She was going about her work with more energy every day, and I'll be blasted if I didn't catch her casting a lingering Marilyn Monroe sort of look at me when Greco's back was turned.

"Shall we fire her?" I asked El Greco when I told him about it.

"What for?"

"She's disrupting the work!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"The work isn't worth a d.a.m.n anyhow," he said moodily. "We're not getting anywhere, Virgie. If it was only a matter of smooth, predictable rates--But look at her. She's picking up speed! She's dropped five years in the past couple weeks."

"She can stand to drop a lot more," I said, annoyed.

He shrugged. "It depends on where. Her nose? It's shortened to about a fifteen-year-old level now. Facial hair? That's mostly gone. Skin texture? Well, I suppose there's no such thing as a too-immature skin, I mean short of the embryonic capsule, but--Wait a minute."

He was staring at the doorway.

Minnie was standing there, simpering.

"Come here!" he ordered in a voice like thunder. "Come here, you!

Virgie, look at her nose!"

I looked. "Ugh," I said, but more or less under my breath.

"No, no!" cried Greco. "Virgie, don't you see her _nose_?" Foolish; of course I did. It was long, beaked--

Then I saw.

"It's growing longer," I whispered.

"Right, my boy! Right! One curve at least has reversed itself. Do you see, Virgie?"

I nodded. "She's--she's beginning to age again."

"Better than that!" he crowed. "It's faster than normal aging, Virgie!

_There are aging demons loose too!_"

A breath of hope!

But hope died. Sure, he was right--as far as it went.

There _were_ aging demons. We isolated them in some of our experimental animals. First we had to lure Minnie into standing still while Greco, swearing horribly, took a tissue sample; she didn't like that, but a hundred-dollar bonus converted her. Solid CO_{2} froze the skin; _snip_, and a tiny flake of flesh came out of her nose at the point of Greco's scalpel; he put the sample of flesh through a few tricks and, at the end of the day, we tried it on some of our mice.

They died.

Well, it was gratifying, in a way--they died of old age. But die they did. It took three days to show an effect, but when it came, it was dramatic. These were young adult mice, in the full flush of their mousehood, but when these new demons got to work on them, they suddenly developed a frowsy, decrepit appearance that made them look like Bowery b.u.ms over whom Cinderella's good fairy had waved her wand in reverse. And two days later they were dead.

"I think we've got something," said Greco thoughtfully; but I didn't think so, and I was right. Dead was dead. We could kill the animals by making them too young. We could kill the animals by making them too old. But keep them alive, once the demons were in them, we could not.

Greco evolved a plan: Mix the two breeds of demons! Take an animal with the young-age demons already in it, then add a batch that worked in the other direction!

For a while, it seemed to work--but only for a while. After a couple of weeks, one breed or the other would gain the upper hand. And the animals died.

It was fast in mice, slow in humans. Minnie stayed alive. But the nose grew longer and facial hair reappeared; simultaneously her complexion cleared, her posture straightened.

And then, for the first time, we began to read the papers.

STRANGE PLAGUE STRIKES ELGIN

bawled the Chicago _Tribune_, and went on to tell how the suburbs around Elgin, Illinois, were heavily infested with a curious new malady, the symptoms of which were--youth.

OAKLAND "BABY-SKIN"

TOLL Pa.s.sES 10,000

blared the San Francisco _Examiner_. The New York _News_ found thousands of cases in Brooklyn. A whole hospital in Dallas was evacuated to make room for victims of the new plague.

And more.

We looked at each other.

"They're out in force," said Theobald Greco soberly. "And we don't have the cure."

IV

The world was topsy-turvy, and in the middle of it Minnie disappeared, talking hysterically about reporting us to the authorities. I don't mind admitting that I was worried.

And the experiments were not progressing. The trouble seemed to be that the two varieties of demons--the aging and the youthing--were not compatible; if one took up residence in a given section of an organism, the other moved out. The more numerous destroyed the weaker; there was no balance. We tested it again and again in the mice and there was no doubt of it.

So far, only the youthing demons were free. But when Minnie left us, it was only a matter of time. Our carriers--from Grand Rapids and from the hotel--had spread to California and the East Coast, to the North and to the South, throughout the country, perhaps by now through the world. It would be slower with the aging demons--there was only one of Minnie--but it would be equally sure.

Greco began drinking heavily.

"It's the end," he brooded. "We're licked."

"No, Greek! We can't give up!"

"We _have_ to give up. The demons are loose in the Earth, Virgie!

Those people in the headlines--they'll die of young age. So will others--even plants and animals, and bacteria, as the demons adapt to them. And then--why not? The air. The rocks, the ocean, even the Earth itself. Remember, the entropy of the Universe is supposed to tend to a maximum not only as a whole, but in each of its parts taken in isolation. The Earth's evolution--reversed. Spottily, and maybe that's worse, because some parts will evolve forward and others reverse, as is happening in my own body. Heaven help the world, Old Virgie! And not just the Earth, because what can stop them from spreading? To the Moon, the other planets--out of the Solar System, for that matter; to the other galaxies, even. Why not? And then--"

"_GRECO._"

An enormous tinny voice, more than human, filled the air. It came from outside.