"You mean you obliged them ... with a guillotine and everything?" Mr. Sims asked.

"Certainly, though most choose the sneaking, cowardly way out. As far as I am concerned, they died as they lived—ignominously! It's depressing. We have the best accommodation, food, entertainment, everything the guest requires during his three days here; then they go ahead and die their miserable deaths. Somehow it makes all the luxury seem like pink sugar frosting around a rotten cake. That's why we're always happy to find a guest with the proper spirit." Mr. Hoode said.

Mr. Sims listened in silence to the sales talk, wondering absent-mindedly what the director's personal interest was in other people's death.

"I took the liberty of looking up your record," Mr. Hoode continued. "I picked you out for a personal talk because I see you led an interesting life." He paused in recollection with a theatrically thoughtful finger pressed to his chin, his eyes gazing skyward. "You made a small fortune in oil in Central America before you were twenty. That was followed by more success in hemelium mining in Northern Canada. An excellent Third World War record, too. Founder of Transcontinental Rocket Lines. Co-builder of the Venus rocket. Oh, and a dozen other things. Quite a career!"

Mr. Sims brightened a little. He smiled modestly.

"Too bad you had to come here at fifty-six," Mr. Hoode remarked. "Heaven knows what you might have done with those last nine years. Heart trouble, wasn't it?"

"So I've been told," Mr. Sims said, slipping back into his former glum mood. He still did not believe he was a sick man, but perhaps this was because things had moved too fast and he had not been given enough time to get used to the idea.

"It's a serious cardiac condition," Dr. Van Stoke had told him at the annual examination, "due to an over-active life. I'll have to recommend you for Sunnylands."

And that had been the first mention of the subject.

"But I never had heart trouble in my life!"

"The graphs show the condition clearly. There's nothing anyone can do to remedy it. I'll have to submit your name."

He had protested—threatened—pleaded.

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