The car whizzed off the Throughway, and began weaving through the residential areas of Arlington. Jean swung under an arched gate, stopped in front of a large greystone house of the sort they hadn't built for a hundred years. Dan Fowler stared out at the grey November afternoon. "Well, then we're really on thin ice at the Hearings. We can still do it. It'll take some steam-rollering, but we can manage it." He turned to the girl. "Get Schirmer on the wire as soon as we get inside. I'll go over Carl's report for whatever I can find. Tell Schirmer if he wants to keep his job as Coordinator of the Medical Center next year, he'd better have all the statistics available on all rejuvenated persons past and present, in my office tomorrow morning." Jean gave her father a queer look. "Schirmer's waiting for you inside right now." "Oh? Why?" "He wouldn't say. Nothing to do with politics, he said. Something about Paul." * * * * * Nathan Shirmer was waiting in the library, sipping a brandy and pretending to scan a Congressional Record in the viewer-box. He looked up, bird-like, as Dan Fowler strode in. "Well, Nate. Sit down, sit down. I see you're into my private stock already, so I won't offer you any. What's this about my brother?" Schirmer coughed into his hand. "Why--Dan, I don't quite know how to tell you this. He was in Washington this afternoon--" "Of course he was. He was supposed to go to the Center--" Dan broke off short, whirling on Schirmer. "Wait a minute! There wasn't a slip-up on this permit?" "Permit?" "For rejuvention, you ass! He's on the Starship Project, coordinating engineer of the whole works out there. He's got a fair place on the list coming to him three ways from Sunday. Follmer put the permit through months ago, and Paul has just been diddling around getting himself clear so he could come in--" The little Coordinator's eyes widened. "Oh, there wasn't anything wrong on _our_ side, if that's what you mean. The permit was perfectly clear, the doctors were waiting for him. It was nothing like that." "Then what was it like?" Nathan Schirmer wriggled, and tried to avoid Dan's eyes. "Your brother refused it. He laughed in our faces, and told us to go to hell, and took the next jet back to Nevada. All in one afternoon." The vibration of the jet engines hung just at perception level, nagging and nagging at Dan Fowler, until he threw his papers aside with a snarl of disgust, and peered angrily out the window.