REINCARNATE, by Lester del Rey

Originally published in Astounding, April 1940.

I

Thorne Boyd lay in a dark tarry pit under black stars that threw out hot blinding points of jagged lightning. And the lightning was aimed at him, crashing down in a steady tumult of sound that shattered into his mind and kept him from fainting. Where the pinpoint lightning struck, pain lanced out with soul-tearing force that threatened to sear his flesh from his bones. It was hot and cold, and all the sensations of a lifetime seemed determined to pile up on him in one malefic swoop.

The sensation was too much for his body; it tore itself away from him, leaving his brain stranded in the pit, and went tearing off through the turgid blackness. Without senses, his mind yet followed it, striving to draw it back.

“Come back, body!” he yelled at it, but there was no sound save the thundering yammering of the lightning. That seemed in some mysterious way to sense his ultimate nakedness, for it crashed down more fiercely, and the black stars threw off their veils, revealing themselves as vultures soaring in a murky sky. With inexorable precision, they wheeled slowly down toward him, beady red eyes feasting on the sight of his naked brain.

Wild thoughts ran through his mind. “Poe’d love this—only they aren’t ravens.” Then there was no time for thought. The monsters were so near that their wings beat a brazen cacophony in his ears. He had to leave. In a frenzied struggle, he thrust out wisps of matter from his brain to serve as legs and began running, running—but the smooth surface of the pit held him fast, and his false legs were too weak. The birds sank lower. One of them came to rest.

A strong beat, as of a heart, pulsed madly through his mind, and he let out one frantic cry that reverberated in a pitch too high for sound. Then his mind tore free and went soaring down and away, through Stygian depths that went on endlessly, toward some unknown goal. Something snapped.

“Crazy dream,” he thought. Or was it? He was still in darkness, set with jagged flashes of light that formed no pattern, and sound that rushed on in a muffled discordant roar. Pain was all about him. But the insanity of fear was gone, and he began groping for a rational solution.

He could not feel his body, though that was due to the pain, probably. There had been an accident—or was that a part of the dream? And today was to be his wedding day. He struggled to get up, but his only response was a fresh stab of pain. Well, if he had to lie there, there was no other solution. Maybe there had been an accident, fatal—and this might be Hell. It certainly wasn’t the other place.

Boyd settled his mind into rough order and subdued the larger part of the fear. The immediate past was still clouded, but perhaps if he went back over it, starting at the beginning of the day, some clue would come. If nothing else, a chronological review would take his mind off his present condition.

* * * *

It had been the big day toward which they had been working. The smokestacks were throwing out their columns of inky oil smoke, telling of power feeding into the turbines that furnished the station with a steady, dependable supply of high-voltage, direct-current electricity. Allan Moss, old and bent, but still with the hot fire that had made him the world’s greatest mathematician and physicist, was helping Boyd inspect the safety suits.

“Lot of good they’ll do if anything happens in there,” he grunted. “You better let me go in alone, Thorne.”

Boyd shook his head, and his eyes traveled past to a figure motioning for him around the corner. Moss followed his gaze and chuckled. “Go on, son, don’t keep her waiting.”

Joan Abbot’s dark hair was flying in the wind, her eyes filled with bubbling deviltry that seemed never to leave them. “Meany,” she greeted him. “I’ll bet you forgot that tomorrow was to be our day. You and your old work.”

He grinned at her awkwardly, not quite sure of her banter, but pleased by it, as always. He needed her lightness and gaiety, her willingness to find the sunnier side of everything in direct contrast to his own character. Seen through her eyes, life must be a wonderful thing. Time had taught him that under the effervescence and impulsive enthusiasm there was a mind he could meet and respect.

“I haven’t forgotten. Moss has agreed to drive us away as soon as he can get rid of your father, and I have the license in my pocket. Only I wish you’d let me tell your father we’re being married.”

“No, you can’t do that. Wait till it’s over and I’ll spring it on the old dear. Mmm, and won’t he growl, though! But it never does him any good.” She gurgled and stretched herself up on tiptoes to grab for his neck. “Let’s run away now! Let’s, Thorne.”

“No can do.” He scraped his unshaven face down against hers, grinning slowly as she slapped at him. “Anyway, you’re only teasing me.”

She crinkled her nose up at him. “How’d you guess? Mmm.” The pause that became necessary was definitely not unpleasant. “All right, Pickleface, you can go back to your work, but if you leave me at the altar—”

Moss looked up at them and tucked an almost paternal smile away in the corner of his mouth. “Been poking your nose into things that were none of your business again, youngster?” he asked her.

