"Yeah," Sam pointed out, "but the thing is that among the passengers was Joseph's own boy, the most popular person on the satellite and the apple of his old man's eye. Nobody had known it, but the kid was playing hookey from his school on Terra and was making a cruise of the Jupiter moons. "Joseph himself had never been very popular with his people, neither had this younger brother of his, Micheal. Too strict, see. But everybody liked the boy and were looking forward to the day when he'd take over the reins of government. When it came out what happened, they went berserk. They cornered Joseph and Micheal and a dozen or so of their close associates in the palace, which was actually more of a fortress than anything else." Sam wiped the bar again without need, and said reflectively, "It must've been quite a fight. Not that Joseph himself participated. The boy had been his whole life, and he just moved around like he was in a trance. "They threw everything at that palace. Every weapon, every device, that had been thought up for centuries; but it didn't crack. Finally, the fight was ended by a fleet of battle cruisers from Terra. Joseph and Micheal and the rest were removed and brought here to Mars. None of them dared to remain on Calypso." I poured myself another brandy from the bottle that Sam had left on the bar. "You make quite a story of it," I told him, "but you didn't tell me what you'd started to--about the immortality." "Yeah," he said, "that's right. Well, it seems that in the atomic bombardment of the palace something happened that wound up with Joseph and his friends all immortal. Don't ask me what; I don't know and neither did these scientist guys when they tried to figure it out. Of course, it didn't become known for years; not until it became obvious they weren't dying, or even aging. They continued to appear as they had at the time of the fight. I don't mean they couldn't die at all; one by one they dropped away. Two were lost in space; one was blown up in an explosion on Terra; another was burned to death; but the only way they could die was through accident--or suicide. After a few hundred years they were all gone but Joseph, and, of course, he'd gone batty." I interrupted. "You mean he's insane?" The bartender grinned. "Crazy as a makron." I said slowly, "He seemed normal enough to me. Uh ... perhaps a bit eccentric." Sam said, "Brother, he's as far around the corner as you can get. You know what he thinks? He thinks that he's wandering through space, going from planet to planet, trying to find a situation similar to that in which he sent away the person he loved most to his death. He thinks that if he ever finds that similar situation, he'll be able to make the opposite decision from the one he made before and that will redeem him." * * * * * I frowned. "Where does he get the money for his wandering around the planets?"