s, when you know perfectly well that the _only_ reason I have to
go on living this long is to make sure that you are really dead first.
You didn't invent rejuvenation all by yourself without the aid of
Barbara Noble, Ph.D., and the company has the sole right to the
process until we're _both_ dead. And, if you start peeking at plump
blonde wenches at this point, I suppose I'll have to live till Los
Alamos freezes over!"

"All right, all right. But she wasn't plump. She wasn't any bigger
than you are. Besides, you know I'd rather have dinner with you. My
man Marko could give us roast beef with all the fixings and afterward
I want you to hear my latest discovery. It's the best damn
extempore-singer you've ever heard, Jeery Wade--fellow in his first
late fifties, no fluff-brain of a juvenee--a blood and thunder
baritone that'll lift that knob of hair clean off your scalp. Let's
say you get here about six-thirty and I'll phone him we'll be over at
his place for a session of hollering about eight."

* * * * *

Miss Noble's scorn needed no vizer to carry it over the wire in full
force. "I'm not going to budge out of this house until after the
director's meeting and then only if the shops stop all delivery
service. This time I'm not taking any chances. Life is too much of a
bore to have to put up with it for another eighty years even for your
marvelous singer who would probably go and get rejuvenated just as I
got to enjoy him. And _nothing_ could induce me to listen to an
evening of your stories for the nine hundredth time. If there's one
thing I'm thankful for in this scatter-brained age, it's the marriage
dissolution law that's got me free from your anecdotes after three
separate terms of fifty years each."

"Now, Barbara, was it that bad?" Roland Harris sounded distressed.

"Do you really think I could be honestly grateful to the Corporation
for a hundred and fifty years of listening to that disgraceful old
thing about the Martian, the Venusian, and the robot?"

"Well, if you feel that way about it, I'll keep my discoveries to
myself. I hope your fancy hallway keeps you safe till you rot."

"It's doing all right," replied the old woman smugly. "I have a young
pup down there right now cooling his number thirteens and waiting to
pretend to interest me in some new face paint and hair gik. My
electric eye set and vizer are less repulsive than your skunk oil and
_twice_ as effective."

"T