She nodded, peering over his shoulder at the suits. “Mm-hmm. One of the men opened the casing around your atom-smasher and let me look inside. I promised him I wouldn’t tell you who he was.”

“And did you understand anything you saw?”

“A little. I’ve been studying lately, so I’d know what Thorne is doing. He’ll talk about his work all the time, and a good wife should understand, shouldn’t she? What’s a restrictive field, Dr. Moss?”

Moss shoved the work aside and sat down opposite her. He was always willing to answer her eternal questions, and managed somehow to make it clear. Something inside the old scientist went out to the insatiable curiosity that filled her. “A restrictive field is just what its name implies. It’s a field of force generated around something and designed to hold that something within certain limits or patterns. You might say that a magnet exerts such a field on iron filings to keep them from scattering and line them up in definite patterns. Only we’re using a field to hold neutrons in the uranium ‘fuel’ and not let them dissipate uselessly as they try to. Understand?”

“Mm. Well enough.” She ran curious fingers inside the suit and examined it. “What’s this for?”

“In case there’s trouble inside. Just an added precaution.” Boyd picked her up and set her out of his way while she squeezed his nose with a little hand. The cooing sound she made embarrassed him, but he wouldn’t have made her stop it for an extra arm. “Dr. Moss and I aren’t taking any risk, you see.”

She appealed to Moss again, a serious note in her voice. “Why do either of you have to go? Couldn’t you control it from outside or use automatic machinery?”

“Not well enough. Automatic machinery can’t do things it isn’t designed for. When we start ripping atoms to pieces, we’ll have to expect the unexpected. That’s what men were built for—emergencies.”

She brushed her hair away from troubled eyes, and a frown had taken the place of her impish deviltry. “Thorne, I’m scared. Call it a sudden premonition, if you like, but don’t go in there. Or let me go with you. Please.”

“You stay out here and it’ll be over before you know it. There’s no real danger,” he assured her. “If we thought there were, we wouldn’t be going in, would we?”

“But if there’s no danger, why can’t I go in with you?”

“Because—” Feminine logic was too direct at times. “Well, your father…”

“Speaking of me?” The voice came from behind them, thin and crisp, that of a man used to giving orders without the need of backing them up with anything but money. They saw the tall, heavy figure of John Abbot entering the doorway.

Moss covered quickly. “Just warning your daughter not to go fooling around while the experiment’s in progress. She’s a science bug, you know, poking her nose into everything. Ordinarily, I like it, but not today.”

“Okay, meanies.” Joan grinned at them, though it looked a little forced, and kissed her fingers at Boyd with her back toward her father, then went tripping out, an odd look of determination on her face. Abbot squatted down on a box and watched them dourly.

“Better work,” he grunted. “Some of the men are complaining about the money we’ve invested in this, with no results for two years. I still don’t see why you needed all this for an experiment.”

“I warned you it’d take five years, maybe.” Moss had the patience with work and men that necessity develops in scientists. “And in dabbling with atoms, there is no small-scale experiment. The results gained then mean nothing. Finished, Thorne?”

“Yeah, the suits are in good condition. Mica’s clear and the asbestos hasn’t been damaged.”

“Good.” Moss picked up one and Boyd followed with the other, leaving Abbot staring after them. They slipped through the doors of the great barnlike experimental building and began donning their suits by the control table at one side of the forty-foot shell encasing the atom-blaster.

Boyd looked at Moss and voiced the question that had been troubling him for months. “How’d you ever pry the money out of Sourpuss in the first place?”

“I didn’t. He heard the government was planning to finance my experiment and came after me on double-quick. Had visions of what government control of atomic power would mean to his utilities, and got the other financiers in with him. It’s the first time he’s had an employee whose orders had to be followed, and he doesn’t like it.” Moss chuckled. “Wonder what he’ll say when you run off with his daughter?”

“Lord knows. Probably try to fire me, but I’m counting on you and her to pull me through that, if our work succeeds; anyway, if it does, he won’t kick too hard. What are you planning to do after this is over?”

“Publish my monograph on restrictive fields and mathematical concepts of atomic disruption—the one with the new type of math I’ve spent two years teaching you.” His heavily gloved fingers found the zipper on the suit finally and pulled it up, muffling his words. “After that, I’ll probably visit Norman Meisner at City Hospital. Haven’t seen him for years, and he’s invited me down to see his latest miracle.”

Thorne grunted as the zipper on his own suit slid up. “I was reading about that miracle; something about his taking a dog’s brain and putting it in some mechanical body where it learned to wag its tail, wasn’t it? The newspaper account gave practically no information.”

“Something like that. Ready?”

