The Body-Masters by Frank Belknap Long

In a future where emotion is engineered and desire is regulated, a respected surgeon begins

to sense a flaw in the system he helps in force.

When doctrine collides with instinct, the cost of perfect control becomes impossible to

ignore. The Body Masters by Frank Belnapp Long. That's next on the Lost Sci-Fi Podcast.

Thanks to David who recently bought us two coffees, one of my favorite podcasts and my

favorite science fiction cast. Please add some more azimuth and Robert Heinlein. Your

podcast has given me a new appreciation for Philip K. Dick. Thanks David. There aren't

many more Isaac Asimov stories that are in the public domain that we haven't already

narrated, but there are a handful. We'll find one and add it to the podcast as soon as

possible. Unfortunately, there aren't any more stories by Robert Heinlein left for

Lost Generate. Happy to hear that you've enjoyed the stories by Philip K. Dick. Histories

are always fun to narrate. If you would like to buy us a coffee, there is a link in the

description. We have developed a new found appreciation for Frank Belnapp Long's work

as of late. Look for another of his creative works in the next week or so. Today's tale

was published in Weird Tales magazine in February 1935 on page 189, The Bodymasters by Frank

Belnapp Long. Ray bronzed and dripping, Glanceurgeon V-6070 merged from the Sunpool and

flicked the water from his hair and eyebrows. Then he stooped and thrust a sturdy muscular

arm into the pale green water. The arm was seized by slim hands and a voice said, Help

me out, darling. V-67 raised from the water and adorable form. His face was a glow with

boyish rapture as he set it down beside him on the edge of the pool. Mechanical companion

G-H looked up at him. Her lips were parted in a smile. And the disc in her bosom said,

It is lovely up here in the sun. Kiss me, darling. V-67 bent and implanted a fervent, lingering

kiss on the soft, pneumatic lips of mechanical companion G-H-8. G-H-8 side. And her arms crept

about the dripping shoulders of her very human and warm blooded escort. For a moment

they embraced in silence. Then V-67 gently untangled her arms and asked, Cold My Sweet? Mechanical

companion G-H-8 said nothing. The disc was exhausted. V-67 debated for a moment with

himself. Supervisor of Emotion T-74 had supplied companion G-H-8 with only one reply

disc. He knew that if he rewound the record mechanism and set G-H-8 back in the pool,

she would swim and splash about and begin to talk to him again. But he was, by no means

certain that the glamour and enchantment would survive a second trial. Besides, there was

a chill wind blowing and his flesh was breaking out in goose pimples. With infinite tenderness

he bent and lifted the fragile rubber form of mechanical companion G-H-8 from the gleaming

metallic margin of the pool. He had been compelled to time his questions so that they would

accord with the answer intervals on the disc. But now he could talk to her more freely

and still preserve an illusion of reality. Murmuring in dearmans he carried her across

the Skygarden and set her gently down in one of the racks which the supervisor of Emotion

had provided for exhausted companions. For a moment he stood gazing down at her with

glowing eyes. Then abruptly he turned and strode to the vacuum shoot. Three other men were

waiting to enter the shoot. One of them, a thin, ascetic-looking individual in striped

swimming shorts, was an associate of V-67s at the glam surgery. V-67 greeted him with

upraised palm. Mechanical companion G-H-8 was glorious, he said. No man would want to

divorce his wife these days. I was getting frightfully bored and despondent, but G-H-8

is corrected all that. Don't you like the companions G-H-78? The man in shorts shook

his head. If I had my way, these recreational gardens would be abolished, he said. We

are becoming a race of self-indulgent flatfish. I like the pools here and the squashball courts,

but the companions are utterly pernicious. V-67 frown. You need a gland injection G-H-78.

He said. A shot of adrenaline and perhaps a little thyroid. You talk like a twentieth

century Puritan. G-H-78 grunted. And you behave like a perfect

ciberite, he said. It is a good thing we are not living in the twentieth century, or even

in the twenty-first. The ancient moralists would have put you in a lethal chamber. V-67

laughed. I am not as bad as you think, G-H-78, he said. G-H-78 grunted again. One of the

waiting men heaved himself up to the aluminum slide at the pinnacle of the vacuum shoot,

and relaxed with a contended sigh. His weight caused the slide to till slightly. As he

vanished from sight, V-67 said. Do you mind if I go next? I am ten minutes overdue at

