He had not the courage to shatter the crystal heart and grow old swiftly. He who had condemned so many beautiful women to death was now chained to something worse—eternal life.
II
"Mr. Carlyle! Mr. Carlyle. Are you all right?"
Thaddeus Carlyle came out of his revery with a start, to hear the shrill rasping of the televis on his desk. His hand snapped the instrument on.
"Sorry, Mrs. Loomis," he muttered. "I must have been napping."
The face of his middle-aged secretary looked relieved. "Captain Wolfe is here," she told him. "About the new secretary, you know."
"Send them in," Carlyle grunted.
He swore softly to himself. Too often lately he had dozed off at the wrong times. He was due for another replenishment, and he cursed his luck that it had to come now. Tomorrow he was leaving in his giant salvage ship, the Friar Bacon, for the newly-discovered sargasso off the orbit of Pluto. Nor could the trip be postponed.
But the renewal of his life-spirit could not wait either. He was a little too tired at night, a little too slow to react. But the certainty was in him that he would not survive the trip to the new salvage fields, with its attendant rigors.