“Ready!” Boyd watched the indicators as Moss turned on power into the restrictive fields that would limit the spread of neutrons and stabilize atomic breakdown. For a split second he imagined he caught a flash of movement in one corner of the building, but there was nothing there when he looked. He turned back to the panel. Power was already swelling out.

Moss leaned over, yelling above the sound of the machinery. “Looks good, eh?” A sudden flash of red sent him darting back, and his hand groped for a switch. Then a roar of light, heat, and sound cascaded out from the big shell!

For a fraction of a second, there was a scream in Boyd’s ear, and he felt his hands clutch at the control switch. Then his mind blacked out, leaving only a numb nightmare of agony.

It could have been only a few seconds later when the agony brought consciousness back again. He made groping movements that sent cold throbs up to join the killing pain, and from the motions, a picture of his own condition sprang into being. His arms were half gone, there were no legs, and the body of which he had been so sure was only the withered hulk of a man—a cinder left miraculously behind to mark the fury of the atom flame! From the pain, part of his face must have been torn away, and sight and sound were gone.

Desperation killed the pain temporarily, and he fought to shout. He was on something that gave like sand, and the dull thuds around him could be only the earth vibrations of footsteps coming at a run. The blast must have thrown him free of the building, out onto the ground, and the other men were just coming up.

A faint idea was in his head, though the torture of existence fought against it. Sand below him, the stump of an arm—and no other means of telling what he wanted.

A convulsive heave threw him to what should have been his knees, and the right stump of his elbow bit down into the sand. He had only muscular memory to guide him, and the letters would have to be big. “MEISNER,” the stub scrawled, and he fought backward against restraining hands that were meant to soothe him. Then: “CITY HOSP—N—” The “Y” was only half completed when his body refused to stand more and collapsed.

Now he was here—wherever here was—with only a dim idea that too much time had passed. The review of the past had only suggested that he was dead and in Hell—or in City Hospital. And that would mean—

The brain of a dog in a metal case, wagging a tail. Meisner of City Hospital, with the charred body of what had been a man, and only the first few experiments to pave the way. Boyd writhed mentally in the fantastic horror to which he had awakened and hoped suddenly that he was dead and in Hades. That at least would give him a background of familiarity. The other possibility was beyond the imagination.

II

Norman Meisner had left Germany as a boy. Had he remained, he might have become a great engineer, as he had planned. Instead, by a long chain of circumstances, he now held the reputation of being the greatest experimental surgeon on the American continent, and his word was law in the newly built experimental wing that had been added to City Hospital. Medicine was finally learning the value of “abstract” science.

“Morning, Papa Meisner,” a trim nurse greeted him, and he chuckled amiably at the surprised expression that crossed the face of his companion.

“Discipline is not good, eh? But when it is brains that are needed, should a man bother with so small things? No, I think not. It is when they are happy they work best.”

Dr. Martin nodded in half agreement. “You seem to get results, anyway. That’s all the board’s interested in. It isn’t official yet, but they’ve decided to vote you the money you’ve been asking to continue this latest thing of yours.”

“I don’t need their money now. It is recently I have acquired a new donation—for experimental work only—from a rich man. I have work from him to do, as you shall see after this.” He led the way down the hall to his private laboratory and smiled at the tall young man waiting outside. “The reporters all here, Tom?”

“All here. Hello, Dr. Martin.”

Martin nodded at him. “Finished your course yet, Tom?”

“Full-fledged engineer now. But I’ve been helping Dad with the mechanical end of this new work—sort of ex officio.”

They followed Meisner in and worked their way through the representatives of the press until they were standing beside a gleaming metal box that lay on a bare table, with only a small magnetic speaker in front of it. Its smooth surface was broken by a hole at one end and a short rubber tube that projected from the other. From inside came a faint hum and a regular muffled thudding.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” Meisner greeted the reporters. “Now if you’ll let me run this little show to my satisfaction… Rex, wake up!”

The tube at the rear came to sudden life and began twitching in a haphazard fashion, and a rough whining sound was emitted from the speaker. The reporters stared at it curiously, though they knew roughly what it was.

One of them started to ask a question, and the tube stopped its beating at the new sound; the speaker made a hoarse, sharp noise, almost like a bark. The barking continued until Meisner made soothing sounds that quieted it. The plump little physician patted his stomach fondly, opened the top of the box, and pointed inside.

“Life,” he began, “must have food and air for energy, water to serve as a liquid medium, no? Good. And it must have blood to carry them, and something to remove the waste matter from the cells, or the blood. Also, to survive is needed white corpuscles or some other defense to kill destructive organisms, such as bacilli. Here, I have them all. When my Rex is run over, I fix him up a new body for his brain—not good, maybe, but better than nothing.

