lthier life." He looked at the captain curiously. "Yet he
wasn't assigned to any over-strenuous duties?"

"You know he wasn't," said the captain. "We don't want anybody to
undertake work they can't handle. His labor was hardly physical. He
worked in the geological and botanical groups, but not in the field.
He did classifying and clerical work."

"Then that wouldn't account for the trouble--"

"Perhaps it does, in a way," The captain bent over the puffy,
chalk-white face of the industrialist, listening to his shallow
breathing. "He was never happy doing it. He had different ideas about
himself than we did. He never understood what we were doing or why."

"It's the greatest mystery of them all," said the physician, shaking
his head.

"What is?"

"The human body. It's incredible how much we've learned about the
physical world, and even the physical features of our own
construction. But there's still a mystery we haven't penetrated--"

The captain smiled. "That doesn't sound like you."

"I know," the young physician answered. "But when I see a case like
this--a man breathing his life away for a reason I really can't
understand--" The doctor rubbed the back of his head. "I know it's
crazy, and old-fashioned, and doesn't make the least bit of sense in
these scientific times, Captain. But if anyone were to ask me--off the
record, and completely unofficially--I could only give them one honest
diagnosis of this case. I think this man is dying of a broken heart."

THE END

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