"Get us out of here," Boyle said sharply. He turned the freeze-gun on the astounded Locke, half expecting resistance and fully prepared to meet it. "You fool, do you think I'm still playing the childish game I made up to keep you and Moira quiet?" A pall of greasy black smoke poured after them when Locke, still stunned by the suddenness of catastrophe, put the aircar into motion and streaked away across the city. Boyle, watching the first red tongue of flame lick out from the building behind, patted the serum case and set himself for the next step. Immortality. * * * * * Locke took the helicar down through the mountains, skirting a clear swift river that broke into tumultuous falls a hundred yards below Boyle's cottage, and set it down in a flagstone court. "Out," Boyle ordered. Moira met them in the spacious living room, her pretty face comical with surprise and dismay. "Philip, what's _happened_? You look so--" She saw the alien then and put a hand to her mouth. "Keep her quiet while I deal with Fermiirig," Boyle said to Locke. "I have no time for argument. If either of you gives me any trouble...." He left the threat to Locke's stunned fancy and turned on the Alcorian. "Let me have the injection you had ready for Cornelison. Now." The Alcorian moved his narrow shoulders in what might have been a shrug. "You are making a mistake. You are not fitted for life beyond the normal span." "I didn't bring you here to moralize," Boyle said. "If you mean to see your mate again, Fermiirig, give me the injection!" "There was a time in your history when force was justifiable," Fermiirig said. "But that time is gone. You are determined?" He shook his head soberly when Boyle did not answer. "I was afraid so." He took the hypodermic needle out of its case, squeezed out a pale drop of liquid and slid the point into the exposed vein of Boyle's forearm. Boyle, watching the slow depression of the plunger, asked: "How long a period will this guarantee, in Earth time?" "Seven hundred years," Fermiirig said. He withdrew the instrument and replaced it in its case, his liquid glance following Boyle's rising gesture with the freeze-gun. "At the end of that time, the treatment may be renewed if facilities are available." _Immortality!_ "Then I won't need you any more," Boyle said, and rayed him down. "Nor these other two." Locke, characteristically, sprang up and tried to shield Moira with his own body. "Boyle, what are you thinking of? You can't murder us without--" "There's a very effective rapids a hundred yards down river," Boyle said. "You'll both be quite satisfactorily dead after going through it, I think. Possibly unrecognizable, too, though that doesn't matter particularly." He was pressing the firing stud, slowly because something in the tension of the moment appealed to the sadism in his nature, when an Orderman's freeze-beam caught him from behind and dropped him stiffly beside Fermiirig.