 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? 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. Warm breezes rustled through Eckert's graying hair and tugged gently at his tunic. It would be like a famous singer suddenly doing a jazz number in an opera, or having the princess in a fairy tale turn out to be ugly." The village started where the port left off and crawled and wound over the wooded ridges. They finally came out on the field and clustered around him and Templin. The committee of one was a middle-aged man dressed in a simple strip of white cloth twisted about his waist and allowed to hang freely to his knees. When he got closer, Eckert became less sure of his age. Eckert still had the feeling that if you wanted to know his exact age, you'd have to look at his teeth or know something about his epiphyseal closures. Colored patches on far hillsides indicated the presence of farms, and practically every house in the village had its small garden. The other part of the square was given over to the native bazaar where pots and bolts of cloth were for sale, and where numerous stalls were loaded with dried fruits and vegetables and the cleaned and plucked carcasses of the local variety of fowl.
 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.