the surgery. G-H-78 and the other man nodded. With a brisk athletic leap, V-67 surmounted

the slide and settled his long limbs in a reposeful attitude. Immediately the slide tilted

and released him. For an instant the soft blue sky above the sky garden was visible

to his upturned gaze. Then it dimmed and vanished. A faint droning arose from the depth

beneath, and a thick blanket of darkness settled about him. He was soon speeding with

a terrific velocity in a vertical direction. The shoot was an almost perfect vacuum, and

he was compelled to hold his breath as the miles beneath him telescoped into a thrumming

spacial porridge. The thrumming came from the pounding blood in his ears. As he fell,

his mind became a kaleidoscopic canvas, something in the swift rhythms of the descent generated

a mental attitude akin to slumber. As in a dream of infinite magnitude and brief duration,

his mind surged in the blackness. In visual splendor he beheld a vivid panorama of mechanical

companions dancing, racing, and swimming for the edification of tired and desponded husbands.

Their live, graceful bodies glistened in the screen-filtered sunlight on the flower-garlanded

rooftops of Cosmopolus. Another vision flashed across his mind. He saw the divorce bureaus

in the fifth-level kiosks, saw the crowded booths and the rapidly growing mountains of

rits and petitions. He saw the long, long files of hopeless women, the one clerks,

and chief objects of pity, the bored and dispirited husbands. It was a vision of the past.

As V-67 sped downward in the darkness, the gloomy and depressing picture was replaced by a verbal

hallucination. V-67 distinctly heard the director of emotional arts affirm

the normal male will at times fervently crave the solace of a new face and mysterious,

unknown hands upon his brow. The wonder and enticement of a strange woman.

You are all familiar with the phrase, but if this anti-social urge could be surmounted as soon

as it arises, in a way that would not provoke jealousy and that would, the voice droned on,

became confused and indistinct. V-67 had another blinding vision of the Sky Gardens,

and their live, limbed and rhythmically moving dispensers of solace. It was a joy to reflect that

mechanical companions were already in attendance in 33 of Cosmopolitan Sky Gardens.

The Vogue, introduced at the beginning of the year 5678, was spreading like wildfire,

and would undoubtedly tend to preserve and glorify the time-honored institution of monogamous marriage.

No sensible wife could be jealous of a mechanical, pneumatic, leisure-hour companion.

It was the beginning of a new dawn in the emotional lives of thousands of husbands,

and V-67 had no misgivings, as slowly from amidst the conjuries of racing, dancing forms,

a lovely face wreathed in silver tail emerged, and you surped his vision.

He saw, again, the enticing pneumatic lips of his own dear mechanical companion, G-H-8,

and heard her whisper, it is glorious here in the sun. Are you happy, my darling?

Metallic arms crept about him in the darkness, and the droning became a roar as of cyclopean

dynamos. The white apron street sanitationists of level TG assisted him from the basil slide

at the circular lower exit to vacuum shoot H-65. As he arose in the incandescent light,

the jointed basil slide shot upward. It would contact his associate, J-78,

a thousand feet above the exit, and carry him downward in its mechanical arms.

V-67 did not wait for his associate to arrive. He did not like J-78.

The man was a prig and a hypocrite. Striding rapidly along the pressed

reservoir pavement of level TG, he drew the spice-centred air deep into his lungs and exhaled with zest.

Ordinarily he shunned rugs, the mild intoxication produced by the health air,

which circulated freely on level TG, and the other non-recreational levels,

was all the stimulation he needed. On this occasion, however,

he extracted a small bluish vile from his upper tunic pocket, and poured upon his palm six grains of

astravacin. Astravacin didn't and dissipated the softer emotions, and stimulated cold scientific

zeal. It was more favored by women than men, but V-67 found it occasionally beneficial.

He had sufficient virility to dismiss, as irrelevant, the conventional snares which were

directed against the male astravacin users. He snuffed the drug into his nostrils and accelerated

his pace. He was facing a trying ordeal. The patient awaiting him in the gland surgery was a

victim of a hideous maladjustment of secretions. The wretch had actually reverted to the morays of

the jungle, and killed his wife in a fit of jealous rage. To study his perspective, V-67

walked to the edge of the pavement and looked down into the abyss beneath him. Far below,

the outer extremities of the lower-level platforms abutted above the great central artery of

Cosmopolus. Down, down he stared. Past the projecting tears and platforms. Past the laboratory

levels and the industrial levels and the agrarian levels. Till his gaze rested on the cyclopean

turbines five miles below. A vertigo swept over him. He withdrew his gaze and walked on.

Level TG was a running tier of laboratories. At intervals of 50 feet, circular doors opened in

the Reservant facade that ran the length of the entire cityward wall of the level. They were

surmounted by the blue-litened classification plates bearing labels in radiumite script.

He passed the skin and exoskeleton correctional laboratory. The sympathetic system clinic,

the muscle and nerve surgery, the epithelial and glandular tissue laboratory, and the tumor

removal center. There was a long line of patients waiting to enter the removal center.

V-67 shivered inwardly. He did not like to think about cancer. It was a major blight. The one

hauling malady that had successfully defied the medical innovations of 50 centuries.

A quarter of the population was afflicted with malignant tumors of one sort or another.

The health supervisors affirmed that the malady was directly traceable to overindulgence in

electric bass and cosmic ray rejuvenators. But V-67 was skeptical of their glib and

facile explanations. He met several co-workers as he progressed toward the surgery.

Biochemist H-43, Grave and Severe, in his India rubber frock, greeted him with

upraised palm as he emerged from biochemical clinic R-66, and T-52 saluted him from the edge of

the pavement. He passed quickly by K-99, L-90, and W-43. How's your wife? Asked W-43.

V-67 said, very well, thanks, and experienced a momentary qualm. It was absurd, of course.

In adoring mechanical companion GH-8, he headed here to a highly moral conduct pattern. His wife

could not possibly resent his attentions to an artificial woman.

The dictator of emotional arts had proclaimed after extensive research and experimentation

that no normal wife could be jealous of a mechanical companion.

Jealousy was a disease anyway. A pathological reversion to a primitive level of thought and feeling.

But even when it did arise, its malignant shafts were directed against

flesh and blood realities. The director of emotional arts was a man of vast air edition,

and V-67 was content to abide by his decision.

V-67 was now abreast of the gland surgery. Turning in at the bulb's surmounted entrance,

he passed quickly down a long blue-lit corridor and nodded to the attendant at the door of the

operating room. F-56 has just been asking for you, said the attendant. Your patient is

in standing it very well. V-67 nodded gravely. He was conscious of an intense cerebral curiosity,

but sympathy and compassion were alien to his mood. The astrobation was circulating freely

in his bloodstream. With ceremony's precision, he removed his tunic and asked the attendant for

his antiseptic suit and mask. The attendant opened a numbered drawer in a metal cabinet at his

elbow and handed V-67 a folded rubber garment and a black surgical mask. The mask was a cumbersome

contrivance that went completely over his head. It had eye holes of violet glass and a long,

twisted breathing tube that terminated in a square metallic box in the region of the Weir's

Naval. In appearance, it was strikingly like the Western European gas masks of the World Wars of

1914, 1936, 1967, and 1987. In the primitive artifacts wing of the Museum of Historical Antiquities

on level K-97, having adjusted the mask and pulled the thin rubber antiseptic garment up over his

shoulders, V-67 nodded to the attendant and passed into the operating room. The operating room

was bayed in a diffused purple light. It was heavily impregnated with high-low foam,

that powerful and dangerous antiseptic which exerted a numbing influence on the lower nerve centers,

leaving them almost insensible to pain, and yet was sufficient vitality to relay messages to

the brain and spinal cord. Its action was insidious and curious. It entered the bloodstream by absorption

through lungs and skin, and altered the vitalistic content of individual cells in every organ and

tissue of the human body. Invented in the 23rd century, it had displaced all the cruder

anesthetics of an earlier age. It had one disadvantage. It did not completely do away with pain.

But as the victim of its fumes remained in full possession of his faculties,

and could even discourse rationally with his deceptors, the surgical workers who refused to

countenance its use were branded as 20th century sentimentalists, or worse. V-67 walked slowly across

the vast domed ceiling operating room in the direction of table 4R6. He breathed deeply of the

pure oxygen which circulated beneath his antiseptic mask, and stopped occasionally to greet

associates as he passed between the long tears of tables. 324 operations were in progress.

Some of his associates were selecting and arranging their instruments. Others were actually at work on

the glands of their human subjects, and a few were busy rectifying blunders, or guarding against

future mistakes by dissecting the dead. When he arrived at table 4R6, the tall form of

gland surgeon F-56 arose from a stooping posture, laid down a gleaming metallic instrument,

and advanced to greet him. Your ten minutes late, he said reproachfully through the audition tube

in the lower left-hand corner of his mask. You know I'm too nervous to work past my schedule.

