"Presto! Old age is held at bay for another twenty or thirty years--I really don't know how long. These mice were my first experiment, and as you see, they're still alive. Next, I tried it on myself."
David put the mice back in their cage, locked it, and returned to the lab.
"Tomorrow, the whole thing is bound to come out because Tanya Hachovnik is coming back. You know her sister Leah--gray, dried-up, soured on life. Well, I've had ways of checking, and when Tanya Hachovnik walks into the Institute, everyone will see her as the same luscious redhead of twenty-five we knew ten years ago. I realize that what I did was a criminal act. I didn't think the thing through or I wouldn't have been such a fool. But when I made those final experiments, I used the Hachovnik twins for a controlled pair."
"Perhaps I was. I'd tried it on myself, of course, with no bad effects except a few days' fever, but I realized that without a control I never could be sure the SDE was actually working. It might be just that my particular genetic constitution caused me to age more slowly than the average. So I chose the twins. To Leah I gave the attenuated Martian Blue, but to Tanya I gave the simple Blue coupled with SDE. The experiment worked. Identical twins--one grows old like other people; the other remains young. I know now, Karl, how to prolong youth indefinitely. But what in the name of Leader Marley shall I do with my knowledge?"
Karl Haslam absently twisted his white hair and spoke slowly, as though he found trouble in choosing his words.
"You realize, of course, that it is your duty to acquaint Leader Marley with all the details of your discovery?"
"Is it? Can you imagine what this will do to our society? What about the generations of children coming into a world where no places have been vacated for them by death? What about the struggles for power? Who will decide, and on what basis, whether to confer or to withhold this gift? There'll be riots, civil wars. I know that I'm only a scientist; all I ever wanted from life was to be left alone, in a peaceful laboratory, and let other people worry about the world and its troubles. But now--don't you see that by the mere fact that I made this discovery, I've lost the right to sit by quietly and let other people make the decisions?"