But he didn't move. He felt his blood pump sleepily from chamber to red chamber in his heart, on down and around through his dead body, to be purified by his folding and unfolding lungs. Then the circuit once more. The ship grew warm. From somewhere a machine clicked. Automatically the temperature cooled. A controlled gust of air flushed the room. Night again. And then another day. He lay and saw four days of his life pass. He did not try to fight. It was no use. His life was over. He didn't want to turn his head now. He didn't want to see Lyte with her face like his tortured mother's--eyelids like gray ash flakes, eyes like beaten, sanded metal, cheeks like eroded stones. He didn't want to see a throat like parched thongs of yellow grass, hands the pattern of smoke risen from a fire, breasts like desiccated rinds and hair stubbly and unshorn as moist gray weeds! And himself? How did _he_ look? Was his jaw sunken, the flesh of his eyes pitted, his brow lined and age-scarred? * * * * * His strength began to return. He felt his heart beating so slow that it was amazing. One hundred beats a minute. Impossible. He felt so cool, so thoughtful, so easy. His head fell over to one side. He stared at Lyte. He shouted in surprise. She was young and fair. She was looking at him, too weak to say anything. Her eyes were like tiny silver medals, her throat curved like the arm of a child. Her hair was blue fire eating at her scalp, fed by the slender life of her body. Four days had passed and still she was young ... no, younger than when they had entered the ship. She was still adolescent. He could not believe it. Her first words were, "How long will this last?" He replied, carefully. "I don't know." "We are still young." "The ship. Its metal is around us. It cuts away the sun and the things that came from the sun to age us." Her eyes shifted thoughtfully. "Then, if we stay here--" "We'll remain young." "Six more days? Fourteen more? Twenty?" "More than that, maybe." She lay there, silently. After a long time she said, "Sim?" "Yes." "Let's stay here. Let's not go back. If we go back now, you know what'll happen to us...?" "I'm not certain." "We'll start getting old again, won't we?" He looked away. He stared at the ceiling and the clock with the moving finger. "Yes. We'll grow old." "What if we grow old--instantly. When we step from the ship won't the shock be too much?" "Maybe." Another silence. He began to move his limbs, testing them. He was very hungry. "The others are waiting," he said. Her next words made him gasp. "The others are dead," she said. "Or will be in a few hours. All those we knew back there are old and worn." He tried to picture them old. Dark, his sister, bent and senile with time. He shook his head, wiping the picture away. "They may die," he said. "But there are others who've been born." "People we don't even know," said Lyte, flatly.