My nerves are all shot. Why didn't you relieve me? I'm sorry, F-56, said V-67.

I was sunbathing in a sky-garden. You know how exacting the new companions are. You'd better

take a shot of adrenaline before you leave. He paused an instant, then asked, how's the patient?

F-56 lowered his head. He's lost consciousness. He said, he's horribly over-emotional, I'm afraid.

I should think he would be, exclaim V-67. A man jealous enough to subject his wife to an

atomic bombardment, just because she exchange five-minute kisses with a turban mechanic. His mighty

shabby human material, jealousy is a revolting disease, affirmed F-56. A superstitious utterly

illogical hangover from the ages of savagery. That man is actually living in the 20th century.

All strong emotion is pathological, ascended V-67 gravely. He was conscious that he was reaffirming

a truism, but he had to say something to ease the tension.

F-56 was obviously worried about the man on the table. He had lost four cases in his many weeks,

and the chief of staff was beginning to regard him with suspicion. If the suspicion became

a certainty, the chief of staff might conceivably decide that F-56's place was where his patient

was now lying. It was a contingency which F-56 didn't like to think about. He loved the full

abundant life which his slightly unstable glands afforded him. V-67, despite the astrobation in his

bloodstream, could sympathize with this very human weakness of his associate. He was himself slightly

unstable. Mechanical companion GHA could bear witness to that. Gripping his associate by the shoulder,

he murmured reassuringly, don't worry F-56. I'll bring him out of it. Thanks old man,

said F-56. His gate was slightly unsteadied as he turned from the table and made his way slowly

across the vast doned room. With a sigh, V-67 moved forward and stood for a moment staring

intently down at the white, haggard face of the man on the table. The subject was young

and physically robust. The surgeons of an earlier and less remorseless age would have shuttered

the way V-67's associate had taken advantage of that robustness. There was only a small area of

firm flash remaining. V-67 did not shutter. The man on the table had been guilty of an anti-social act

and society insisted, as it had every right to do, upon a surgical corrective.

The man had deliberately reduced his wife to an inner mass of gray ash by bombarding her with

an atomic disintegrator. Men who succumbed to violent emotions were a menace to the peace and

well-being of the corporate Commonwealth. The surgeons of Cosmopolus were the benevolent masters,

the therapeutic overlords of anti-social bodies. V-67 dipped his fingers into a bowl of ammonium vapour

and rubbed them across the young man's brow. Slowly, unsteadily, the patient's eyelids flicked

open. For a moment he stared up in dazed bewilderment at his new benefactor.

Conquering his disgust and enmity, V-67 said, how do you feel now, boy?

The young man's eyes showed an awareness of pain. He essayed a twisted smile.

I feel pretty rotten, he said. How long is it going to take, surgeon? Not long, said V-67.

Not long, boy. We've removed a portion of your thyroid and right-low pituitary,

and cut away practically all of your adrenal cortex. A few stitches and will be finished.

I rather suspect that psychopaths will find that you will not require any mental reconditioning.

The jealousy spasm was purely glandular. You mean I wouldn't have

disintegrated her if my glands had been normal? That's the youth. His facial muscles contracted

pitifully as he spoke. V-67 was busy with his surgical dressing. He nodded sadly as he soared

and needed the lacerated tissue into a semblance of normality. I'm afraid the glands were at the

root of all your troubles, boy. He said. Your parental supervisors should have corrected the

maladjustment in childhood. But several thousand years ago, men often killed their wives, said the youth.

Several thousand years ago, men murdered one another on a wholesale scale.

In hideous blood-letting contests, said V-67, they had no control, whatever.

You cannot justify your conduct by exulting the primitive malad.

If our race has raised itself above the level of the jungle, it has done so only by a long

process of selective mating. When the eugenus of the twenty-second sensory started selecting

stocks on a glandular basis, they were blind, interrupted the youth in desperation.

Blind, I tell you. War was awful, but love. V-67 shrugged.

We still love, he said. The use-face twisted in a grimace.

You think you do, he said. We have overcome certain crude and violent prejudices. That is all,

said V-67 calmly. He wished the young man would not talk so much. His ceaseless, primitive chatter

unnerved him, despite the astrophacin in his bloodstream. He did not realize that the young man

was talking to keep up his courage. It was not so much the pain that the young man dreaded. He dreaded

the thought that he would become like his benefactor. High-minded, impartial, and serene.

