nk of what it would mean to a man dying of
cancer. Think ..."

* * * * *

Think. You finish the letter and put it down.

You think of Barbara dead for forty-five years. And of the fact that you
were married to her for three years and that those years are lost to
you.

Fifty years lost. You damn the old man of seventy-five whom you became
and who has done this to you ... who has given you this decision to
make.

Bitterly, you know what the decision must be. You think that _he_ knew,
too, and realize that he could safely leave it in your hands. Damn him,
he _should_ have known.

Too valuable to destroy, too dangerous to give.

The other answer is painfully obvious.

You must be custodian of this discovery and keep it secret until it is
safe to give, until mankind has expanded to the stars and has new worlds
to populate, or until, even without that, he has reached a state of
civilization where he can avoid overpopulation by rationing births to
the number of accidental--or voluntary--deaths.

If neither of those things has happened in another fifty years (and are
they likely so soon?), then you, at seventy-five, will be writing
another letter like this one. You will be undergoing another experience
similar to the one you're going through now. And making the same
decision, of course.

Why not? You'll be the same person again.

Time and again, to preserve this secret until Man is ready for it.

How often will you again sit at a desk like this one, thinking the
thoughts you are thinking now, feeling the grief you now feel?

There is a click at the door and you know that the time lock has opened,
that you are now free to leave this room, free to start a new life for
yourself in place of the one you have already lived and lost.

But you are in no hurry now to walk directly through that door.

You sit there, staring straight ahead of you blindly, seeing in your
mind's eye the vista of a set of facing mirrors, like those in an
old-fashioned barber shop, reflecting the same thing over and over
again, diminishing into far distance.

--FREDRIC BROWN

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from _Galaxy Science Fiction_ December 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected with