But we, the people of the United States of America, have rejected it in toto: there must be some way to keep grandpa a gamin and mom nubile; meantime, let us pretend there is a way. Millions for senescence and not one cent for sense. So, okay, I said, it is happening to me with the short and sweet just around the corner and a good thing too, perhaps. Or a bad thing. A thing, I realized, of no import. _Now_ is a sufficient tomorrow for all my yesterdays--if I will see to the circumstance in person. This summary was a current that carried away the incubus of that early morning and left me sound asleep on the divan. When I woke up I saw by my watch--which slid on its gold band when I moved my thin, saturate wrist--that it had passed nine o'clock. I budged and yawned and swam up into the room. I felt better--the other side of age having somewhat returned during the nap. Paul still lay on his back, mouthing and snoring and sweating. Room service brought cold orange juice and good, hot coffee with a civilized cup to drink from. I needed assistance--which is to say, Paul needed it. A friend. An attorney. I could hardly spend the whole day with him unless there was no alternative. Yet certainly he should not be alone with his callow impetuosity. And certainly his young colleagues would be too inept for a proper handling of all the potential dilemmas. He needed a Danaos--he had always needed one, a wise older slave to manage his love affairs--a shrewd promoter. Lacking such a companion he had invested the meaningless savings of youth's passion in one whore. Profligate, comical, and a disaster. I considered Johann Brink. Women, he would say, do not exist in the laboratory. When you switch on the cyclotron, you switch off She. It was too damned bad they _hadn't_ taken women along in there with the atoms--_flame inspiratrice_, man's soul. They might have discovered more concerning the nature of the velocity of light and the behavior of particles and even the essence of packing fractions than they'd learned by the castrate inspection of their micros and macros and milles. Which other set of barbarian priests was it who emasculated themselves before accepting Holy Orders? I couldn't remember. Brink the mental giant and pigmy person would be as much help here as a handful of ice cubes against a forest fire. I dialed Dave Berne. His man Veto answered. "This is Phil Wylie." "Just a minute." "Hello, you toothless cobra! What the hell are you doing in town? Waiting for the women to faint?" "Some of us," I said, "don't have to wait." He roared. "No kidding! What gives? God, isn't it hot? If I had a human head, I could shrink it right here on my terrace--and it's only nine-twenty, A.M.!" "Dave, I got trouble." I told him about Paul. "I have a ten-thirty conference with some movie moguls," he said when I finished, "so I'll be right over." He was there in less than a half hour.