"Fifteen of the men here invented the serum independently. The rest are
successful inventors in other fields. Our oldest member is Doctor Li, a
serum discoverer, who disappeared from San Francisco in 1911. You are
our latest acquisition. Our clubhouse is probably the most carefully
guarded place on Earth."

* * * * *

Dennison said, "Nineteen-eleven!" Despair flooded him and he sat down
heavily in a chair. "Then there's no possibility of rescue?"

"None. There are only four choices available to us," Ferris said. "Some
have left us and joined the Undertakers. Others have suicided. A few
have gone insane. The rest of us have formed the Immortality Club."

"What for?" Dennison bewilderedly asked.

"To get out of this place!" said Ferris. "To escape and give our
discoveries to the world. To stop those hopeful little dictators
upstairs."

"They must know what you're planning."

"Of course. But they let us live because, every so often, one of us
gives up and joins them. And they don't think we can ever break out.
They're much too smug. It's the basic defect of all power-elites, and
their eventual undoing."

"You said this was the most closely guarded place on Earth?"

"It is," Ferris said.

"And some of you have been trying to break out for fifty years? Why,
it'll take forever to escape!"

"Forever is exactly how long we have," said Ferris. "But we hope it
won't take quite that long. Every new man brings new ideas, plans. One
of them is bound to work."

"_Forever_," Dennison said, his face buried in his hands.

"You can go back upstairs and join them," Ferris said, with a hard note
to his voice, "or you can suicide, or just sit in a corner and go
quietly mad. Take your pick."

Dennison looked up. "I must be honest with you and with myself. I don't
think we can escape. Furthermore, I don't think any of you really
believe we can."

Ferris shrugged his shoulders.

"Aside from that," Dennison said, "I think it's a damned good idea. If
you'll bring me up to date, I'll contribute whatever I can to the
Forever Project. And let's hope their complacency lasts."

"It will," Ferris said.

* * * * *

The escape did not take forever, of course. In one hundred and
thirty-seven years, Dennison and his colleagues made their successful
breakout and revealed the Undertakers' Plot. The Undertakers were tried
before the High Court on charges of kidnapping,