would wish the society of other—young people."

Emrys avoided Dyall's eye, and, so doing, met the gaze of the girl standing next to the old man, and stopped, transfixed. She was very young, less than forty, he judged, perhaps even less than thirty.

It was long since he had seen a woman like her. Her hair was a soft yellow, the only natural color among all the women in the room. Her face was painted pink and white, not the blues fashionable that year. Instead of being twisted and bedizened with cloth into fantastic shapes and protuberances, her pretty body was clad in a simple translucent slip. Yet, in spite of her almost deliberate dowdiness, she was beautiful—not the most beautiful woman he had ever seen, but the most ... no, striking was not it, either. What was the word he wanted? He could not dredge it out of the pool in which so many of his memories had been submerged for want of room.

"This is my great-great-granddaughter Megan," Dyall introduced her. The girl nodded and smiled. After a moment, Emrys forced himself to do the same.

"I won't press you to come visit us, Mr. Shortmire," Dyall said to Emrys as he and his descendant finally turned to leave, "but I hope that you will."

"We should be so glad to see you," the girl said, with a shy smile.

"Perhaps—perhaps I will come," he found himself saying. "One day." The two men shook hands, and Nicholas Dyall and his great-great-granddaughter moved away. Emrys stared after them for a minute; then, without paying any attention to the exhibits, he went back to his house and spent the rest of the evening staring at the falling flakes in his snowplace.

For years, he had thought he'd lost any capacity to feel. Now he knew that was not true ... because he had been moved by Megan Dyall. How, he could not say—not even whether it was love or hate he felt toward her—but he felt. That was the important thing, and, because of that, he had to take the risk and call on them.

---

He waited a week, then went to the Dyall house—a mansion, less ostentatious than his, but probably more expensive. Dyall greeted him warmly. "I'm glad you decided to come. Your father and I were not close friends, but he was the only one left of my generation whom I knew. It was a shock to hear of his passing, even though I hadn't seen him for a century or so."

"You've lived for such a long time, Grandpa," Megan said in her high, sweet voice, "it's hard to imagine. But why doesn't everybody get the longevity treatment, so we can all live a long time?"

"Because it's difficult and expensive," her ancestor said, smiling over her golden head at Emrys. "Because the old must make way for the young. It is only given to those whose lives, the government feels, should be prolonged, either because of the contributions they can still make, or whose contributions have already been so great that this is the only fitting reward."

The girl stared at him with large blue eyes. "Does that mean you will live forever, Grandpa?"

"No," the old man told her. "All our science can give is an extra half century. I don't know how long my life span would have been, but I'm past the average and the extra half century, and so I'm living on borrowed time."

The blue eyes filled with tears. "I don't want you to die, Grandpa. I don't want to grow old and die, either."

Dyall looked down at her, and there was, Emrys thought, an odd perplexity in his gaze. Didn't he find it natural for a young girl not to like the idea of old age, of death?

"But I shall want to die when my time comes, Megan," Dyall said. "We all will." Gently, he touched her cheek. "Perhaps, by the time you make your contribution to society, scientists will know how to give youth as well as extra years. More years are not really much of a gift to the old."

"But I can't do anything, Grandpa," she sobbed. "I have nothing to contribute."

It was an outrage, Emrys thought, that this woman, by being the essence of femininity, should be denied the ultimate reward society had to offer. Motherhood alone should entitle her.... He was, of course, already envisioning himself as the father of her children. But could he be a father?

Old Dyall was saying, "Perhaps, Megan, by the time you are old enough, our government will be wise enough to realize that beauty, of itself, deserves the greatest reward Man can give." He turned to Emrys. "Forgive me for getting so sentimental, but Megan looks as uncannily like her great-great-grandmother—my wife—as ... you look like your father. I can't bear to think she must die, too. It's a pity there is no way she can stay young and beautiful for all time."

Emrys found his fists clenching. The fingers were cold.

"Alissa's portrait was painted just before I married her," the old man said. "She was just about Megan's age then. Come, I'd like you to see it."

No! something inside Emrys cried out, but he could not courteously—or any other way—refuse to follow the old man.

They went into another room. Hanging over the mantelpiece was the painting of a girl in old-fashioned clothes. Anyone, not knowing, would have taken her to be Megan. But Emrys knew she was not, and suddenly he let himself remember what it was that Megan meant to him ... and why he hated Nicholas Dyall with such coruscating fury.

---

IV

"You should have sent for me to come to you, Mr. Hubbard," Nicholas Dyall said, with a gentle pity that infuriated the old lawyer, who knew that he himself was young enough to be Dyall's grandson. Hubbard was jealous—he would not conceal it from himself—bitterly jealous. It had not been hard for him to rationalize Jan Shortmire's gift of years as a worthless one; that old man's bitterness and disillusionment had not inspired envy. But this hale and rosy old man seemed to be enjoying his years.

I may not have made any signal contribution to human welfare, Hubbard thought resentfully, but I have done my best. Why must I die at an age fifty years short of the age which this man is allowed to reach?

