We bought animals--mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, even dogs. We infected the young with some of our own demons--that was simple enough, frighteningly simple; all we had to do was handle them a bit. And we watched what happened. They died--of young age. Some vital organ or another regressed to embryonic condition, and they died--as Greco and I would die, if we didn't find the answer. As the whole world might die. Was it better than reverting past the embryo to the simple lifeless zygote? I couldn't decide. It was dying, all the same. When an embryonic heart or liver is called on to do a job for a mature organism, there is only one way out. Death. And after death--the demons went on; the dog we fed on the remains of the guinea pigs followed them to extinction in a matter of weeks. Minnie was an interesting case. She was going about her work with more energy every day, and I'll be blasted if I didn't catch her casting a lingering Marilyn Monroe sort of look at me when Greco's back was turned. "Shall we fire her?" I asked El Greco when I told him about it. "What for?" "She's disrupting the work!" [Illustration] "The work isn't worth a damn anyhow," he said moodily. "We're not getting anywhere, Virgie. If it was only a matter of smooth, predictable rates--But look at her. She's picking up speed! She's dropped five years in the past couple weeks." "She can stand to drop a lot more," I said, annoyed. * * * * * He shrugged. "It depends on where. Her nose? It's shortened to about a fifteen-year-old level now. Facial hair? That's mostly gone. Skin texture? Well, I suppose there's no such thing as a too-immature skin, I mean short of the embryonic capsule, but--Wait a minute." He was staring at the doorway. Minnie was standing there, simpering. "Come here!" he ordered in a voice like thunder. "Come here, you! Virgie, look at her nose!" I looked. "Ugh," I said, but more or less under my breath. "No, no!" cried Greco. "Virgie, don't you see her _nose_?" Foolish; of course I did. It was long, beaked-- Then I saw. "It's growing longer," I whispered. "Right, my boy! Right! One curve at least has reversed itself. Do you see, Virgie?" I nodded. "She's--she's beginning to age again." "Better than that!" he crowed. "It's faster than normal aging, Virgie! _There are aging demons loose too!_" A breath of hope! But hope died. Sure, he was right--as far as it went. There _were_ aging demons. We isolated them in some of our experimental animals. First we had to lure Minnie into standing still while Greco, swearing horribly, took a tissue sample; she didn't like that, but a hundred-dollar bonus converted her. Solid CO_{2} froze the skin; _snip_, and a tiny flake of flesh came out of her nose at the point of Greco's scalpel; he put the sample of flesh through a few tricks and, at the end of the day, we tried it on some of our mice. They died.