"I'm serious about it," I said. "And you're not old enough to be my father. An older brother, perhaps. You can't stretch it any further than that."
"What do you mean I can't? I'm an old man of forty-eight. Hair thinning, going a little to fat. My God, a Wendel Atomics or Endicott Fuel top executive couldn't look any older, and they've got a head start on the rest of us. They start burning out at thirty-five."
"There's not an ounce of fat on you, as far as I can see," I assured him.
"That's going to handicap you on Mars, Ralph. Eyesight not what it should be in a five-star general. Look again, look closer. I've got a pot belly you'd notice, all right, if I didn't exercise to keep it down."
I'd skipped over his reference to Wendel Atomics and Endicott, maybe subconsciously, but it must have registered belatedly in a very pronounced way, because something in my expression turned him dead serious in an instant. No man ever speaks with complete levity about his age, but what there was of ironic amusement in his gray eyes vanished and his lips tightened.
"Well ... suppose we go over what we've got," he said. "I'll be grateful for any ideas, any suggestions you may care to make. I've found out something that's going to give you a jolt. It may even rock you back on your heels, depending on how easily you can be rocked. But it will keep ... until we've discussed what she told us. What do you think of her story?"
"I believe it," I said. I didn't think it was necessary to elaborate.
"Well ... I'm afraid I do too, more's the pity. If I thought she was lying I'd have more of a lever to pry what we don't know loose."
There was a thin sheet of paper covered with very fine handwriting on his desk. He picked it up and ran his eyes over it.
"I sort of summarized what she told us," he said. "But there's no sense in your reading this. I can summarize it even more briefly by skipping two-thirds of what I have here."