"I am perfectly able to get about, Mr. Dyall," he said in icy tones, "since I am in excellent health."

Which he was, the doctor had told him, adding, however, "for your age."

"What is more," Hubbard continued, "since I was on Ndrikull, it might have seemed rather presumptuous for me to send for you; whereas I had always been planning to return to Earth one day. I left at the time of the plague."

"You were wise. I merely retired to the country. I escaped the virus, but the rest of my family was less fortunate. I have but one remaining—my great-great-granddaughter."

"Yes," Hubbard said, "I know. It's because of her I've come to see you."

He had not really planned ever to return to Earth. Ndrikull had been comfortable and a man of his age did not risk a trip through space unless the need was urgent. The memory of Emrys Shortmire had disturbed him from time to time, but, he thought, probably the young man had died of the plague. Even if he had not, what good would it do for Peter Hubbard to be present on Earth? He could not counteract the presence of an evil force without knowing the quality of that evil.

Then, picking up the kind of journal he did not usually read, he had seen mentioned the fact that Jan Shortmire's son was "courting" Nicholas Dyall's great-great-granddaughter. And he had known the need was now urgent. He must go back to Earth and warn someone; it was his duty. A letter could not convey the hatred and fear with which the young man had inspired him. Obviously, old Dyall had been the person to warn. Yet he did not seem right.

I do not like this man, Hubbard thought. And then: This is the second man I have taken such an instant dislike to. Can it be senility rather than perceptiveness, and have I been foolish to come all this way?

"You've come because of Megan?" Dyall raised eyebrows that were still thick and black. "Have you met her? Do you know her?" His voice sharpened. "She has never spoken of you."

"I have never met her," Hubbard said, and saw Dyall relax. Hubbard waited, but the other man said nothing, so he went on, "I wanted to talk to you about the man she's been seeing, this Emrys Shortmire." Leaning forward, Hubbard spoke slowly, as if, by giving weight to each word, he could make them sound less fantastic. "He's a monster. Literally, I mean. His mother was a Morethan. Or is. For all I know, she may still be alive."

---

Hubbard had not thought of this before, and it shook him. Yet, if Iloa Tasqi was alive, then Emrys Shortmire must be considered to be, to all intents and purposes, Morethan entirely, working only for the interests of that planet. After all, his mother had been the only parent the boy had known. Even on Clergal, he must have been brought up under a strong Morethan influence. Now, if the female was still alive, then the influence would be alive, too. Since Morethans were not permitted on Earth, there would be an obvious advantage for them in having someone here.

Dyall was holding back a smile, not too well. "I didn't know a human and a Morethan could—ah—breed together."

And, obviously, he didn't believe it. There was no way Hubbard could prove it, unless he asked Emrys to produce his birth certificate again. "It isn't generally known that the two species can reproduce together," he finally said, "nor should it be."

Then he looked directly in Dyall's black eyes—impossible that eyes so keen should be so deliberately blind, that any aware human being should not have sensed something of that dark aura. "Haven't you felt something strange about young Shortmire?" he asked.

"Can't say I have," Dyall chuckled. "He seems an agreeable enough young fellow."

"He's sixty-five years old."

"Really? I should have taken him to be younger. But youth lasts longer these days. And there's—" Dyall gave a little laugh—"no crime in being old, or you and I would be in prison, wouldn't we?"

Hubbard would not let himself be distracted. "He looked less than forty when he came to Earth, and he hasn't, I understand, changed in the past ten years."

"Ten years is not so long." Dyall's swarthy hands began playing with the ornaments on his desk. Clearly, he was impatient to be rid of his tedious caller, and Hubbard struggled with the instinctive good breeding that told him to get up and leave. This was not a social call, so it did not matter that he was boring his host, however.

On the other hand, he was not getting anywhere. Perhaps he could blast the other out of his smugness. "Look, Dyall, I know this is an outrageous thing for a man of my profession to say. I haven't a shred of proof, not a suspicion—but I'm morally sure he killed his father."

Instead of showing shock or anger or even thought, Dyall merely gave him a tolerant smile. "You're an old man, Mr. Hubbard. We're both old men," he amended graciously, "so we're apt to—jump at shadows."

I'm an old man, Hubbard thought angrily, and you're an old fool!

"There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the young man," Dyall continued, "or not-so-young man, if you prefer. He appears to be very fond of Megan, and if he should choose to marry her, it would ease my mind considerably. I've exceeded my life span myself, you know."

Since Peter Hubbard had done the same, and his span was considerably shorter, he had no sympathy. "You'd—let the strain continue?"

"Perhaps it's a good strain. I understand the Morethans are said to be immortal. If so, the genes might be a desirable addition to our own."

He was laughing openly now. Hubbard almost wept with helplessness. There must be something he could do. But what? He could not take the trip to Morethis; he would certainly die on the way. And what could he do there? There was no guarantee that, if there was anything to be found, he would find it, or even if he reached the planet alive, that he would go back alive.

