nothing of what science had already done to destroy all the still current notions about the mystery of life and birth.  He still laughed, as at a clever bit of legerdemain, when Hallowell showed him how far science had progressed toward mastery of the life of the lower forms of existence—­how those “worms” could be artificially created, could be aged, made young again, made diseased and decrepit, restored to perfect health, could be swung back and forth or sideways or sinuously along the span of existence—­could even be killed and brought back to vigor.

“We’ve been at this sort of thing only a few years,” said Hallowell.  “I rather think it will not be many years now before we shall not even need the initial germ of life to enable us to create but can do it by pure chemical means, just as a taper is lighted by holding a match to it.”

Norman ceased to think of sleight-of-hand.

“Life,” continued the juggler, transformed now into practical man, leader of men, “life has been demonstrated to be simply one of the forms of energy, or one of the consequences of energy.  The final discovery is scientifically not far away.  Then—­” His eyes lighted up.

“Then what?” asked Norman.

“Then immortality—­in the body.  Eternal youth and health.  A body that is renewable much as any of our inanimate machines of the factory is renewable.  Why not?  So far as we know, no living thing ever dies except by violence.  Disease—­old age—­they are quite as much violence as the knife and the bullet.  What science can now do with these ‘worms,’ as my daughter calls them—­that it will be able to do with the higher organisms.”

“And the world would soon be jammed to the last acre,” objected Norman.

Hallowell shrugged his shoulders.  “Not at all.  There will be no necessity to create new people, except to take the place of those who may be accidentally obliterated.”

“But the world is dying—­the earth, itself, I mean.”

“True.  But science may learn how to arrest that cooling process—­or to adapt man to it.  Or, it may be that when the world ceases to be inhabitable we shall have learned how to cross the star spaces, as I think I’ve suggested before.  Then—­we should simply find a planet in its youth somewhere, and migrate to it, as a man now moves to a new house when the old ceases to please him.”

“That is a long flight of the fancy,” said Norman.

“Long—­but no stronger than the telegraph or the telephone.  The trouble with us is that we have been long stupefied by the ignorant theological ideas of the universe—­ideas that have come down to us from the childhood of the race.  We haven’t got used to the new era—­the scientific era.  And that is natural.  Why, until less than three generations ago there was really no such thing as science.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” admitted Norman.  “We certainly have got on very fast in those three generations.”