But there was nothing the young man could do. He was bound and helpless.

He would be turned into a cool, impersonal cog in the vast mechanism of the corporate state.

Curse them. He muttered in jungle fury. Curse them all. His resentment was short-lived.

The excess glandular secretions were ceasing to stimulate his brain even as he spoke.

With the glands removed, the remaining hormones became mild aids to normality, instead of

goats to anti-social action. For exactly 45 minutes, V-67 labored with painstaking care.

Then he straightened, dipped his instruments in a basin of pale blue antiseptic,

and drew a thin sheet of transparent rubber over the breast and limbs of his patient.

You'll be all right now, he said. I'll prescribe a cathartic, and your digestion will be

checked by the dietician. The use eyes were melancholy and resigned. Thank you, surgeon, he said.

Ten minutes later, V-67 was standing before a vacuum shoot in the release quarter of level TG.

He was very tired. His work was exacting and arduous, and the unstable portions of his

personality were in mild revolt. It was really unjust that he should be compelled to devote five

hours a week to social labor, we told himself. It was his conviction that with a more equitable

distribution of leisure and a more rigidly planned economy, the work quotas could be substantially

reduced. Your turn, V-67, said an impatient, red-haired biochemist on the opposite side of the

shoot. V-67 nodded, climbed up and relaxed on the broad, unstable slide. The slide tilted and

released him. He thought of many things as he shot downward in the darkness. The faces of mechanical

companion GH-8 and his wife vied for supremacy in his mind. Eventually they merged into a single

image, and he sighed in rapture. It was a mystical idea, he beheld now. The composite of all feminine

loveliness. Mechanical companion GH-8 was simply another aspect of his wife's personality.

It was absurd to imagine that the concept woman did not embrace a variety of lovely forms.

Individual women were merely facets, isolated aspects of one eternal and glorious reality,

the feminine principle, imperishable, mysterious, and sublime. My own sweet wife and dear companion,

a murmured in mystical adoration. Down, down he swept. The blood throbbed in his temples,

his pulses ached. Finally a droning began, and he felt something collide with his nether extremities.

Then the steel-cold arms of the jointed basal slide crept about him, and his consciousness

reverted to a more practical level. He emerged in a glare of incandescence, the sun simulating

arc lamps, which lined the cityward wall of suburban home-level R-H, shown down upon him in

radiant splendor. An attemptard buoyancy came upon him as he climbed from the slide and turned his

steps in the direction of his suburban home. He hoped that his wife had heard no disquieting rumors.

The Sky Gardens were far removed, both spatially and spiritually, from the quiet haven of his home.

As he walked between the cyclopean tears of potted shrubs, the great domed aquariums with their

myriads, brilliant, huge and exotic fishes and crustaceans, and felt upon his brow the warm sea breezes,

still redolent with the spices of far islands and archipelagos, as they emerged from hundreds of

swinging odour phones, a look of supreme contentment came into his face. So rapidly did he walk,

that he traversed the distance between the shoot exit and the portals of his suburban home

without meeting anyone. Stepping into the vacuum lift, he was world of fifty-five stories,

and emerged in the community corridor adjoining his wife's quarters. The corridor was deserted.

He was glad of this, for he did not wish to talk to dull and gossipy B-54,

or exuberant and boisterous C-88, or any of the other tenets of story-55.

As he tipped out across the floor to the door of his wife's television room,

a great joy came upon him. He felt confident that she would be sitting relaxed in the darkness,

enjoying an African or Asian telelog. He would steal up behind her and implant a fifteen-second

kiss on the nape of her neck, immediately beneath the two blonde curls which intertwined so adorably

below her quaffior. He laid his hand on the door and drew it outward. The television room was

in darkness as he had anticipated, and his wife was clearly visible from the doorway.

Clearly visible, and leaning on the shoulder of another man. As his gaze swept the room,

he felt his flashco suddenly cold. It was an optical illusion, of course,

a mad cruel hallucination caused by the astravation in his bloodstream.

Yet his wife was actually whispering in the darkness as she stroked the dark curly hair of the

other man. Her head rested on his right shoulder, and he was crushing her hand in his long,

virile fingers. My dear, my darling, she whispered. You understand me. It is glorious here in the darkness,

said her companion. Somehow the grave mechanical tones of the speaker's voice seemed vaguely unnatural.

