class="c005">Funny, he couldn’t picture really losing his temper here. Families did odd things to a man.

HE LISTENED to a few of the discussions after the dinner, but he’d heard them all before, except for one about the super-speed drive, and there he had no wish to talk until he could study the final report. He gave up at last and went to his own suite. What he needed was a good night’s sleep after a little relaxation.

Even that failed him, though. He’d developed one of the finest chess collections in the world, but tonight it held no interest. And when he drew out his tools and tried working on the delicate, lovely jade for the set he was carving his hands seemed to be all thumbs. None of the other interests he’d developed through the years helped to add to the richness of living now.

He gave it up and went to bed—to have the fragment of that song pop into his head. Now there was no escaping it. Something about the years—or was it days—dwindling down to something or other.

Could they really dwindle down? Suppose he couldn’t rejuvenate all the way? He knew that there were some people who didn’t respond as well as others. Sol Graves, for instance. He’d been fifty when he finally learned how to work with the doctors and they could only bring him back to about thirty, instead of the normal early twenties. Would that reduce the slice of eternity that rejuvenation meant? And what had happened to Sol?

Or suppose it wasn’t rejuvenation, after all; suppose something had gone wrong with him permanently?

He fought that off, but he couldn’t escape the nagging doubts at the doctor’s words.

He got up once to stare at himself in the mirror. Ten hours had gone by and there should have been some signs of improvement. He couldn’t be sure, though, whether there were or not.

He looked no better the next morning when he finally dragged himself up from the little sleep he’d managed to get. The hollows were still there and the circles under his eyes. He searched for the gray in his hair, but the traitorous strands had been removed at the doctor’s office and he could find no new ones.

He looked into the dining room and then went by hastily. He wanted no solicitous glances this morning. Drat it, maybe he should move out. Maybe trying family life again would give him some new interests. Amanda probably would be willing to marry him; she’d hinted at a date once.

He stopped, shocked by the awareness that he hadn’t been out with a woman for....

He couldn’t remember how long it had been. Nor why.

“In the spring, a young man’s fancy,” he quoted to himself, and then shuddered.

It hadn’t been that kind of spring for him—not this rejuvenation nor the last, nor the one before that.

GILES TRIED to stop scaring himself and partially succeeded, until he reached the doctor’s office. Then it was no longer necessary to frighten himself. The wrongness was too strong, no matter how professional Cobb’s smile!

He didn’t hear the preliminary words. He watched the smile vanish as the stack of reports came out. There was no nurse here now. The machines were quiet—and all the doors were shut.

Giles shook his head, interrupting the doctor’s technical jargon. Now that he knew there was reason for his fear, it seemed to vanish, leaving a coldness that numbed him.

“I’d rather know the whole truth,” he said. His voice sounded dead in his ears. “The worst first. The rejuvenation...?”

Cobb sighed and yet seemed relieved. “Failed.” He stopped, and his hands touched the reports on his desk. “Completely,” he added in a low, defeated tone.

“But I thought