“See, here is the brain case and the big blood vessels are connected to this mechanical heart—a refinement I make on the Lindbergh-Carrel pump which you know, maybe. Here is a jet air infuser for a lung; blood goes in, loses carbonic acid gas, and picks up oxygen. So. Then up through the brain, down into this glass kidney—the same that Lindbergh also worked on—and the life-poisons come out and are a trouble no more. This is the stomach, where predigested food enters the blood by osmosis.”

The newspapermen were impressed, but hardly amazed. Most of them had seen pieces of chicken’s heart kept alive by the use of the Lindbergh pump and kidney before. This was merely a refinement of that, though the use of an entire brain was a big forward step. “I suppose you put in new blood as the old red corpuscles break down?” one of them asked.

“Ach, that is the beauty of this; blood I do not use.” Meisner waited for their reactions until satisfied that they were properly curious. “I have a new substitute for blood. It carries food, air, and water, just as does the real, but there is no breaking down. That is the great advance.”

Dr. Martin stared at him with sudden interest. “How about its effects on the cells? I suppose it’s some nontoxic organic compound with a loose affinity for oxygen, but do the cells work well with it?”

“Perfectly. And—” He tapped a small chamber that had been overlooked. “Here it is sterilized. With real blood, that could not be, no? Real blood has white bodies that fight disease, but my blood washes the germs through this and poof—they are dead. I have given my brain all that is needed for life.”

“Yeah, but how’d you get the brain in there without letting it die? And what starts the magnets that wag its ‘tail’?”

Meisner shrugged. “Have you no imagination? First the blood vessels are opened and reconnected one by one, so life does not stop, until the artificial heart does all the work. Then my liquid replaces the blood, and the brain is moved to its new case—not before. And the nerve endings, which conduct faint currents of electricity from the brain, are hooked up to platinum filaments. So. And their so faint electric impulse is boosted in relays to operate the magnets and the speaker which is connected to two modulators, one for the whine and the other a bark.”

He held up his hands to silence their instant protests. “So, you know nobody can trace out individual nerves, eh? That is true. But I can locate nerve bundles that lead to the ears, throat, and tail, and separate the sensory nerve bundles from the motor impulse bundles. I attach the bundles on the right places, not separating nerves, and hope maybe the brain gets some sensation—and it does. Two months Rex has had to learn in, and already he knows my voice and his name. Rex!”

Again the speaker whined and the tube that served as a tail twitched. It beat in a hopelessly disordered fashion, but apparently any beat seemed better than none to the dog’s mind. The reporters examined it again, checked up on their information, and began filing out.

“Going to use it on a man sometime?” one of them asked as a parting shot.

“Why not, maybe?” Meisner turned to his son as they left and he grinned. “Maybe we use it on a man, eh? Tom, shall we honor the fine Herr Doktor Martin with our latest efforts?”

Tom’s grin answered him. “If it won’t shock the esteemed Dr. Martin.”

Martin stared from one to the other, making no sense of their expressions. “Why so darned mysterious?”

Meisner took his hand on one side, and Tom marched around him to the other. “You now have the honor, Dr. Martin, of seeing—oh, skip it, come on and see for yourself. It really isn’t funny, after all.”

Dr. Charles Martin followed along meekly enough, as they led him, and light began to dawn. Unless he was mistaken seriously, what he was about to see had something to do with the reporter’s last question.

III

Boyd fought against himself in the crazy world of chaotic sensation to which he seemed doomed, and sudden darkness rolled down over him, cutting off the disordered jumble of varicolored light that had been torturing his eyes—or where his eyes had been. With a sense of pride he realized he’d done the equivalent at least of closing his eyelids.

But the dark emphasized the solitude of the place. There was still a rushing confusion of sound, but the hours he had lain there had dimmed his consciousness of it until it formed a hazy pattern in his mind. The pains were less sharp now, mercifully.

But there was no mercy for him. In spite of himself, his mind insisted on speculating on death, though the more rational thoughts insisted that this could not be death.

A sudden torrent of fresh sound struck down on him, not loud but raucous in disorder. The sounds grew louder and changed, and he guessed that something or someone was coming closer to him. He tried to see, and again his eyes acted without his knowledge of how. Stronger light lanced out, flickering for a moment, and then burning hotly. His struggles to close his eyes again only resulted in a harsher glare, as if his pupils had dilated.

The confused sounds kept on, and there was something in the rise and fall of them that suggested speech. They were clearer than the other noises. Boyd cried out, or tried to, and was startled to hear a grating jangle. It couldn’t have been his voice, yet he was sure it had come from him.

