* *

Not for long. When we saw the boys off to Centauri I had a dizzy spell
and only with the greatest effort hid my distress until the long train
of ships had risen out of sight. Then I lay down in the Visitors Lounge
from where I could not be moved for several hours. Great waves of pain
flashed up and down my spine as if massive voltages were being released
within me. The rest of my body stood up well to this assault but every
few seconds I had the eerie sensation that I was back in my old body, a
ghostly superimposition on the living protoplast, as the spinal chord
projected its agony outward. Finally the pain subsided, succeeded by a
blank numbness.

I was carried on gravito-cushions to Erics' office. "It had to be," he
sighed. "I didn't have the heart to tell you after the last operation.
The subvirus is attacking the internuncial neurones."

I knew what that meant but was past caring. "We're not immortal--not
yet," I said. "I'm ready for the end."

"We can still try," he said.

I struggled to laugh but even gave up that little gesture. "Another
operation? No, it can't make any difference."

"It might. We don't know."

"How could it?"

"Suppose, Treb, just suppose you do come out of it all right. You'd be
the first man to be completely of second matter!"

"Erics, it can't work. Forget it."

"I won't forget it. You said we're not immortal but, Treb, your survival
would be another step in that direction. The soul's immortality has to
be taken on faith now--if it's taken at all. You could be the first
_scientific_ proof that the developing soul has the momentum to carry
past the body in which it grows. At the least you would represent a step
in the direction of soul freed from matter."

I could take no more of such talk. "Go ahead," I said, "do what you
want. I give my consent."

The last few days have been the most hectic of my life. Dozens of great
physicians, flown in from every sector of the Solar System, have
examined me. "I'm leaving my body to science," I told one particularly
prodding group, "but you're not giving it a chance to die!" It _is_ easy
for me to die now; when you have truly resigned yourself to death
nothing in life can disturb you. I have at long last reached that
completely stoical moment. That is why I have recorded this history with
as much objectivity as continuing vitality can permit.

* * * * *

The operating theatre was crowded for