"Won't you stay and dine with us tonight, Mr. Hubbard?" Dyall asked.

"No—no, thank you," Hubbard said, feeling no necessity for making an excuse. The offer had represented only the barest kind of courtesy.

Dyall got up. "Perhaps another night then?"

"Perhaps." Hubbard rose to his feet also, trying to appear brisk and alert and young. At least he could walk without aid, he thought, staring pointedly at the stick leaning against the wall. "I would rather you didn't tell Shortmire I had come to see you about him."

"Of course not, if you wish."

But Hubbard knew Dyall would not keep the stranger's visit from his friend. Odd that Dyall and young Shortmire should be friends. Not so odd either, though; young Shortmire had no reason to love his father. Besides, although Jan Shortmire had hated Nicholas Dyall, that did not mean Nicholas Dyall had hated Jan Shortmire, or even knew of the other man's animosity.

---

As he was riding back to his hotel, Hubbard let his tired old body indulge the aches and pains that were its rightful heritage. As his body relaxed, his mind relaxed, and he began to think more clearly. Perhaps Dyall would not listen to him—perhaps Dyall had some reason for not listening—but the government might.

What young Shortmire might have done as a human, they would consider a matter for local law—but the fact that human and Morethan had begotten offspring would interest them. The fact that the Morethans might have managed at last to get a spy on Earth would interest them. If Emrys would not surrender his birth certificate, they could get another from Clergal. Only, would the government's representative believe Hubbard enough to get that birth certificate? Or would they, like Dyall, dismiss him as a doddering old fool?

The private humiliation had been hard enough; he hated to risk a public one. But it was his duty to tell officialdom of his suspicions, he knew miserably. Never again could he think with pride of himself as a worthy citizen if he didn't at least make the attempt. Never again could he let himself feel a justifiable jealousy of those with endowments superior to his, if he did not prove himself worthy of what he had.

Well, there was no hurry; he would sleep on it. He was mistaken. In the morning, before he had even started to decide upon any course of action, the front desk called to announce that a Mr. Shortmire wished to see him.

"Very well," the old lawyer said wearily into the machine, to the machine, for it was the Dyall itself speaking. "Send him up."

A short while later, there was a rap on the door. "Come in," Hubbard called.

The door slid open. A man entered, a tawny golden youth with eyes like burnished metal. "Do you know who I am, Peter?"

"Of course," Hubbard said, faintly disgusted, since he considered melodrama vulgar. "You're Emrys Shortmire."

"You're wrong," the man said. "I'm Jan Shortmire."

---

V

Emrys Shortmire had gone home the night Dyall had shown him the portrait of his long-dead wife, and Emrys had dreamed, not of Megan Dyall, but of Alissa Embel, Megan's great-great-grandmother, whom he had wanted a hundred years before, and who had married Nicholas Dyall. Consciously, he had forgotten her, but at the back of his mind, she had, for over a century, walked hand in hand with his hatred.

That night he understood what he had not realized then. He had completed the engines with which he had been tinkering for years with a real vengeance. He had taken the first starship out into space himself—when no one had faith in his engines, least of all himself—merely "to show her" what a great man he was, even if he died in the showing. In his spite, he had opened up the stars for mankind.

And when he returned, years later, he found that Dyall, too, had stopped tinkering and had changed the pattern of his gadgets to one more acceptable to the public taste. Before, they had operated quite satisfyingly, but they had not been salable in the shape he had given them, and no manufacturer had been interested in leasing the patents. Now that he had yielded, manufacturers were falling all over themselves to get the right to produce his machines.

Dyall's was not as soul-stirring a success as Shortmire's—he did not inspire cheering crowds and parades—but a more enduringly popular one. The Shortmire engines carried humanity to the stars, but it was the Dyall machines that cooked humanity's dinners and kept its houses clean. So humanity respected Jan Shortmire and took Nicholas Dyall to its collective heart.

Emrys awakened, remembering all this and rigid with loathing for Nicholas Dyall, and for the world which had allowed Nicholas Dyall to take from him something he had wanted. Something which had, as soon as he'd known for sure he'd lost it forever, become what he wanted most. And also he hated the world which had given Alissa Embel to Dyall and had then proceeded to heap on him in addition every honor Jan Shortmire himself had won in an effort to make up for what he'd lost. Jan Shortmire had risked his life in space; Nicholas Dyall had sat comfortably in his chair—and both were equally honored.

Then Emrys—as Emrys—caught hold of himself. It was true that originally there had been injustice. But it had been righted and so there was no more reason to hate Dyall. I have a second chance, but he will have none. I will live out another full lifetime, and I will have Megan, too, and he'll die in a few years. And as for the world, I have already revenged myself on it in advance.

He got up and pulled a spun-metal robe about him, amethyst and sable—a gift from Morethis. There was always a costly gift on his birthday, either out of kindness or cruelty, together with a vial of the golden capsules.

What a pity, he thought, as he went downstairs, that Dyall and the world both would never know the truth: that Jan Shortmire had no son, that Emrys and Jan Shortmire were one.

