e came back to
Earth for his second Retread." The old man shook his head. "I wanted
to go back to Mars with him--I actually packed up to run away, until
dear brother Paul caught me and squealed to Dad. Imagine."

"I'm sorry, Dan."

The car whizzed off the Throughway, and began weaving through the
residential areas of Arlington. Jean swung under an arched gate,
stopped in front of a large greystone house of the sort they hadn't
built for a hundred years. Dan Fowler stared out at the grey November
afternoon. "Well, then we're really on thin ice at the Hearings. We
can still do it. It'll take some steam-rollering, but we can manage
it." He turned to the girl. "Get Schirmer on the wire as soon as we
get inside. I'll go over Carl's report for whatever I can find. Tell
Schirmer if he wants to keep his job as Coordinator of the Medical
Center next year, he'd better have all the statistics available on all
rejuvenated persons past and present, in my office tomorrow morning."

Jean gave her father a queer look. "Schirmer's waiting for you inside
right now."

"Oh? Why?"

"He wouldn't say. Nothing to do with politics, he said. Something
about Paul."

* * * * *

Nathan Shirmer was waiting in the library, sipping a brandy and
pretending to scan a Congressional Record in the viewer-box. He looked
up, bird-like, as Dan Fowler strode in. "Well, Nate. Sit down, sit
down. I see you're into my private stock already, so I won't offer you
any. What's this about my brother?"

Schirmer coughed into his hand. "Why--Dan, I don't quite know how to
tell you this. He was in Washington this afternoon--"

"Of course he was. He was supposed to go to the Center--" Dan broke
off short, whirling on Schirmer. "Wait a minute! There wasn't a
slip-up on this permit?"

"Permit?"

"For rejuvention, you ass! He's on the Starship Project, coordinating
engineer of the whole works out there. He's got a fair place on the
list coming to him three ways from Sunday. Follmer put the permit
through months ago, and Paul has just been diddling around getting
himself clear so he could come in--"

The little Coordinator's eyes widened. "Oh, there wasn't anything
wrong on _our_ side, if that's what you mean. The permit was perfectly
clear, the doctors were waiting for him. It was nothing like that."

"Then what was it like?"

Nathan Schirmer wriggled, and tried to avoid Dan's eyes. "Your brother
refused it. He laughed in ou