The other noises stopped momentarily, and then the sound he had made was repeated, slightly changed but recognizable. Surely no human throat could have imitated it—a hyena, perhaps, but not a man. He tried again, getting a different noise this time, and it was repeated by the other.

There was a silence for a moment, and a clear tone broke in, different from the rest. It was hoarse, but lacked the confusion of all former sounds. “Dit-dit-dit-dit,” it said in short clicks. Then there was a slight pause, and it began again, this time in longer signals mixed with the short ones. “Dit…dit-dah-dit-dit…dit-dah-dit-dit…dah dah-dah.”

The short clicks and longer ones resembled something he had heard. He groped around in his mind, seeking the answer, and finally found it. The irregular frequency was that of a telegraph sounder, and the clicks must be code. It came again, and he listened more closely, piecing out the letters. “H…E…?…?…O.”

“Hello!” That was what they were saying. But his knowledge of code was too limited. As a boy, he had known a friend who operated a ham station, but all he had ever learned were the symbols for THE, I, and SOS. That gave six letters out of twenty-six. He started to return the signal they sent with whatever noise his throat chose to make, depending on the length instead of articulation of sound, but thought better of it. If he made no reply, they might realize he could not understand.

There was a conference of noises, and the clicking again, all short this time. One click, space, two clicks, space, three—They were running over the numbers in the simplest of codes. Clumsily he repeated, and the numbering left off. Then the clicker reverted to a series of mixed short and long sounds, with spaces coming in irregular order. He counted the sounds between spaces and made out twenty-six. As the signals started again, he checked. The fifth was E, the eighth H, and the others fitted in. They were sending the alphabet for him to memorize. He selected four of the most necessary letters and concentrated on them until he was sure he could make an intelligible sentence.

“Where am I?”

There was an excited buzzing of sounds, and the clicker broke out quickly, “-o- are i- the -it- hos-ita- to -et we—.” So he was in City Hospital and they were trying to patch up what was left of him. But how much was that. Something was wrong with his sight, his hearing, and his voice, and he had no ability to move any other part—or at least could feel no response.

The alphabet was running through again, certain letters emphasized by longer space between them this time. He made a sound when satisfied that he knew them, and the sounder began picking out words slowly and carefully.

“This is Meisner. You are making out well. You must rest now. We will make you well. We must leave now. The machine that makes ABC will stay to keep teaching you. You must not worry.”

Even the simple sentences brought half comfort, suggesting as they did the possibility of communication. Boyd made the proper sounds for “yes,” and the noises that were voices began to fade away. The machine kept up its alphabetical discourse.

They were almost gone when Boyd remembered the questions he must ask and shouted. There was a series of increasing sounds, and a voice answered.

“Moss?” he spelled.

“Dead!”

“How long?”

“A month,” the answer came. “No worry. All is well.”

Then the voices receded again, and he knew he was alone. So Moss was dead, and it was a month since he had been conscious. They must have kept his mind drugged while the pain of healing was going on, and the ache he was now experiencing must come from muddled sensations. A month, while he had lain here in a fog, and the world had gone on without him.

It must have been hell for Joan, he thought. Next time the men came to see him, he’d ask about her, if he wasn’t too horrible for her to see. Perhaps it would be better if she never visited him. As a future husband, he was a washout.

The clicking of the machine called his mind back, and he turned his thoughts to the code, glad for a reason to forget all the troubles that were looming up for the future. Hours sped by, and the machine buzzed on, leaving the alphabet for simple primer sentences. He seemed to have no desire for sleep, and the light flashes finally disappeared, leaving him in darkness that was soothing. Some of the noises in the background disappeared, and he realized it was night.

The machine went back to simple words, and there was a new element “Man” it spelled out. “M.” The letter was followed by a different noise, then “A” and another. Finally the whole word was spelled in completion and a longer noise that resembled the voice sounds of the men. They were trying to teach him to speak!

The sounds that followed the letters seemed all alike at first, but slowly he noted minor differences that clarified as he studied them. They bore no resemblance to speech as he remembered it, being a jumble of whistles, buzzes, and things for which there was no name. Dutifully, he tried to imitate them, but the response was disheartening. In the hours that followed he learned there were just thirty-one sounds he could make, and that making them in any logical order was going to take education. His voice refused to respond to the old patterns of speech in any sensible fashion. And some of the sounds he had regarded as primary were now made up of more than one. A vowel might require two or more sounds blended in rapid order.

But slowly the distinctions between the sounds he could hear became plainer, and he was able to grasp in a dim way the meaning of a few words out of each simple sentence before the code form was spelled out. It was slow, grim work and only the desperate urge for knowledge of himself drove him on.