---

The Morethans first came to Jan Shortmire when, approaching his natural old age, he had traveled as a visitor to their planet—largely because old men did not go to Morethis—and they had made him their offer. He had laughed in their dark and exquisite faces.

"My own government will give me fifty years more of life," he said, for he had heard, during the voyage out, that he would be on the next honors list. "What need do I have of you?"

"We can give you far more than fifty years," they'd told him. "And youth, besides."

At that, he had stopped laughing, but still he had not accepted their offer, for many reasons ... doubt and fear, perhaps some shreds of honor, and certainly, since he was a man of science, skepticism.

Then, when Shortmire was nearing the end of those fifty extra years which had, indeed, been granted him by a grateful Earth government—together with a plaque, suitably inscribed—he had received a gift. It was one of those great crystalline prisms from Morethis that were so fashionable on Earth as lighting fixtures, not because they saved fuel—for one such prism would cost ten lifetimes of fuel—but because they gave a light no Earthborn device could give, making the old look young, the stupid wise, and, most important of all, the ugly beautiful.

Shortmire looked into the lambent depths, wondering who had sent him so costly and so useless a gift. Suddenly the flame vitrified into a face that flashed up at him from the crystal—a face that was beautiful in its horror, and horrible in its beauty. He closed his eyes, but when he opened them, the iridescent eyes were still there, mocking him for his cowardice.

"I am Uvrei," a deep voice of tingling sweetness said, "god among gods and man among men. I bring you greetings from Morethis, Jan Shortmire."

---

Shortmire knew well enough what Uvrei must want, for the Morethans' long-ago offer had risen of late to the top of his thoughts. They could not do what they claimed, he had tried to reassure himself, whenever the memory returned; it was a trick which he had been clever enough not to fall for. But part of his mind did not believe this, and that part was glad to see Uvrei.

"What do you want of me?" he demanded.

The Morethan smiled, and each glittering tooth was a fiery brilliant. "The same as before, on the same terms," he said, offering no enticements. The man who would accept such an offer would provide his own.

---

If they were capable of doing this ... thing with the crystal, then they might also have other powers. So Shortmire could no longer pretend that what they offered him was impossible. On the other hand, what they required of him in return was truly terrible. Could they really do what they said?

After all, my world has not done overmuch for me. Others, like Nicholas Dyall, have wealth and power and.... He would not let himself think of Alissa Dyall, since she must long be dead, of old age, if nothing else. The last he had heard of her was when she and Dyall had announced their wedding date. Then he had taken the ship fitted out with the engines everyone said would not work, and he had fled into space. When he had come back, no one had spoken of her, and gradually, in his new-found importance, he had to some degree forgotten her, though he never forgot Dyall.

Pity to think of Alissa as having grown old. Even more of a pity to think of himself as having grown old, for he could see that in every mirror he passed.

"You're sure you can give me youth as well as life?" he asked.

"Not only youth, but perpetual youth," Uvrei assured him. "Youth such as you did not know even when you were young."

But Shortmire was still suspicious. Even if the Morethans could do what they said, how did he know they would? An alien concept of honor might have no reference to the terrestrial one. "How do I know I can trust your word?"

Uvrei's face grew black, literally black, and the crystal shivered until, Emrys thought, it would split. And he shivered, too, knowing in the fine nerves and little muscles of his body what would happen to him at the final shivering. A fear filled him then that he had never known before, not even when he faced space for the first time, and in the midst of that fear came the thought that, if he truly hated Earth, this was the most artistically nasty revenge he could take.

---

The crystal trembled to stillness as Uvrei's face paled to composure. "If you were not an Earthman, Jan Shortmire," he said, "we would not have needed you, nor you us. And an Earthman could not be expected to know that the words you have just spoken are the insult that, on Morethis, is deadlier than death; for the word of an immortal—no matter to whom or what he gives it—is as sacred and enduring as he himself."

"I apologize," Shortmire said quickly, "for my ignorance."

"And I forgive you," Uvrei declared, as grandly as if he were a god, "because of that ignorance. Moreover, since you cannot help your racial deficiencies, I will make this bargain with you. Come to Morethis. There we will give you the life and youth we promised. Then, when you are satisfied that we have given you what you desire, you will give us what we desire."

Not having been too honorable a man in his own hundred and fifty-five years, Jan Shortmire still could not believe that the Morethans would act in all honor. However, even the remote possibility that they would play fair was strong temptation for an ardent man pushing death. So he had agreed. He had wound up his affairs and made his will in favor of "his son." Then he had left Earth to go to Morethis, to die as Jan Shortmire and he resurrected as Emrys Shortmire.

The Morethans had kept their word, though there were times when he wished they had not. For no phoenix casting itself into the fire to burn alive in agony, so that it might rise again, young and strong and purified, from the ashes of its own dead self, could have suffered the excruciating torment of both mind and body that he suffered as, little by little, he was made young again.

