He was sick when they reached Washington.  The pain in his chest became acute as he walked down the gangway, and by the time he found a seat in the terminal and popped a nitro-tablet under his tongue he was breathing in deep, ragged gasps.  He sat very still, trying to lean back against the seat, and quite suddenly he realized that he was very, very ill.  The good red-headed Dr. Moss would smile in satisfaction, he thought bitterly.  There was sweat on his forehead; it had never seemed very probable to him that he might one day die-he didn’t have to die in this great, wonderful world of new bodies for old, he could live on, and on, and on.  He could live to see the Golden Centuries of Man.  A solar system teeming with life.  Ships to challenge the stars, the barriers breaking, crumbling before their very eyes.  Other changes, as short-lived Man became long-lived Man.  Changes in teaching, in thinking, in feeling.  Disease, the Enemy, was crushed.  Famine, the Enemy, slinking back into the dim memory of history.  War, the Enemy, pointless to extinction.

All based on one principle:  Man must live.  He need not die.  If a man could live forty years instead of twenty, had it been wrong to fight the plagues that struck him down in his youth?  If he could live sixty years instead of forty, had the great researchers of the 1940’s and ’50’s and ’60’s been wrong?  Was it any more wrong to want to live a thousand years?  Who could say that it was?

He took a shuddering breath, and then nodded to Terry Fisher, and walked unsteadily to the cab stand.  He would not believe what he had seen at Starship Project.  It was not enough.  Collect the evidence, then conclude.  He gave Fisher an ashen smile.  “It’s nothing.  The ticker kicks up once in a while, that’s all.  Let’s go see what Carl and Jean and the boys have dug up.”  Fisher smiled grimly, an eager gleam in his eye.

Carl and Jean and the boys had dug up plenty.  The floor of offices Dan rented for the work of his organization was going like Washington Terminal at rush hour.  A dozen people were here and there, working with tapes, papers, program cards.  Jean met them at the door, hustled them into the private offices in the back.  “Carl just got here, too.  He’s down eating.  The boys outside are trying to make sense out of his insurance and advertising figures.”

“He got next to them okay?”

“Sure-but you were right, they didn’t like it.”

“What sort of reports?”

The girl sighed.  “Only prelims.  Almost all of the stuff is up in the air, which makes it hard to evaluate.  The ad-men have to be figuring what they’re going to do next half-century, so that they’ll be there with the right thing when the time comes.  But it seems they don’t like what they see.  People have to buy what the ad-men are selling, or the ad-men shrivel up, and already the trend seems to be showing up.  People aren’t in such a rush to buy.  Don’t have the same sense of urgency that they used to-” Her hands fluttered.  “Well, as I say, it’s all up in the air.  Let the boys analyze for a while.  The suicide business is a little more tangible.  The rates are up, all over.  But break it into first-generation and Repeaters, and it’s pretty clear who’s pushing it up.”

“Like Armstrong,” said Dan slowly.

Jean nodded.  “Oh, here’s Carl now.”

He came in, rubbing his hands, and gave Dan a queer look.  “Everything under control, Dan?”

Dan nodded.  He told Carl about Tyndall’s proposition.  Carl gave a wry grin.  “He hasn’t changed a bit, has he?”

“Yes, he has.  He’s gotten lots stronger.”

Carl scowled, and slapped the desk with his palm.  “You should have stopped him, Dan.  I told you that a long time ago-back when I first came in with you.  He was aiming for your throat even then, trying to use me and what I knew about Dad to sell the country a pack of lies about you.  He almost did, too.  I hated your guts back then.  I thought you were the rottenest man that ever came up in politics, until you got hold of me and pounded sense into my head.  And Tyndall’s never forgiven you that, either.”

“All right-we’re still ahead of him.  Have you just finished with the ad-men?”

“Oh, no.  I just got back from a trip south.  My nose is still cold.”

Dan’s eyebrows went up.  “And how was Dr. Aviado?  I haven’t seen a report from Antarctica Project for five years.”

“Yes you have.  You just couldn’t read them.  Aviado is quite a theoretician.  That’s how he got his money and his Project, down there, with plenty of room to build his reflectors and nobody around to get hurt if something goes wrong.  Except a few penguins.  And he’s done a real job of development down there since his rejuvenation.”

“Ah.”  Dan glanced up hopefully.

“Now there,” said Carl, “is a real lively project.  Solar energy into power on a utilitarian level.  The man is fanatic, of course, but with his plans he could actually be producing in another five years.”  He lit a cigarette, drew on it as though it were bitter.

