I went back to the party almost as mad as I was curious. I collared Alec and asked him, “Since when did Tommy become an ironman? I used to toss him around like a sparrow. And incidentally what’s all this red star business? It looks pretty silly to me.” Alec looked at me kind of funny. “You don’t--know what the red star signifies?” I shook my head, and he frowned. “Look,” he said, “let’s have a party tonight, and I’ll tell you all about it in the morning.” That was all right with me. This crowded flat was getting on my nerves, so I invited the whole mob into a fleet of cabs and went searching for some night life. * * * * * We were barely out in the lights when a snubby little vehicle whammed out of a sidepass and just about pulverized our lead cab. “Oh, that’s too bad!” Alec said. “I think Forest and Kelly were in that one. They’ll hate to miss this party.” “Too bad?” I shouted. “My God, is that all it is when a couple of your buddies get ground into a pudding? Look at that mess.” That’s all our driver did, was to glance at the two smoking, half-fused lumps of machinery then swing out around them and back into traffic. Alec caught my arm. “Take it easy, Bill. They’re not hurt. That’s all part of this new set-up. I guess I’d better tell you now.” I guessed he better had. My stomach was rising and about to shine. I said, “None of your supersurgery is going to do those boys any good. They’re pulp!” “Bill, there isn’t a spot of real flesh and blood back there on the pavement, unless the cab driver was _fleshing it_, and damned few of them do.” Just then the cab stopped. Alec shouted to the rest that we’d be back pretty soon. He turned on the dome-light and told the driver to cruise around. Tapping his red star solemnly he said, “Bill, have you ever thought about _not dying_--ever?” He stuck out a bare hand. He cramped his fingers, wiggled them, pressed each against his thumb then grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. It felt warm and human until he put the pressure on. I got the sensation of being caught in a hydraulic vise. There was inhuman power in those slender fingers. “Jab it and it’ll jump. Cut it and it’ll bleed. Freeze it and it would rot off if you didn’t replace it. It’s fifty per cent stronger and reacts with greater sensitivity and coordination than the hand I was born with.” I didn’t understand yet, but I was getting disgusted already. Alec said, “Now keep your mind open a minute, Bill. Here, I’ll show you some more.” He bared the right half of his upper torso. Touching a spot in his armpit he laid open a flap of skin over his right breast. In a four-inch cubic cavity snuggled a red rubber lump with two tubular outlets that buried their opposite ends in his body. “That’s the power pick-up. The sympathetic mechanism is in the skull.”