One of them, a stocky, bearded man, was an old college acquaintance of Dennison's.
"Jim Ferris?"
"That's right," Ferris said. "Welcome to the Immortality Club, Dennison."
"I read you were killed in an air crash last year."
"I merely—disappeared," Ferris said, with a rueful smile, "after inventing the immortality serum. Just like the others."
"All of them?"
"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."