Uvrei had warned him that this would happen. "To become one of us, you must be capable of all-endurance." So, for three years, he had lived on the miasmic planet, suffering unending, unbearable pain—not only his, but of the others whose lives went to make his new life. Slowly, agonizingly, these were stirred into the shrieking cauldrons of his body, until they blended and melted and coalesced to become his new shape.

Then Uvrei had led him ceremoniously to a reflecting glass and shown him Emrys Shortmire—a boy far more handsome than the boy Jan Shortmire had been, though, at the same time, his twin. The only thing not quite human about Emrys Shortmire was his eyes, and how could they be human after what they had seen? But he would forget all that once he was back on Earth, forget the payment that had been exacted—and prepare to live his new life to the full.

---

All this Emrys Shortmire told Peter Hubbard in the quiet of the expensive hotel room. It was pleasant to be able to unburden himself at last. For the past eleven years, there had been a secret side of him that must always walk apart, even from Megan. Now there was someone who could know the whole of him, and he was grateful to Hubbard for having come back to Earth.

But Hubbard sat there staring with so fixed a gaze that, for a moment, Emrys thought he was dead. Then he realized that it was only shock; all this had been too much for so old a man. Selfishly, he had heaped his burden upon another, without asking whether that other was willing, or able, to share it.

"Peter," he began, "I'm sorry...." not quite sure for what he was apologizing. He could not have trusted the old man at the beginning, just as he had to trust him now. But of course he was apologizing to Peter Hubbard, as the representative of humanity, for what he himself had done to Earth.

He began to give unasked-for explanations. "I deliberately made you suspect I killed my father, because if you suspected one of us had done away with the other, why, then, you'd automatically have assumed there were two." He looked down at the floor. "And I wanted you to hate me. We couldn't be friends; otherwise, knowing me better than anyone else alive, you might have guessed...."

"I doubt it," Hubbard said wearily. "Almost anything else would have seemed more likely." Presently he asked, "Weren't you afraid I might investigate?"

Emrys smiled. "What could you find out? After all, I hadn't killed Jan Shortmire."

The smile became a little fixed. "I wouldn't have cared even if you had told someone your suspicions then," Emrys went on doggedly, "because I knew no one would believe you. But now—" he colored—"well, I don't want you to tell Megan Dyall anything ... bad about me. You see, I ... love her."

"I gathered that impression," Hubbard said.

But why does he sound so unhappy about it? Emrys thought angrily. What's wrong with me? Because he was in love, he could not appreciate the irony of that thought.

---

VI

Peter Hubbard looked at his old friend with the young face and the young body and the eyes that were unhuman—but less so than before. This was a frightful thing that had been done, and by and by he would feel the full horror of it. Right now he was too numb to care. He felt, as Emrys Shortmire must have felt on coming back to Earth, detached and without interest. But I've felt this way before, he thought; it's because I'm old.

"Were you really satisfied with your bargain, Jan?" he asked, almost casually.

"Not at first," the boy admitted, sinking down on the couch and clasping his hands around his knees. So young, so graceful, and so ... unnatural. "It seemed to me then that the Morethans had given me youth and taken away humanity. Because, once I found I was physically capable, I found I didn't really want the things I had craved so much before."

"So they did trick you?" When all was said and done, Hubbard thought, you could never trust an alien life-form, a foreigner.

"No, no! You still don't understand. The way I see it is that ... certain elements in us may not mean anything to them. They don't know they're there, so they wouldn't realize that anything got lost in ... the process."

"Do you think, Jan," Hubbard asked slowly, "that the way you felt—or didn't feel—might not have anything to do with the Morethans at all? That, for all your young body, you are an old man and feel like an old man?"

"Nonsense! I know what it is to feel like an old man, and I know what it is to feel like a young man, and I—I felt like neither."

"When a man has lived a certain number of years," Hubbard said, knowing that envy gave the truth relish, "he is an old man. Age is in the mind and heart, not only in the body."

"That's a lie!" Then Emrys said, more calmly, "If that's so, why did everything change when I met Megan? Because I found then that my emotions had not been lost! I had a feeling for her that I'd never had for another woman—not even for Alissa, I think. I hadn't imagined there could be a woman like Megan in the world, so sweet and amiable and completely feminine." He looked angrily at Hubbard. "You think I'm sentimental, don't you?"

Hubbard tried to smile. "There's nothing wrong with sentiment." But sentimentality was characteristic of an old man's love.

Emrys laughed and hugged his knees. He was overdoing the ingenuousness. Of course he deliberately played the part of a boy young enough to be his own great-great-grandson, because he was wooing a woman young enough to be his own great-great-granddaughter. And Hubbard remembered how he himself had attempted to move briskly before Nicholas Dyall. Emrys Shortmire would not have the physical aches that he'd had as a result, but could there be psychical aches? Could an old man ever actually be young?

---

Emrys' face grew sober. "I've never touched her, Peter—really touched her, I mean. She's not like other women, you know."

