It won't be for long, Freya thought. Unless, she thought suddenly, we have luck.

She continued brushing her hair, paying no attention to him. For a woman one hundred and forty years old, she decided critically, I look all right. But I can't take responsibility for it... none of us can.

They were preserved, all of them, by the absence of something, rather than the presence; in each of them the Hynes Gland had been removed at maturity and so for them the aging process was now imperceptible.

"I like you, Freya," Clem said. "You're a refreshing person; you make it obvious you don't like me." He did not seem bothered; oafs like Clem Gaines never were. "Let's go somewhere, Freya, and find out right away if luckwise you and I—" He broke off, because a vug had come into the room.

Jean Blau, putting on her coat, groaned, "Look, it wants to be friendly. They always do." She backed away from it.

Her husband, Jack Blau,, looked about for the group's vug-stick. "I'll poke it a couple of times and it'll go away," he said.

"No," Freya protested. "It's not doing any harm."

"She's right," Silvanus Angst said; he was at the sideboard, preparing himself a last drink. "Just pour a little salt on it." He giggled.

The vug seemed to have singled out Clem Gaines. It likes you, Freya thought. Maybe you can go somewhere with it, instead of me.

But that was not fair to Clem, because none of them consorted with their former adversaries; it was just not done, despite the efforts by the Titanians to heal the old rift of wartime dislike. They were a silicon-based life form, rather than carbon-based; their cycle was slow, and involved meth-