“Statistics compiled over a period of a thousand years indicate the average death rate expectancy per thousand people; they have also demonstrated that only fifty per cent of our women are capable of bearing children; therefore, fifty per cent of the required children are permitted yearly to those who wish them, in the order in which their applications are filed.” “I have not seen a child since I arrived in Amtor,” I told him. “There are children here,” he replied, “but, of course, not many.” “And no old people,” I mused. “Could you administer that serum to me, Danus?” He smiled. “With Mintep’s permission, which I imagine will not be difficult to obtain. Come,” he added, “I’ll take some blood tests now to determine the type and attenuation of serum best adapted to your requirements.” He motioned me into his laboratory. When he had completed the tests, which he accomplished with ease and rapidity, he was shocked by the variety and nature of malignant bacteria they revealed. “You are a menace to the continued existence of human life on Amtor,” he exclaimed with a laugh. “I am considered a very healthy man in my own world,” I assured him. “How old are you?” he asked. “Twenty-seven.” “You would not be so healthy two hundred years from now if all those bacteria were permitted to have their way with you.” “How old might I live to be if they were eradicated?” I asked. He shrugged. “We do not know. The serum was perfected a thousand years ago. There are people among us today who were of the first to receive injections. I am over five hundred years old; Mintep is seven hundred. We believe that, barring accidents, we shall live forever; but, of course, we do not know. Theoretically, we should.” He was called away at this juncture; and I went out on the veranda to take my exercise, of which I have found that I require a great deal, having always been athletically inclined. Swimming, boxing, and wrestling had strengthened and developed my muscles since I had returned to America with my mother when I was eleven, and I became interested in fencing while I was travelling in Europe after she died. During my college days I was amateur middleweight boxer of California, and I captured several medals for distance swimming; so the inforced inactivity of the past two months had galled me considerably. Toward the end of my college days I had grown into the heavyweight class, but that had been due to an increase of healthy bone and sinew; now I was at least twenty pounds heavier and that twenty pounds was all fat.