"I know," Hubbard said, remembering back to the time when he, too, had been in love. Only the memory was not tender in him, because he had married the girl and lived with her for nearly seventy years.

"Peter, you aren't listening!"

"I'm sorry," the old man said, waking from his reverie. "What were you saying?"

"I said, do you think Megan would be willing to marry me, if she knew I was older than her great-great-grandfather?"

But there was a more important question that Hubbard could no longer refuse to face. "Jan, what did you give the Morethans in return for what they gave you?"

"You haven't answered my question."

"I can't answer it, because I don't know the girl. But you can answer mine, because you know what you gave the Morethans."

Emrys was silent for a moment; then he laughed. "I gave them my soul," he said lightly. "Like that fellow in the opera."

"I know that. What I'm afraid of is that it wasn't enough. In what form did you give it to them, Jan?"

"You have no right to catechize me like that."

The old man's voice was soft. "I think I have."

Emrys was a long time in answering. When he finally spoke, his voice was flat and dead. "All right, I gave them the blueprints for the space-warp engines. What else did I have to give them in exchange?"

Hubbard expelled a long breath. He had answered this question for himself many minutes before. Still, the shock of confirmation was too great. All hope was gone now. "Perhaps you had a right to sell your own soul, Jan, but you had no right to sell humanity's." His good breeding held up all the way. This man had betrayed the whole of mankind, and so he, Peter Hubbard, reproached him gently for it. Though, come to think of it, what good would savage recrimination—or anything—do?

"But you don't have to worry about it, Peter!" Emrys cried. "Listen, the Morethan technology is so alien, so different from ours, because it's based on mental rather than physical forces, that it'll take centuries before they can acquire the techniques they'll need to build the engines. And they'll have trouble getting the materials. We'll both have been long in our graves by the time they'll reach Earth."

"And that makes it all right? It doesn't matter to you what happens to your own home planet once you are dead?"

---

The young-looking face was flushed. "Why should it? Does Earth care what happens to me? During the plague, they cursed my name because I invented the star-engines. That's the only time Earth remembered me."

"During the plague, men were insane, Jan," Hubbard said, knowing his own sweet reasonableness was ludicrous under the circumstances, "not responsible for what they said. They don't curse your name any more."

"No, they've forgotten it." Emrys looked at Hubbard with blazing, unhuman eyes. "Why should you expect me to put their welfare before my own?"

"You must, if the race is to survive."

Hubbard expected Emrys to say, "Why should it survive?" but apparently there was a grain of emotion left here. "It will survive. The Morethans are not—" the word seemed to stick in Emrys' throat—"monsters."

"Jan," Hubbard said in a monotone, "eleven years ago, after you came to Earth for your inheritance, I became interested in Morethis—naturally enough, I suppose. I started scanning everything I could lay my hands on, and I learned a great deal about it—as much, I believe, as anyone off Morethis knows. Except, of course, you."

Emrys rose and began to pace the floor. "Nobody really knows anything about Morethis. Most of what has been written is a—a pack of lies. One liar copied from another, and so they perpetuate the lie. Scandal has always sold better than truth!"

Hubbard said, "There is a legend that the Morethans once had limited space travel, though no way of warping space to bring the distant stars closer, since they did not use engines. But there were many stars close to them, and they traveled from system to system, sucking each one dry. Then there were no living planets left in their sector of space, and their engineless ships could not bridge the gap to the next cluster, so they found themselves trapped on a dying planet that revolved around a dying star, and they, as a race, began to die themselves."

Emrys tried to laugh. "Looks like a fine case of poetic justice, but—"

"Wait. I haven't finished. The race did not die completely; it decayed. Certain among the people stayed alive through sucking the lives of the others; certain among them still kept some vestiges of the old traditions and knowledge; certain among them waited."

"Is that the end of your story?"

Hubbard nodded. Emrys' face was ashen. "Well, it's an old wives' tale," he sputtered. "All the Morethans want is to be able to compete on an equal basis with Earth. They don't want to be exploited, nor do they intend to...." As his eyes caught Hubbard's, his voice trailed off. "Anyhow, I'll be dead," he said. "I don't give a damn what happens after I'm dead."

---

Hubbard didn't believe it. He couldn't. There is no man who has not some love for his own kind, be it ever so little, merely because they look like him.

"You won't tell anybody who I really am?" Emrys asked childishly. "You're still my friend, aren't you?"

Hubbard sighed. Was he still this creature's friend? He didn't know. "Who would believe me?" he finally asked. "And even if they did, what's the use? Nothing can be done. The only thing that's ever protected us from the Morethans is distance. When they reach Earth, they will have already conquered us. Mental powers are always stronger than physical powers at close range."

"That's right." Emrys seemed to be relieved at the idea that the question was out of his hands. "Too late now to do anything about it."

Hubbard nodded. There was no way out that he could see.

"But you do promise not to tell old Dyall that I'm my father instead of me?" Emrys asked anxiously.

"Even if he believed me, he wouldn't care. All he wants is a good match for that great-great-granddaughter of his."