“Could?”

“Seems he’s gotten sidetracked a bit,” said Carl.

Dan glanced at Terry Fisher.  “How?”

“Well, his equipment is working fine, and he can concentrate solar heat from ten square miles onto a spot the size of a manhole cover.  But he hasn’t gone too far converting it to useful power yet.”  Carl suddenly burst out laughing.  “Dan, this’ll kill you.  Billions and billions of calories of solar heat concentrated down there, and what do you think he’s doing with it?  He’s digging a hole in the ice two thousand feet deep and a mile wide.  That’s what.”

“A hole in the ice!”

“Exactly.  Conversion?  Certainly-but first we want to be sure we’re right.  So right now his whole crew is very busy trying to melt down Antarctica.  And if you give him another ten years, he’ll have it done, by god.”

This was the last, most painful trip of all.

Dan didn’t even know why he was going, except that Paul had told him he should go, and no stone could be left unturned.

The landing in New York Crater had been rough, and Dan had cracked his elbow on the bulkhead; he nursed it now as he left the Volta on the deserted street of the crater city, and entered the low one-story lobby of the groundscraper.  The clerk took his name impassively, and he sat down to wait.

An hour passed, then another.

Then:  “Mr. Devlin will see you now, Senator.”

Down in the elevator, four-five-six stories.  Above him was the world; here, deep below, with subtly efficient ventilators and shafts and exotic cubby-holes for retreat, a man could forget that a world above existed.

Soft lighting in the corridor, a golden plastic door.  The door swung open, and a tiny old man blinked out.

“Mr. Chauncey Devlin?”

“Senator Fowler!” The little old man beamed.  “Come in, come in-my dear fellow, if I’d realized it was you, I’d never have dreamed of keeping you so long-” He smiled, obviously distressed.  “Retreat has its disadvantages, too, you see.  Nothing is perfect but life, as they say.  When you’ve lived for a hundred and ninety years, you’ll be glad to get away from people, and to be able to keep them out, from time to time.”

In better light Dan stared openly at the man.  A hundred and ninety years.  It was incredible.  He told the man so.

“Isn’t it, though?” Chauncey Devlin chirped.  “Well, I was a was-baby!  Can you imagine?  Born in London in 1945.  But I don’t even think about those horrid years any more.  Imagine-people dropping bombs on each other!”

A tiny bird of a man-three times rejuvenated, and still the mind was sharp, the eyes were sharp.  The face was a strange mixture of recent youth and very great age.  It stirred something deep inside Dan-almost a feeling of loathing.  An uncanny feeling.

“We’ve always known your music,” he said.  “We’ve always loved it.  Just a week ago we heard the Washington Philharmonic doing-”

“The eighth.”  Chauncey Devlin cut him off disdainfully.  “They always do the eighth.”

“It’s a great symphony,” Dan protested.

Devlin chuckled, and bounced about the room like a little boy.  “It was only half finished when they chose me for the big plunge,” he said.  “Of course I was doing a lot of conducting then, too.  Now I’d much rather just write.”  He hurried across the long, softly-lit room to the piano, came back with a sheaf of papers.  “Do you read music?  This is just what I’ve been doing recently.  Can’t get it quite right, but it’ll come, it’ll come.”

“Which will this be?” asked Dan.

“The tenth.  The ninth was under contract, of course-strictly a pot-boiler, I’m afraid.  Thought it was pretty good at the time, but this one-ah!” He fondled the smooth sheets of paper.  “In this one I could say something.  Always before it was hit and run, make a stab at it, then rush on to stab at something else.  Not this one.”  He patted the manuscript happily.  “With this one there will be nothing wrong.”

“It’s almost finished?”

“Oh, no.  Oh, my goodness no!  A fairly acceptable first movement, but not what I will do on it-as I go along.”

“I see.  I-understand.  How long have you worked on it now?”

“Oh, I don’t know-I must have it down here somewhere.  Oh, yes.  Started it in April of 2057.  Seventy-seven years.”

They talked on, until it became too painful.  Then Dan rose, and thanked his host, and started back for the corridor and life again.  He had never even mentioned his excuse for coming, and nobody had missed it.

Chauncey Devlin, a tiny, perfect wax-image of a man, so old, so wise, so excited and full of enthusiasm and energy and carefulness, working eagerly, happily-

Accomplishing nothing.  Seventy-seven years.  The picture of a man who had been great, and who had slowly ground to a standstill.

And now Dan knew that he hadn’t really been looking at Chauncey Devlin at all.  He had been looking at the whole human race.