Light was streaking back again as he made his last efforts at speech. Surprisingly enough, at the twentieth time ordered sound came out. “I am.” The words that man had first spoken in the dim past when consciousness of self was new. Now they marked a milestone in his progress as great as that first effort.

He could not repeat them, though he tried. But what he had done once could be done again, in time; he might learn even to recognize the weird conglomeration that constituted speech for him with a semblance of ease. At least he would not be doomed forever to solitude.

He was! For the time, that would have to suffice.

IV

“The prince kissed her lightly,” oozed the telegraphone with nice unction, “and Sleeping Beauty opened her eyes and smiled at him. Then they were married and lived happily ever after.”

Boyd swore mentally at the recording. It wasn’t bad enough to stay awake twenty-four hours a day in Hell, but they had to furnish recordings to remind him of his sleepless condition. Not that he needed sleep, apparently. But a little merciful oblivion would have been welcome. Still, the machine was familiarizing him with the hoots and gargles that represented spoken language.

Grumbling to himself, he turned his attention to the chart that hung over him. By a series of manipulations that normally would have made his eyes act in a distinctly abnormal manner, he finally focused on it and began piecing out the characters. They all looked like blobs of wax that had been left too long in the sun, but careful study was bringing some sense out of them.

He could recognize the straight lines now, and a few letters of the alphabet, though he had to take their words about the beauty of the girl’s face in the central picture. So far, motion was the only thing that registered properly, when he could keep it in focus.

“Like using the faceted eyes of an insect,” he growled. Then it didn’t sound right; he repeated it. That was better. His new voice still insisted on getting the whistle that went with “k” mixed up with the rushing cough that stood for “e.”

Someone was at the door, coming toward him, from the sound. He waited until a moving blob registered on his eyes, looked for what he had come to know as a beard, and decided from its absence that the visitor was Tom Meisner. There was another figure with him, thinner, and also without a beard.

“Hello, Boyd.” Tom’s clear-cut English identified him further. “I’ve brought you a visitor—Mr. Abbot.”

Looking at the other, Boyd decided it did look something like Abbot. Careful inspection revealed the bald spot on the man’s head, and he felt a sudden glow of pride at his achievement. Then it disappeared into the usual gloom. “Hello,” he said slowly. “I didn’t expect to see you, Mr. Abbot.”

“And why not?” From the speed of the words, the question was probably meant to be good-natured, though the fine nuances of tone failed to register. “You’ve been costing me a small fortune, Thorne, so I figured I might as well see what was coming of it.”

“You’ve been paying for me?” It was news to Boyd, though he had wondered about the financial end of it. “Why?”

Something that might have been a chuckle came from Abbot. “Not from sentimental reasons, as you’ve guessed. I’ve been paying because I need your memory and knowledge. When I saw what you’d scrawled in the sand, I figured you’d learned something that might prove the solution to the problem of power, and took you to Meisner. What was it?”

“Mostly nothing. Instinct of self-preservation, I guess, made me write that. You’ve had experts go over the wreck?”

“Naturally, and they don’t understand it. Some of Moss’s notes are incomplete, and the equipment is pretty well ruined. The other investors in the work are yelling about the money they’ve put in, and I’ve got to show results.” Abbot paused, and Boyd guessed which one of the investors was most worried about the money. “At least, you can supply the information in the missing notes.”

“It wouldn’t do any good, sir. All I know is that the field we’d built up collapsed just after it started, and the experiment went wild before the neutrons were dissipated enough for the reaction to stop. Theory doesn’t explain that, and another test might give you more things like me. If I could go over the wreck and try again, I might find the trouble. But—”

“Good.” Abbot picked up his hat and started to leave. “Hurry up and learn to use your arms and legs, and I’ll see you don’t lose if it works.” He motioned Tom back and went out the door alone, leaving Boyd’s mind in a state of numbed shock.

Learn to use his arms and legs! He’d been thinking of himself as a brain in a box, with nothing but the senses of sight and hearing, but that was apparently false. Now, perhaps he wasn’t like the dog in the newspaper item. Perhaps—Fifty wild conjectures ran through his mind in the half second it took him to call Tom.

Young Meisner sat down within range of his sight, and his voice was low and calm. “I know, Boyd. Take it easy. We didn’t tell you about it because we wanted you to spend all your time learning to see and talk. But you’re about as complete as we can make you. Ever read any of those robot stories?”

“Yes, but—”

“Well, in a rough way, that’s what you are now. There wasn’t enough of your body left to save, so we gave you a new one. In some ways, it can’t equal the old one, but it has points of superiority. The blood system insures your brain against disease and fatigue. You’ll never need sleep because all poisons are removed as they form. You’ll never have to worry about your body wearing out, because new parts can be added. And you’ll probably live longer than Methuselah, since your brain cells are perfectly fed and cared for. For instance, the thermostatic controls that keep your brain and spinal cord at the right temperature are far more sensitive and dependable than the normal bodily methods.”