But was that all? As far as money went, Nicholas Dyall was reputed to be the richest man alive. And if he was truly fond of the girl, would he not at least have investigated the young man?

"You're hard!" Emrys complained, but without rancor.

"I have a suspicious nature," Hubbard said thoughtfully. "Perhaps it's the legal mind. At any rate, I don't care for Nicholas Dyall."

"Well, I don't either, but I don't really give a hang what kind of a great-great-grandfather-in-law I'm getting. All I care about is Megan. Do you think it's wrong for me to ask her to marry me?"

"Can't you understand that, at this stage, the girl doesn't matter?"

"No," Emrys said simply. "I cannot imagine her not mattering."

After he had gone, Hubbard still found himself thinking about Nicholas Dyall. In his whole lifetime, the old lawyer had personally known only two men whom society had deemed worthy of its highest honor, the longevity treatment. And these were more than most men had met, for the longevity treatment was given to very few. Both of the two, Dyall and Shortmire, had some defect in their personalities that warped them—all but completely, in Shortmire's case—away from the human virtues.

Was that defect a part of the creative talent that had earned the individual his right to the treatment? Or did it arise as an effect of the treatment itself? Because, if that was the case, then Earth's longevity treatment might be nothing more than a primitive form of the Morethan "process."

Since only straws remained to be grasped at, no one thing Hubbard did would be more futile than any other. And since he had nothing better to do, he might just as well investigate this new avenue. Jan Shortmire had hated Nicholas Dyall. Had Nicholas Dyall hated Jan Shortmire with equal venom? And, if so, had he done anything about it?

---

VII

A Gong sounded and a mechanical voice announced, "Mr. Peter Hubbard to see Mr. Dyall and Mr. Shortmire."

"Do you mean to say he has the gall to come see us, after the accusations he made against you, Emrys?" Dyall demanded incredulously. "I still can't understand why you sent him an invitation to the wedding, but that he should make a casual social call...!"

"We've come to terms." Emrys smiled. "After all, at his age, he can't be held accountable for everything he says."

"I'm at least fifty years older than he is!" the old engineer almost spat. "And you—do you mean that I am not responsible for what I say?"

Knowing that he was the other man's senior by some twenty years himself, Emrys was malevolently pleased. "Some people retain their faculties longer than others," he observed. "And Hubbard was my father's friend, as well as his lawyer, so he's the closest thing to a relative that I have on Earth. Except you, of course; you were my father's friend, too."

Dyall's lips tightened. "How does Hubbard know you're in this house right now? Do you think he's having you followed?"

It was possible, but Emrys didn't care. For almost a year now, his life had been blameless, and, strangely, it suited him to live that way. "I'm here in this house most of the time. It wouldn't be hard for him to figure out where he could find me."

The gong sounded again. Dyall looked undecided.

"If I can forgive him, sir," Emrys said gently, "surely you can."

"Show him in," Dyall rasped to the machine.

Megan rose to go, but Emrys kept hold of her small, cold hand. "I'd like you to meet Peter Hubbard, dear. He's really a nice old fellow when you get to know him. Just a bit too much of a do-gooder, that's all."

Dyall snorted.

"I shall be glad to know any friend of yours, Emrys," Megan said, sitting down again obediently.

After a moment, Peter Hubbard came into the room. "Peter, this is my fiancÉe, Megan Dyall." Smilingly, Emrys waited for the usual inane felicitations. He couldn't expect a man of Hubbard's age to be bowled over by this loveliness, but still surely no man, no matter how ancient, could be completely insensible to the girl's charm.

Hubbard stood still and stared at her. "Amazing...." he murmured. "Amazing...." Then he turned to Dyall. "You are to be congratulated, sir."

Emrys was annoyed. He knew Hubbard was too well-bred to make a remark like that unintentionally. However, he pretended to be amused and said, "You're supposed to congratulate me, Peter."

But Hubbard continued his inexplicable rudeness by paying no attention to Emrys and, instead, staring at Nicholas Dyall. And finally Dyall said, with a strangled laugh, "I think perhaps in this instance Mr. Hubbard is right."

He threw himself into an easy chair with an attempt at nonchalance, but it was embarrassingly apparent that his stick was not enough to support him any more. His old body was trembling. And Emrys found that he himself was trembling, too.

---

There was a painful silence. Everyone seemed to be waiting. Even Megan glanced from one to the other with her usual expression of bright-eyed interest.

"Unfortunately, Mr. Hubbard," Dyall said at last, "you've reached your conclusions too late to do anything except perhaps hasten an end that is, you'll concede, by now inevitable."

"Yes," Hubbard agreed, "you've won your game." He came a little further into the room, so that he was standing over the other old man. "I do believe that, of the two, you are the worse. He did what he did out of spite. You created that spite and kept it alive."

Dyall's dark face flushed and his hands tightened on his cane. "But I had a right to do what I did. And I hurt only one person. Two, if you include me. Give me credit, at least, for the smallness of my scope."

