"Approximately so, sir. And after conversion you alone will be able to operate with the full power of your eight, without tiring. You will also, of course, be able to absorb almost instantaneously all the knowledges and abilities of the old Masters." Hilton gulped twice before he could speak. "You wouldn't be holding anything else back, would you?" "Nothing important, sir. Everything else is minor, and probably known to you." "I doubt it. How long will the job take, and how much notice will you need?" "Two days, sir. No notice. Everything is ready." Hilton, face somber, thought for minutes. "The more I think of it the less I like it. But it seems to be a forced put ... and Temple will blow sky high ... and _have_ I got the guts to go it alone, even if she'd let me...." He shrugged himself out of the black mood. "I'll look her up and let you know, Larry." * * * * * He looked her up and told her everything. Told her bluntly; starkly; drawing the full picture in jet black, with very little white. "There it is, sweetheart. The works," he concluded. "We are not going to have ten years; we may not have ten months. So--if such a brain as that can be had, do we or do we not have to have it? I'm putting it squarely up to you." Temple's face, which had been getting paler and paler, was now as nearly colorless as it could become; the sickly yellow of her skin's light tan unbacked by any flush of red blood. Her whole body was tense and strained. "There's a horrible snapper on that question.... Can't _I_ do it? Or _anybody_ else except you?" "No. Anyway, whose job is it, sweetheart?" "I know, but ... but I know just how close Tuly came to killing you. And that wasn't _anything_ compared to such a radical transformation as this. I'm afraid it'll kill you, darling. And I just simply couldn't _stand_ it!" She threw herself into his arms, and he comforted her in the ages-old fashion of man with maid. "Steady, hon," he said, as soon as he could lift her tear-streaked face from his shoulder. "I'll live through it. I thought you were getting the howling howpers about having to live for six thousand years and never getting back to Terra except for a Q strictly T visit now and then." She pulled away from him, flung back her wheaten mop and glared. "So _that's_ what you thought! What do I care how long I live, or how, or where, as long as it's with you? But what makes you think we can possibly live through such a horrible conversion as that?" "Larry wouldn't do it if there was any question whatever. He didn't say it would be painless. But he did say I'd live." "Well, he knows, I guess ... I hope." Temple's natural fine color began to come back. "But it's understood that just the second you come out of the vat, I go right in." "I hadn't ought to let you, of course. But I don't think I could take it alone."