irth. He still laughed, as at a clever bit of legerdemain, when
Hallowell showed him how far science had progressed toward mastery of
the life of the lower forms of existence--how those "worms" could be
artificially created, could be aged, made young again, made diseased and
decrepit, restored to perfect health, could be swung back and forth or
sideways or sinuously along the span of existence--could even be killed
and brought back to vigor.

"We've been at this sort of thing only a few years," said Hallowell. "I
rather think it will not be many years now before we shall not even need
the initial germ of life to enable us to create but can do it by pure
chemical means, just as a taper is lighted by holding a match to it."

Norman ceased to think of sleight-of-hand.

"Life," continued the juggler, transformed now into practical man,
leader of men, "life has been demonstrated to be simply one of the forms
of energy, or one of the consequences of energy. The final discovery is
scientifically not far away. Then--" His eyes lighted up.

"Then what?" asked Norman.

"Then immortality--in the body. Eternal youth and health. A body that is
renewable much as any of our inanimate machines of the factory is
renewable. Why not? So far as we know, no living thing ever dies except
by violence. Disease--old age--they are quite as much violence as the
knife and the bullet. What science can now do with these 'worms,' as my
daughter calls them--that it will be able to do with the higher
organisms."

"And the world would soon be jammed to the last acre," objected Norman.

Hallowell shrugged his shoulders. "Not at all. There will be no
necessity to create new people, except to take the place of those who
may be accidentally obliterated."

"But the world is dying--the earth, itself, I mean."

"True. But science may learn how to arrest that cooling process--or to
adapt man to it. Or, it may be that when the world ceases to be
inhabitable we shall have learned how to cross the star spaces, as I
think I've suggested before. Then--we should simply find a planet in its
youth somewhere, and migrate to it, as a man now moves to a new house
when the old ceases to please him."

"That is a long flight of the fancy," said Norman.

"Long--but no stronger than the telegraph or the telephone. The trouble
with us is that we have been long stupefied by the ignorant theological
ideas of the universe--ideas that have come down to us from the
chil