Some of those, Boyd decided, weren’t assets. He’d have given a lot for one night’s sleep and forgetfulness, and the idea of living a long time might prove a mixed blessing. But there was no use of complaining about that. “How’d you do it?”

“By combining Dad’s surgical skill with what I know of engineering, and getting a lot of outside help,” Tom answered. “Your ears are vocoders, breaking down sound into its basic elements. For a voice, you have the opposite, a voder, that takes the basic elements and recombines them. We couldn’t hope to re-create anything like the original, since nature, working with millions of unified cells, is devilishly complex. But the substitutes will serve fairly well.

“You have a television scanner for eyes, connected to the optic nerves, and the nerves governing your eye muscles are hitched on to change the focus tubes and move them about. We used a photoelectric cell to govern the iris setting, but you can control that to some extent. Incidentally, our biggest trouble was getting a television hookup that would work properly with lenses having a focal length short enough to give sufficient depth of field to your sight, and the wide-angle f:10 lenses had to be made specially.

“Most of the apparatus is located in your torso, of course, along with the new high-power accumulator coils to furnish power. Not having your atomic energy yet, that’s the best we could do, so you’ll need recharging regularly.”

“Mmm.” In a hazy way, Boyd had figured out part of that for himself, but his chief interest was in motility. “What about the muscles in arms and legs?”

“Magnets. Dad planned on using motors and sliding shafts, but that would have taken a body the size of an elephant. We used thin disk magnets with a one-tenth-inch gap between them. A hundred of them equal a ten-inch gap, and there’s no comparison between the two when it comes to pull exerted. Where the big gap might not work, the series of small ones pack in plenty of power. The old inverse-square law that applies to all force fields, you know.”

The door opened again with a faint creak, and Meisner’s thick pronunciation broke in on them. “So?” He moved over beside his son. “So you tell our Mr. Boyd all about himself, eh? All I hear is how good an engineer you are to make a body like this. How you feel, Boyd?”

“A little better, now that I won’t be cramped down in a box all my life. What about the sense that governs muscular movements?”

“You see, Dad, he wants to know. You can boast about your part when I’m finished.” Boyd made out that Tom and Meisner were grinning at each other as the younger man went on. “We used piezoelectric crystals as pressure detectors in the muscle piles. They should gauge the effort applied by the magnets and serve as a fair kinesthetic sense. Temperature sense isn’t so important to you, but we used thermocouples for that, and gyroscopes attached to the balance-organ nerves supply a sense of balance.”

Meisner nodded. “And so you are a man again. A brain and spinal cord from nature taken, a body made from skill. We hook the nerves to wire filaments, indiscriminately, and they learn again. Maybe then you are once more complete.”

“Sounds like a horrible mess to me,” Boyd stated.

“Maybe. But it is nature that makes the so horrible mess. One million cells she puts in a muscle, and makes them work as one. A hundred little habits of thought that you don’t know about she gives you by experience, to work those million cells. No, that we could not duplicate. We’ve simplified, instead. That you could do all that you did before would be impossible, but that you could approximate normal activity—yes. Good, eh?”

“If I learn. But all the sensations I get are completely distorted.”

Again Meisner disagreed. “Not distorted, but different. You are again a baby. Are the eyes of a baby incomplete? No. But he has learned no habits of understanding the messages sent by his eyes, and he cannot fully see. Even a boy of five may draw a picture that to him looks like his mother, and to you or me, like nothing.

“It is the old senses that lie as much as the new. You must forget the old habits and new ones acquire. In his head, man sees upright, but the message on the nerves is reversed. Glasses have been built to reverse this, and for a time sight seems upside down; then, in a few weeks, the brain corrects, and all looks normal. Now it is without the glasses that sight is wrong. So.

“I could sort afferent nerve bundles from efferent. I could trace the ones to the ears, to the eyes, to other parts. But the separate nerves? No, never. And they would not work with the new sensors and motors, anyhow. So the message is sent to the brain—without any system it is sent. And the brain, that great organizer, it must learn to find habits that work with them. It will. In time new habits you will learn, and then your senses will no longer distort.”

Boyd turned it over in his mind, and partly agreed. Already sound was beginning to seem more natural to him, and there was some promise of his eyes working properly. He tried to see his body, but the movement of his eye tubes was too limited for that. Meisner seemed to sense his desire.

“There is a mirror here.” He moved away for a few seconds, and came back carrying something. Tom helped him adjust it. “So. Now look, if you must.”

