Doc shrugged sadly. "Neurasthenia. It's getting commoner, Charlie," he said. "A straw just broke another camel's back. Our friend has had a tough time. Besides, he's one of the slow ones. Slow to adjust and grow with his civilization. Oh, he'll probably straighten out. Or the cerebral specialists will fix his brain. He'll be an easy going, untroubled individual. Is it right and democratic to tamper with a man's mind? Well, would you let him be insane, poignantly miserable, for keeps?" Again I had a primitive qualm. The Earth was all around me, strange, teeming, overpopulated in spite of colonies across space. The crowd, jubilant over the robot's demonstration, was all around us. But I bet that every one of those people was at least a little bewildered by the times. "Let's drive home, Doc," I urged sharply. II As we whizzed along, Dr. Lanvin smirked at me like a sly elf. "To what our poor friend complained about, I owe much," he remarked. "Consider my birth-date, January 23rd, 1932. It's now 2033. Yes, I'm a hundred and one, though I look and feel fifty by old standards. It's common enough. Wizardry? No. Let's face facts, Charlie. Something like immortality has been sneaking up on the human race for well over a century. First, diseases were conquered one by one. Meanwhile, surgery, replacing worn out organs with new ones grown artificially, went far ahead. Hormone therapy was developed. The final degenerative disease, senility, is proving to be just as conquerable as cancer. Remove its causes--accumulation of minerals and certain fatty acids among other things, and tone up the machine--and it just isn't there anymore!" Doc paused for breath, then went on: "Yes, there's plenty that we don't yet know about the wonderful mechanism of the human body. But we don't need to know everything to keep it living on and on. Because, with a little help, it restores itself. The trouble with our viewpoint is that death has been the destiny of all life on Earth for so long that it seems like an inviolable tradition. A silly attitude, don't you think? Now, have I disoriented you some more, Charlie? Don't be embarrassed. I feel somewhat that way myself. Maybe your mood is right for me to go a step further into the murky Destiny of Man, eh?" My hide was tingling with something like dread. But I was eager. "I'm ready for anything, Doc." We got back to his old house under the trees of the campus. From a cabinet in his quiet living room he took a plastic box. In it was a small, oblong bar of pinkish substance that wriggled slightly, as if it were animated. "Touch it," Dr. Lanvin commanded. I obeyed. The stuff was warm, and in response to contact with my finger, it writhed violently. "Unh--what in hell!" I grunted.