Funny, he couldn’t picture really losing his temper here. Families did odd things to a man.
HE LISTENED to a few of the discussions after the dinner, but he’d heard them all before, except for one about the super-speed drive, and there he had no wish to talk until he could study the final report. He gave up at last and went to his own suite. What he needed was a good night’s sleep after a little relaxation.
Even that failed him, though. He’d developed one of the finest chess collections in the world, but tonight it held no interest. And when he drew out his tools and tried working on the delicate, lovely jade for the set he was carving his hands seemed to be all thumbs. None of the other interests he’d developed through the years helped to add to the richness of living now.
He gave it up and went to bed—to have the fragment of that song pop into his head. Now there was no escaping it. Something about the years—or was it days—dwindling down to something or other.
Could they really dwindle down? Suppose he couldn’t rejuvenate all the way? He knew that there were some people who didn’t respond as well as others. Sol Graves, for instance. He’d been fifty when he finally learned how to work with the doctors and they could only bring him back to about thirty, instead of the normal early twenties. Would that reduce the slice of eternity that rejuvenation meant? And what had happened to Sol?
Or suppose it wasn’t rejuvenation, after all; suppose something had gone wrong with him permanently?
He fought that off, but he couldn’t escape the nagging doubts at the doctor’s words.
He got up once to stare at himself in the mirror. Ten hours had gone by and there should have been some signs of improvement. He couldn’t be sure, though, whether there were or not.
He looked no better the next morning when he finally dragged himself up from the little sleep he’d managed to get. The hollows were still there and the circles under his eyes. He searched for the gray in his hair, but the traitorous strands had been removed at the doctor’s office and he could find no new ones.