duplicate not only the
office, but the building and even replicas of all the people in the
building. Mr. Conklin himself is in an easy chair on the twentieth
story."

"_And?_"

"Well, gentlemen, as you know, Happy Glades is the outstanding mortuary
on Earth. And, to put it briefly, with the constant explorations of
planets and moons and whatnot, our Mr. Waldmeyer hit upon this scheme:
Seeking to extend the ideal hereafter to our Guests, we bought out this
little asteroid. With the vast volume and the tremendous turnover, as it
were, we got our staff of scientists together and they offered this
plan--to duplicate the exact surroundings which the Guest most enjoyed
in Life, assure him privacy, permanence (a _very_ big point, as you can
see), and all the small things not possible on Earth."

"Why here, why cart off a million miles or more when the same thing
could have been done on Earth?"

"My communication system went bad, I fear, so I haven't heard from the
offices in some while--but, I am to understand there is a war beginning?
_That_ is the idea, Captain; one could never really be sure of one's
self down there, what with all the new bombs and things being
discovered."

"Hmm," said Captain Webber.

"Then too, Mr. Waldmeyer worried about those new societies with their
dreadful ideas about cremation--you can see what that sort of thing
could do to the undertaking business? His plan caught on, however, and
soon we were having to turn away Guests."

"And where do you fit in, Mr. Greypoole?"

The little man seemed to blush; he lowered his eyes. "I was head
caretaker, you see. But I wasn't well--gastric complaints, liver, heart
palpitations, this and that; so, I decided to allow them to ... _change_
me. They turned all manner of machines on my body and pumped me full of
fluids and by the time I got here, why, I was almost, you might say, a
machine myself! Fortunately, though, they left a good deal of Greypoole.
All I know is that whenever the film is punctured, I wake and become a
machine, do my prescribed duties in a complex way and--"

"The film?"

"The covering that seals in the conditioning. Nothing can get out,
nothing get in--except things like rockets. Then, it's self-sealing,
needless to say. But to get on, Captain. With all the technical
advancements, it soon got to where there was no real work to be done
here; they threw up the film and coated us with their preservative or,
as they put it, Eternifier