PIETY

By MARGARET ST. CLAIR

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Thrilling Wonder Stories December 1947. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Frost tossed an avenil wrapper in the space erviser's part reducer.

"These people have found the secret of immortality," he said.

"What a romantic temperament you have," Scott replied softly. "'The secret of immortality,' it sounds as dated as the philosopher's stone."

"What do you mean? We're not immortal."

"No, we're not—though you may not have noticed that the last report of the committee for India gives the life expectancy there now as seventy years. And because of consistently good medical care, you and I both look a good ten years younger than our actual chronological age."

Scott was in his early thirties: he had the trim body and resilient skin of first maturity.

"That's not immortality."

"No, of course not. That's what I'm driving at. How do we arrest aging and prolong life? With some mysterious serum, by some dark business with a fantastic ray? Hocus-pocus of a sort which would be the equivalent of the philosopher's stone I mentioned?

"We've increased our temporal range to the point where it's not at all unusual to meet active and alert people who've passed the century mark. Society has done that by a system of care which is pre-prenatal, by seeing to it that every human being grows up in the best possible environment and receives the best possible nutrition, and by prophylactic measures of all possible sorts. In a word, we've eliminated from human life all the stresses and strains which can be eliminated. And that's the nearest to immortality we'll ever get."

Frost raised his eyebrows. "You heard what Thor-na'thor said. How do you account for it?"

Scott went over to the viewing plates and turned them to low power. The mass of buildings that was Tarthal leaped into visibility. "I don't account for it," he said, with his back to Frost. "We don't speak his language very well yet; we may have misunderstood. Or he may have been speaking 

  P 1/8 next