What happens when a man who has lived for centuries suddenly discovers he can die? Arthur Giles has spent lifetimes skipping from one body to the next through rejuvenation technology, building an empire and watching his family tree grow into a forest of strangers. Then his treatment fails. For the first time in hundreds of years, his body begins to fail. His colleagues have moved on. His descendants barely know his name. The world that once revolved around him now spins without purpose or place for a man who was supposed to live forever. In desperation, he makes a final choice: volunteer for a dangerous space mission that might reach new worlds, or new endings. Lester Del Rey takes the shiny optimism of 1950s science fiction and turns it inside out, asking what happens when the fountain of youth stops working and you must face the mortality you've spent centuries avoiding. This is a quiet, aching meditation on love, loss, and the terrible gift of finite time, wrapped in a space-age adventure.
