girl was sitting there, her back to him, looking out over the
simmering city streets to the cool rise of mountains beyond. He
recognized at once the slight figure, the sheen of the long curling
auburn bob, the poise of her head and slim hand resting on the arm of
the chair.

"Babs!"

She turned half around. "Hello, Rod."

He grinned and sank down in the next chair. "Here we are again."

"Knocked out by your own skunk oil?" she asked pointedly.

"No. Company copter man got me leaving Jeery Wade's. What happened to
you? I thought you were walled up neatly for the declining years."

"The cosmetic man ambushed me in the hall. But I've got another fifty
years to figure out something better ... if I still need it."

"What do you mean _if_ you still need it? Are you changing your mind
about rejuvenation?"

She smiled. "Well, you know it's always fun at first. But I'm having
my lawyer come to this meeting. I've got an idea we can change the
articles of agreement so that the process can finally become public
property at the end of another fifty years instead of only after our
deaths. Then if we want to go on and die, nobody" (she waved her hand
around the great room at the little group of athletic men and
glamorous, expensively gowned women moving in through the arch)
"nobody will have any financial interest in rejuvenating us. Then,
too, our own fat incomes will lapse; and since that's the reason we
set up the articles the way they are--so we'd never be in danger of
starving, that is--we'd have the more interesting choice of whether to
die off or get young again and go back to work. Would you sign a
fifty-year termination, Rod?"

"Would you marry me for the fifty years, Babs?" His voice was gentle,
pleading.

"Honest to goodness, now, aren't you really pretty tired of me?" she
asked earnestly, turning to face him.

"No, I can't say I am. You're pretty special, doctor, and you're
special pretty." It was a ritual.

"You know you're the only man. I'll marry you. Will you sign?"

"Of course I'll sign. I would have anyhow when I knew you wanted me
to. And Babs--maybe we could get some sort of jobs now--sort of to get
in practice. I'll bet we could rent a lab somewhere and do commercial
analyses for a while until we got hit by another idea for research."

"Rod, that's the best idea you've had in the last hundred and fifty
years. But we could have a honeymoon first, couldn't we?"

"That's your best suggestion in th