"You read the Bible, son?"

"Yes, off and on. I've read most of it."

"And why did you read it?"

"Why, I don't know," said Frost, startled at the question. "Because it's a human document. Perhaps in hope of some spiritual comfort, although I can't be sure of that. Because, I suppose, in many ways, it is good literature."

"But without conviction?"

"I suppose you're right. Without any great conviction."

"There was a time when many people read it with devout conviction. There was a day when it was a light shining in the darkness of the soul. Not too long ago it was Me and hope and promise. And now the best that you can say of it is that it's good literature.

"It's your talk of physical immortality that has brought all this about. Why should people read the Bible any more or believe in it or believe in anything at all if they have the legal—not the spiritual, mind you, but the legal—promise of immortality? And how can you promise immortality? Immortality means going on forever and forever and no one can promise that, no mortal man can promise forever and forever."

"You're mistaken," said Frost. "I have not promised it."

"I'm sorry. I speak too generally. Not you, personally, of course. But Forever Center."

"Not entirely Forever Center, either," said Frost. "Rather man himself. If there had been no Forever Center, man still would have sought immortality. It is a thing that, in the very nature of him, he could not have ignored. It's not in man's nature to do less than he can. He may fail, of course, but he'll always try."

"It's the devil in him," said the grizzled man. "The forces of darkness and corruption work in many ways to thwart man's inherent godliness."

Frost said: "Please, I don't want to argue with you. Some other time, perhaps. But not right now. You must understand that I am grateful to you, and…"

"Would anyone else in all this land," the man demanded, "have held out a hand of fellowship to you at a moment such as this?"

Frost shook his head. "No, I don't imagine there is anyone who would."

"But we did," said the man. "We, the humble ones. We, the true believers."

"Yes," said Frost, "I give you that. You did."

"And you don't ask yourself why we may have done it?"

"Not yet," said Frost, "but I suppose I will." "We did it," said the man, "because we value not the man, not the mortal body, but the soul. You read in old historical writings that a nation numbers not so many people, but so many souls. And this may seem quaint and strange to you, but those old writings are a reflection of how men thought in those days, when the human animal always was aware of God and of the life hereafter and was less concerned with worldliness and the present moment."

The door came open and the light streamed out into the room again. An old and wrinkled woman moved into the range of the lantern light. She carried in her band a bowl and half a loaf of bread and these she banded to the grizzled man. "Thank you, Mary," said the man, and the woman backed away.

"Food," said the man, putting down the bowl in front of Frost and handing him the bread. "I thank you very much," said Frost. He lifted the spoon that was in the bowl and carried a spoonful of the substance to his mouth. It was soup, weak and watery.

"And now I understand," said the grizzled man, "that in just a few more years a man need not even go through the ritual of death to attain immortality. Once Forever Center has this immortality business all written down and the methods all worked out, a man will be made immortal out of hand. He'll just stay young and go on living and there won't be any death. Once you get born, then you will live forever." "It won't be," said Frost, "for a few years yet." "But once it can be done, that will be the way of it?" "I suppose it will," said Frost. "Once you have it it's just plain foolishness to let a man grow old and die before you give him eternal youth and lif e."

"Oh, the vanity of it," the old man wailed. "The terrible waste of it. The impertinencel"

Frost did not answer him. There wasn't much of an answer, actually, to be given. He simply went on eating. The man nudged him in the arm. "One thing more, son. Do you believe in God?" Slowly Frost put the spoon back into the bowl. He asked: "You really want an answer?" "I want an answer," said the man. "I want an honest one."

"The answer," said Frost, "is that I don't know. Not, certainly, in the kind of God that you are thinking of. Not the old white-whiskered, woodcut gentleman. But a supreme being—yes, I would believe in a God of that sort. Because it seems to me there must be some sort of force or power or will throughout the universe.

The universe is too orderly for it to be otherwise. When you measure all this orderliness, from the mechanism of the atom at one end of the scale, out to the precision of the operation of the universe at the other end, it seems unbelievable that there is not a supervisory force of some land, a benevolent ruling force to maintain that sort of order."

"Order!" the man exploded. "All you talk about is order! Not holiness, not godliness…"

"I'm sorry," Frost said. "You asked for an honest answer. I gave you an honest one. Please take my word for it—I would give a lot to have the kind of faith you have, blind, unquestioning faith without a single doubt. But even then I wonder if faith would be enough." "Faith is all man has," the man told him, quietly. "You take faith," Frost said, "and make a virtue of it. A virtue of not knowing…"

"If we knew," the man said, positively, "there would be no faith. And we need the faith."

Somewhere someone was shouting and there was the far-off sound of feet pounding rapidly.

The grizzled man rose quickly and in the act of rising one of his feet stepped sidewise and caught the bowl of soup and overturned it. In the light of the lantern, it ran like slow oil across the floor.

"The cops!" someone shouted and everyone was moving very rapidly. Someone grasped the lantern and lifted it and the flame went out. The room was plunged in darkness.

Frost had risen, too. He took a step and someone bumped into him, driving him backward in an awkward stumble. And then he felt the floor give way beneath his feet with the faint popping and snapping of long-rotten boards and he was plunging downward. He threw out his arms instinctively, clutching for any support that he might find. The fingers of his left hand closed upon the end of a broken board, but even as he grasped it, the weight of his falling body snapped it and he was through the floor and faffing.

His body landed with a splash and evil-smelling water rose in a sheet and slapped him in the face.

The fall had thrown him forward and now he raised himself so that he squatted in the foulness that was all about him—the darkness and the foulness a part of one another.

He twisted about and glanced up and he could not see the hole through which he'd fallen, but from the floor above him came the thud of running feet and the sound of distant voices, drawing rapidly away.

New thuddings came and new voices, very sharp and angry, and the splintering of boards as someone broke a door. Feet pounded once again on the floor above him and thin beams of light danced across the hole where he had fallen.

Fearful that someone would flash a light directly down the hole and catch him in its beam, he moved slowly forward, water swirling at his ankles.

The feet pounded back and forth and ran into far rooms and returned again and snatches of voices floated down to him.

"Got away again," one voice said. "Someone tipped them off."

"Pretty dismal," said another. "Just the kind of place you would expect…"

And then another voice, and at the sound of it, Frost stiffened and took another involuntary step farther from the hole in the floor above.