Life in the village continued its simple, invariant way. The Sweeper moved slowly along, cleaning with his twig broom. The hunters trekked out in search of srags. The women of the village prepared food and looked after the village's one child. The priests and dancers prayed nightly for the sun to rise in the morning. Everyone was satisfied, in a humble, submissive fashion. Everyone except the Earthmen. They had more talks with Deg and slowly learned the complete story of the sersee juice and the troubles surrounding it. The sersee bush was a small and sickly affair. It did not flourish in a state of nature. Yet it resisted cultivation and positively defied transplantation. The best one could do was to weed thoroughly around it and hope it would blossom. But most sersee bushes struggled for a year or two, then gave up the ghost. A few blossomed, and a few out of the few lived long enough to produce their characteristic red berries. From the berry of the sersee bush was squeezed the elixir that meant life to the people of Loray. "And you must remember," Deg pointed out, "how sparsely the sersee grows and how widely scattered it is. We must search for months, sometimes, to find a single bush with berries. And those berries will save the life of only a single Lorayan, or perhaps two at the most." "Sad, very sad," Carver said. "But surely some form of intensive fertilization--" "Everything has been tried." "I realize," Carver said earnestly, "how important the sersee juice is to you. But if you could give us a little--even a pint or two--we could take it to Earth, have it examined, synthesized, perhaps. Then you could have all you need." "But we dare not give any. Have you noticed how few children we have?" Carver nodded. "There are very few births. Our life is a constant struggle against the obliteration of our race. Every man's life must be preserved until there is a child to replace him. And this can be done only by our constant and never-ending search for the sersee berries. And there are never enough," the medicine man sighed. "Never enough." "Does the juice cure _everything_?" Fred asked. "It does more than that. Those who have tasted sersee add fifty of our years to their lives." Carver opened his eyes wide. Fifty years on Loray was roughly the equivalent of sixty-three on Earth. The sersee was more than a healing agent, more than a regenerator. It was a longevity drug as well. He paused to consider the prospect of adding another sixty years to his lifetime. Then he asked, "What happens if a man takes sersee again after the fifty years?" "We do not know," Deg told him. "No man would take it a second time while there is not enough." Carver and Fred exchanged glances.