"The old gentleman's been poorish lately, sir. Ah, it'll be a sad thing when he goes, won't it?" "He's one of our greatest," Harker agreed. "Many people up there today?" "The usual lot," the operator said, halting the car and opening the door. It opened immediately into the foyer of the huge Bryant apartment. Almost at once, Harker found himself staring at the fishy, cold-eyed face of Jonathan Bryant, the old man's eldest son. "Good afternoon, Jonathan." "Hello, Harker." The reply was sullenly brusque. "You're here to see my father?" "I didn't come for tea," Harker snapped. "Will you invite me in, or should I just push past you?" Jonathan muttered something and gave ground, allowing Harker to enter. The living room was crowded: half-a-dozen miscellaneous Bryants, plus two or three whom Harker did not know but who bore the familiar Bryant features. A horde of vultures, Harker thought. He nodded to them with professional courtesy and passed on, through the inner rooms, to the old man's sick room. The place was lined with trophies--one room, Harker knew, consisted of the cockpit of the _Mars One_, that slender needle of a ship that had borne Rick Bryant to the red planet nearly fifty years ago, an epoch-making flight that still stood large in the annals of space travel. Trophy cases in the halls held medals, souvenir watches, testimonial dinner menus. Old Bryant had been a prodigious collector of souvenirs. His doctor, a tiny man with the look of an irritated penguin, met him at the door to the sick room. "I'll have to ask you to limit your stay to thirty minutes, Mr. Harker. He's very low today." "I'll be as brief as I can," Harker promised. He stepped around the barricade and entered. Helen Bryant, oldest of the daughters, sat solicitously by her father's bedside, glaring at him with the tender expression of a predatory harpy. Harker said, "If you'll excuse me, Miss Bryant, your father and I have some important business to discuss." "I'm his daughter. Can't I--" "I'm afraid not," Harker said coldly. He waited while she made her proud retreat, then took her seat at the side of the bed. "Afternoon, Harker," Bryant said in a tomblike croak. He was not a pretty sight. He was seventy-three, and could easily pass for twice that age--a shrunken, leathery little man with rheumy, cataracted eyes and a flat, drooping face. There was little about him that was heroic, now. He was just a dying old man. The needles of an intravenous feed-line penetrated his body at various points. He no longer had the strength to swallow or to digest. It was difficult to believe that this man had made the first successful round-trip flight to another planet, back in 1984, and that from his early thirties until his stroke four years ago he had been a figure of world importance, whose words were eagerly rushed into print whenever he cared to make a statement. He said, "How does it look for next Thursday?"