female secretly nurtured the hope that someday—

With the inexplicable tension mounting in him he passed the vial along to an assistant with instructions for administering it. Anne would be in no condition to discuss the matter for another day or two.

But he must know. He must know whether she had already chosen Clifford.

He slipped into a light street-jacket, caught an express to top-side and engaged a taxi. His finger was poised over the destination dial before he realized with a start that he had forgotten the five-digit number for Clifford's address. It had been that long since he had called on his old friend.

Friend? The concept seemed suddenly strange. How long since their friendship had actually dissolved into an unacknowledged rivalry?

Nonsense. He and Clifford had both been uncommonly busy with their respective professions. And since Clifford had branched from medicine into robotics, their paths and interests had simply diverged. Alternating almost weekly between the two men, Anne Tabor had kept each more or less informed of the other's activities, but somehow he and Clifford had ceased looking each other up.

The directory gave him Clifford's number, and he dialed it. The small vehicle lifted quickly, slipped into the invisible traffic pattern and began applying the dialed code-address to the electronic grid that cross-hatched Chicago like a mammoth waffle. As traffic cluttered ahead on one particular striation, the taxi banked smoothly and right-angled to the next parallel course and proceeded.

Neat, safe, fool-proof. Perfect transportation within proscribed geometrical limits, Webb thought. An infinite number of routes from one point to another—like the course of a human life—but all within certain proscribed limits.

It's a long life.

The course of a man's life could be considered a passage with infinite possibilities only if he were allowed to backtrack occasionally. Was that what he was doing? Had life grown so dull that he was seeking the diversion of immaturity again?

Immortality.

Was it really so important? Once there had been a time when love, open, unashamed love had been accepted as one of life's strongest motivations. And it wasn't just a feeling of jealous possessiveness. There was a feeling of mutuality in it, a tenderness, an unselfishness and 

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