But Shortmire was still suspicious. Even if the Morethans could do what they said, how did he know they would? An alien concept of honor might have no reference to the terrestrial one. "How do I know I can trust your word?" Uvrei's face grew black, literally black, and the crystal shivered until, Emrys thought, it would split. And he shivered, too, knowing in the fine nerves and little muscles of his body what would happen to him at the final shivering. A fear filled him then that he had never known before, not even when he faced space for the first time, and in the midst of that fear came the thought that, if he truly hated Earth, this was the most artistically nasty revenge he could take. * * * * * The crystal trembled to stillness as Uvrei's face paled to composure. "If you were not an Earthman, Jan Shortmire," he said, "we would not have needed you, nor you us. And an Earthman could not be expected to know that the words you have just spoken are the insult that, on Morethis, is deadlier than death; for the word of an immortal--no matter to whom or what he gives it--is as sacred and enduring as he himself." "I apologize," Shortmire said quickly, "for my ignorance." "And I forgive you," Uvrei declared, as grandly as if he _were_ a god, "because of that ignorance. Moreover, since you cannot help your racial deficiencies, I will make this bargain with you. Come to Morethis. There we will give you the life and youth we promised. Then, when you are satisfied that we have given you what you desire, you will give us what we desire." Not having been too honorable a man in his own hundred and fifty-five years, Jan Shortmire still could not believe that the Morethans would act in all honor. However, even the remote possibility that they would play fair was strong temptation for an ardent man pushing death. So he had agreed. He had wound up his affairs and made his will in favor of "his son." Then he had left Earth to go to Morethis, to die as Jan Shortmire and he resurrected as Emrys Shortmire. The Morethans had kept their word, though there were times when he wished they had not. For no phoenix casting itself into the fire to burn alive in agony, so that it might rise again, young and strong and purified, from the ashes of its own dead self, could have suffered the excruciating torment of both mind and body that he suffered as, little by little, he was made young again. Uvrei had warned him that this would happen. "To become one of us, you must be capable of all-endurance." So, for three years, he had lived on the miasmic planet, suffering unending, unbearable pain--not only his, but of the others whose lives went to make his new life. Slowly, agonizingly, these were stirred into the shrieking cauldrons of his body, until they blended and melted and coalesced to become his new shape.