"What do you mean," I asked.

"Why," said the Man in Asbestos, "I suppose it's what you would call
being dead. Of course, in one sense there's been no death for
centuries past; we cut that out. Disease and death were simply a
matter of germs. We found them one by one. I think that even in
your day you had found one or two of the easier, the bigger ones?"

I nodded.

"Yes, you had found diphtheria and typhoid and, if I am right, there
were some outstanding, like scarlet fever and smallpox, that you
called ultra-microscopic, and which you were still hunting for, and
others that you didn't even suspect. Well, we hunted them down one
by one and destroyed them. Strange that it never occurred to any of
you that Old Age was only a germ! It turned out to be quite a simple
one, but it was so distributed in its action that you never even
thought of it."

"And you mean to say," I ejaculated in amazement, looking at the Man
in Asbestos, "that nowadays you live for ever?"

"I wish," he said, "that you hadn't that peculiar, excitable way of
talking; you speak as if everything _mattered_ so tremendously.
Yes," he continued, "we live for ever, unless, of course, we get
broken. That happens sometimes. I mean that we may fall over a
high place or bump on something, and snap ourselves. You see,
we're just a little brittle still--some remnant, I suppose, of the
Old Age germ--and we have to be careful. In fact," he continued,