Hubbard glanced at Megan. And Dyall broke into the shrill cackle of an old man. "But you know, you know, and still you think of her! How sentimental can you get? Don't you realize—"

"How much does she?" Hubbard said. "How much do you?"

Emrys had become nearly frantic with frustration and bewilderment. He was the one who had secrets; nobody else. Nothing was to be kept hidden from him! "What are you two blabbering about?" he almost screamed. "It doesn't make sense—any of it!"

Hubbard turned toward him, his head and neck moving with the deliberate precision of a piece of clockwork. "It makes very good sense, Jan. I realized that I could find out nothing more from the stars, so I turned my researches back to Earth. I've been investigating Mr. Dyall."

"What did you find?" Emrys asked tensely. Why did Peter call him by his former name in front of his former enemy? Had the old fool forgotten his promise, or had he broken it on purpose? "What did you find out?" he repeated.

Hubbard's voice was filled with pity. "Just this: Nicholas Dyall never did marry Alissa Embel."

Emrys' fear exploded into a scarlet rage. "Then Megan is—" He advanced on Dyall, his fists clenched. "If you took Alissa and then didn't—"

Hubbard caught his arm in a frail grip. "Don't be so hasty, Emrys. Dyall did no wrong to Alissa Embel, whatever wrong he may have done to you."

"Thank you," Dyall murmured, "for granting me that I gave her all I had, but it wasn't what she wanted. She wanted—" his old eyes were filled with hate as he looked at Emrys—"you."

"Alissa Embel killed herself on the day before the wedding," Hubbard told Emrys. "She, as we attorneys say, died without issue."

---

Emrys was glad that, since he could not have had Alissa, Dyall had not, either. At the same time, he felt an overwhelmingly poignant sense of sorrow, that he should have had three full lifetimes, and the woman he had loved—insofar as Jan Shortmire had been capable of love—not even one.

He raised dull eyes to the two old men. "Then who is Megan?"

Hubbard hesitated. But what worse could there be to tell? And then the lawyer asked a ridiculous question, "Jan, do you know why Dyall's machines didn't meet popular favor until he changed them?"

Emrys plunged back once again into the well of his memories. "Nobody wanted to buy machines that looked too much like people; it made them ... uncomfortable. So Dyall stopped designing robots and made machines adapted to their separate functions and—" His voice became a cry of anguish. "Megan!"

She turned her bland, smiling doll face toward him. "I'm sorry, Emrys," the sweet voice said.

Dyall's eyes were squeezed shut and something glistened on the edge of them—something that Emrys would not admit were tears, because he himself could never cry.

"When Alissa died," Dyall said, "I knew I couldn't love another woman. So I made a mechanical doll in her image. I made her the woman every man dreams of—lovely and sympathetic and undemanding. And I told myself she would be better than the original Alissa because she would be perfect, and Alissa wasn't; she would stay young forever, while the real Alissa would have grown old ... if she had lived. But it wasn't the same for me."

Why was she the same for me, then? Emrys wondered bitterly. Was it because I didn't know? Is that all love is—self-deception?

"Perhaps," Dyall went on, "Man cannot appreciate true perfection; perhaps he's not good enough himself. Still, she was company of a sort and so I kept her by me. And then, when I read of Emrys Shortmire's arrival on Earth, I sent him a note, but he didn't answer; however, I contrived to get a look at him anyway. Then I knew for sure that he was Jan Shortmire himself; and then I knew what Megan's destiny was...."

"How could you know he—I was Jan Shortmire?" Emrys demanded angrily. It was insupportable that old Dyall should have known all along; it spoiled the joke. "Where would you have—have gotten the concept?"

The old man smiled, opening his eyes. "Because the Morethans made me the same offer they did you! Did you think you were the only one?" And, throwing back his head, he derisively began to laugh aloud.

---

More than ever, Emrys hated the Morethans, not for what they would do to Earth's pride, but for what they had done to his. Because now there was nothing that he had been offered that Dyall had not been offered also. And Dyall had not accepted the Morethans' offer, thereby proving himself the better man. And Dyall had tricked him, thereby proving himself the cleverer man. And Dyall had hated him even more than he had hated Dyall, thereby proving himself the more constant man. So there Emrys Shortmire, Jan Shortmire, was left ... with nothing but a youthfulness of which, he had to admit to himself, he had grown rather tired.

"I'm sorry, Emrys," Megan said. "I'm terribly sorry."

Dyall sprang from his chair. "I'm sick of that piping doll's voice of yours! I've stood it for a century, and that's long enough!" Raising his stick high in the air, he crashed it down upon the golden head, the pretty pink and white face. And, frozen in horror, Emrys could not move until it was too late. He had not conceived old Dyall capable of committing outright murder so wantonly. Probably he wasn't; to him, Megan was and had been always a doll.

And now she was a heap of broken wheels and gears on the thick rug. Still, out of the heap of twisted machinery, a tiny, tinny voice kept repeating "I'm sorry, Emrys. I'm terribly sorry."

---