Donovan walked through his office, conscious that he was doing this for the last time. Rejuvenation was like death. You put an end to a lifetime casually and without haste. At the pilo-cab station, the wind cutting down from the whirr of swooping cabs, Donovan met Blascomb. There were two bright flashes, and then the smell of disintegrated flesh. Blascomb gestured toward two graying pools on the plasticized floor in back of them. "Murder and suicide," he said, obviously pleased with himself, "The C.D. will think you are dead. The murderer's body is also there to provide a motive for the transfer of the Trust's funds in the event Crane becomes too thorough. He'll be here soon; we work fast now." * * * * * The special pilo-cab dropped them into a gravity-shielded warehouse above the European Desert. It housed Blascomb's laboratory. The rejuvenation process was even simpler than Donovan had expected. "Not the Fountain of Youth, exactly," Blascomb explained as he plunged in the needle, "but a selective antibody that attacks only aging tissue and forces replacements practically on an embryonic level of activity. Unlike the Callistan serum, which is merely a stimulant, this antibody creates from its destroyed tissue a catalyst capable of stimulating chromosomes and genes. By the very process of feeding upon itself, the body grows younger. The net result is a reversal of the life process, an anabolism making you grow younger, year by year." "Eventually to disappear as a single cell?" "Ultimately, yes. Long before that period, probably when you're a young man, you'll have to return to 2482 for a reversion to normal metabolism." "The process can be repeated?" "Indefinitely." Donovan breathed deeply. "Immortality!" Blascomb did not smile. "Only if the C.D. does not find you. Unlicensed rejuvenation is punishable by execution in an extremely painful manner. You're a doomed man now if the C.D. even finds you. The worst tortures of the Middle Ages would be nothing compared to what Crane would do to you or me if he tracks us down." "You can stay in the present time-cycle," Donovan said, "but I'm tired of control and supervision. Send me to some period where an individual had a chance to work and live without state control. Give me the times of individualism!" "C.D. agents are everywhere in the time-cycles, tracking down illegal immigrants. Quite a number of the men I've rejuvenated chose the Renaissance for escape, but I'm afraid that a good part of that cycle's carnage was the work of such C.D. agents as our friend Crane. I'd recommend another period." "The Golden Age of Greece?" Blascomb shook his head. "Already taken. Aristotle, Plato, and a few others are 25th century men. Archimedes was murdered by a C.D. agent, and Socrates sent to his death by a group of them." "Their fates were known to history--why did those men leave the 25th century to live in that cycle?"