enly in the
doorway, dressed in a different type of robe. This was short and somehow
conservative--it had a sincere, executive look about it. The man seemed
changed in other ways, too. But Dave wasn't concerned about that. He was
growing tired of the way people suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Maybe
they all wore rubber-soled shoes or practiced sneaking about; it was a
silly way for grown people to act.

"Come with me, Dave Hanson," Ser Perth ordered, without wasting words.
He spoke in a clipped manner now.

Dave followed, grumbling in his mind. It was even sillier than their
sneaking about for them to expect him to start running around before
they bothered to check the condition of a man fresh out of his death
bed. In any of the hospitals he had known, there would have been hours
or days of X-rays and blood tests and temperature taking before he would
be released. These people simply decided a man was well and ordered him
out.

To do them justice, however, he had to admit that they seemed to be
right. He had never felt better. The twaddle about Sagittarius would
have to be cleared up sometime, but meanwhile he was in pretty good
shape. Sagittarius, as he remembered it, was supposed to be one of the
signs of the Zodiac. Bertha had been something of a sucker for
astrology and had found he was born under that sign before she agreed to
their little good-by party. He snorted to himself. It had done her a
heck of a lot of good, which was to be expected of such nonsense.

They passed down a dim corridor and Ser Perth turned in at a door.
Inside there was a single-chair barber shop, with a barber who might
also have come from some movie-casting office. He had the proper wavy
black hair and rat-tailed comb stuck into a slightly dirty off-white
jacket. He also had the half-obsequious, half-insulting manner Dave had
found most people expected from their barbers. While he shaved and
trimmed Dave, he made insultingly solicitous comments about Dave's skin
needing a massage, suggested a tonic for thinning hair and practically
insisted on a singe. Ser Perth watched with a mixture of intentness and
amusement. The barber trimmed the tufts from over Dave's ears and
clipped the hair in his nose, while a tray was pushed up and a
slatternly blonde began giving him a manicure.

He began noticing that she carefully dumped his fingernail parings into
a small jar. A few moments later, he found the barber also using a jar
to collect the h