 Why did Eckert think that one would have to view the committee member's teeth to know his age?
Or more complex ones, if you went into it deeper. He turned his head slightly so he could just see Eckert in the bank facing him. It was Eckert who had come into his office several days ago and told him that Don Pendleton had killed himself. Your memory plays traitor and boils friendship down to the status of a breakfast food testimonial. There had been no mental instability in his family for as far back as the genetic records went. He had been raised in a middle-class neighborhood and attended a local grammar school where he had achieved average grades and had given his instructors the normal amount of trouble. In high school and later in college, he was the well-balanced type, athletic, popular, hard-working. How long would it be before memories faded and all there was left of Pendleton was a page of statistics? In the statistics Pendleton was the All-Around Boy, the cold marble statue with the finely chiseled muscles and the smooth, blank sockets where the eyes should be. And then an unscheduled freighter had put in for repairs, one of the very few ships that ever came by Tunpesh. Eckert and he had been chosen to go to Tunpesh and investigate. The thin red line was practically microscopic now and Templin could feel his lashes lying gently on his cheeks. They knew that it had no trading concessions or armed forces and that nobody from neighboring systems seemed to know much about it or even visited it. But a staff anthropologist must have been routinely assigned to Tunpesh to furnish data and reports.
 He looked both young and old at the same time.
 He seemed wise beyond his years.  He had disguised himself as an old man with gray hair but no wrinkles.  He acted too much like a small child.  He looked both young and old at the same time.