V. 67 had no clear notion at first as to the cause of this. He simply stood trembling in the doorway,

resisting the evidence of his senses, and telling himself over and over that it was the astravation,

the astravation. The drug sued that first, but later it heightened and distorted the perceptions

of sense. What he saw was surely nothing more than a visual illusion, the figments of a drug-fevered

brain. The attempt that evasion was tragically short-lived. Slowly, insidiously, the truth

crept upon him, and he was shaken to the core of his being by the sickening realization

that his wife had succumbed to the flatteries of that newest of fads and abominations,

the syrupy voiced male mechanical companion. The horror of it was more than he could

safely endure. With an oaf, he slammed the door shut and strode fiercely into the room.

His wife turned about and screamed. Without uttering a word, V. 67 lifted the companion into the air,

and brought him down with violence on the tempered steel floor of the television room. There ensued a

crash, something tinkled in the mannequin's chest, and a small revolving wheel emerged from a twisted

sleeve, and rolled diagonally across the floor. With a curse, V. 67 picked the detestable creature

and hurled him across the room. Never in his life had he experienced such primitive,

unregenerate wrath. The companion collided with the opposite wall and sank limply to the floor.

As his head contacted the hard steel, the record in his breast said,

Your husband does not esteem you as I do. I see you and wreath in roses,

but dood in mists of glory. Your lips are like a lotus flower, and the touch of your hand is a

healing benison. When you are beside me, the moon splendor is enhanced tenfold, and all the stars of

heaven sing for me. V. 67 turned slowly about. His wife was shrinking, white-faced against the

base of the television screen, so as you console yourself with a jiggle-o in my absence, he cried,

his lips livid with wrath. A jig, a jig, stammered his wife in a frightened whisper.

V. 67 cursed his wife's lack of air-addition. The new male companions are exactly like the

abominable jiggle-os of the ancient world, emuttered fiercely. A more despicable type of parasite

never existed, but the dictator of emotion has announced that mechanical companions are perfectly

respectable. Lead his wife in desperation. V. 67 looked at her. His eyes were destitute of

compassion. He was speaking of the female companions, he said. That sort of thing is all right for a man.

It's a strange rule that doesn't work both ways, said the wife in a despairing tone.

Brutal and primitive passions were flooding V. 67 in waves. Something loathsome and aberrant in

his nature surged to the surface. And for a moment he felt an impulse to strike his wife,

actually to strike her with the flat of his hand. The impulse generated its own negation.

Man is not built to cross the humanizing gulf of forty centuries and revert to the savagery of

a dead world without experiencing an overwhelming reaction. No sooner had V. 67 experienced the

detestable emotion than a great shame and horror came upon him. He sank into a chair and covered

his face with his hand. Compassionately, his wife rose and crossed to where he was sitting.

Slipping to the floor beside him, she rested her blonde, talc reed head against his right knee.

My poor darling, she whispered. Do you imagine for a moment that he has taken your place in my

affections? Why, he is a mere mechanical toy, an amusing diversion. Even if he does talk

divinely of moonlight and roses, he is, in essence, nothing but a gadget. I was lonely and horribly

unhappy, and I wanted to make you jealous. But if you will give up that creature, V. 67 was silent

for a moment, then his hand descended and caressed his wife's quaffior. As the flimsy

adormant slipped between his fingers, he said, You are right, my sweet. Tomorrow I shall ask

Supervisor of Emotion T-74 to give me permission to dismantle mechanical companion G-H-8.

You will doubtless be relieved when the bosom records are destroyed and the tender individual

nuances of her face, throat, and limb ceased to exist as parts of an illusionary hole.

His wife looked up at him, she thought, he will give up mechanical companion G-H-8 for my sake,

but he still loves her. He is going to dismantle her because he cannot bear the thought of

surrendering her to another. In his sight, she will always remain as young and lovely,

and inaccessible as the figures on aggression earn. How did the ancient poet phrase it?

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, forever wilt thou love, and she be fair.

I shall have a real rival now. There was a faraway look in V. 67's eyes as he continued,

tenderly, to caress his wife's silver quaffure. Next, on the lost sci-fi podcast, an old

spaceman lies dying while a rocket prepares for launch nearby. As the final countdown approaches,

he fights for one last moment that proves his life in space meant something. Death of a spaceman

by Walter M. Miller.