Boyd looked. At first, he saw only a vague blur, but as he analyzed it part by part, some meaning began to come out of what he saw. That was a straight line, that a curve, and another straight line at a forty-five-degree angle. His mind built up a picture from the separate messages sent to it.

He was big, far bigger than any normal man; probably the problems of structure had necessitated that. And his head was too large even for his body. They had made little effort to copy the human form accurately. Tubes stuck out in front of his face for eyes, and there was no nose or chin. He realized quickly that he looked less human than the various robots that had been built for stage exhibition purposes.

And in that body he was supposed to move about among the normal people of the world! There could be no concealing it in coats and hats, no hope of being anything but a freak for people to stare at. Men distrust the unknown, and he would have few if any friends. No home, no social life—no wife!

Surely he couldn’t expect Joan to marry him in such a form. Perhaps that was why they had kept her from seeing him. He was a monster, a creation that even Frankenstein would have shunned as unholy. All that was left to tie him to the world of men was a job to be finished.

“All right,” he said. “Help me sit up and put that mirror where I can watch myself. I’ve got to learn how to handle these muscles you gave me, if I can start the things twitching.”

V

The razor blade was absolutely steady in the big hand, and the hair moved toward it surely until it was split smoothly down the center. The other hand picked up one of the pieces, and this time the blade moved against the half hair, splitting it into quarters of the original.

Boyd tapped one finger against the palm of his hand in a clicking sound he used to express satisfaction; some of the old habits had been redesigned to work with the new body. Being made of metal made for steadiness, at least, as the split hair proved, and the auxiliary lenses changed the focal length of his eyes to his optional telescopic or microscopic sight. Now he slipped the lenses off and put them in the fur-lined pouch that was attached to his body.

Tom Meisner opened the door of the office and came in, his lips blue with the cold, beating his hands together to warm them. “All set, Boyd,” he said. “The transformers just came in. Want I should start the men on them?”

Boyd grunted. “Guess so. Abbot’s still climbing on me for being so slow. I’ll go along and help with the installation.” Tom had been doing good work since the return to the station, and he was glad to have the young engineer as an addition to his staff. He rose from his seat, a little jerkily as the faint giddiness of motion hit him. His balance sense still wasn’t in perfect tune, and a slight dizziness usually accompanied any change of position. For a second, he moved his legs carefully, then sureness came back.

“The X-ray plates for the transformer cores they sent okay?”

“Yeah, seem to be. I can’t find a trace of flaw in any of the stuff this time. Brr! It’s colder than Billy-be-damned. How you can stand it without an—” He caught himself suddenly. “Skip it!”

Even though he had been largely responsible for Boyd’s body, Tom still made those little mistakes. And his acceptance of Boyd as a man at such times bothered more than the frank stares of the others. It was bad enough to be an object of ridicule, but to have the other man start treating him normally and suddenly realize the difference was worse.

“I wouldn’t get much good out of an overcoat,” Boyd answered his unfinished question. “It’s a good thing you chose chrome steel for the foot plates, though, with all this slush on the ground.”

His heavy feet made harsh plopping sounds in the muck that served as a constant reminder of his strangeness. One of the men stopped his work to stare as he passed, wonder still written large on his face, though Thorne had been at the station nearly a month now. Then the man turned quickly and too obviously back to his work, avoiding Boyd’s eyes.

The men were uncomfortable, he could see, as they worked under his orders, setting the big transformers in place, coupling them up, and adjusting them. Some of them had worked with him before, on easy terms of camaraderie, and it was hardest for them. They tried their best to act toward him as if nothing had happened, and their efforts failed miserably.

Some of the new men made jokes about him behind his back and called him “Frankie,” derived mistakenly from Frankenstein. That did not worry him; if men could treat his new body as a joke and be serious about the brain in it, life would be tolerable. But they pitied him, instead, and looked down at him from superior normality. They were a little too quick to accept his orders, to address him as “Mr. Boyd,” to laugh at his attempted jokes.

He caught up one end of a beam the men were working with and twisted it around to the position they wanted. For a minute, they looked up with surprise and admiration, then it faded. Boyd’s sharp ears caught the remark one of them made. “Why shouldn’t he be strong? Automobiles got strong engines, too. He don’t need to show off in front of us.”

“Shut up, dammit!” the other growled, but there was the same hint of dislike in his voice.

That’s how it was. If he did what they couldn’t, they resented it; if he failed to do anything they could, they were condescendingly pitying. He was a freak, something hashed together from an accident, which should have killed him, and they had to take orders from him. There was no way he could win their respect or friendship, since those were reserved for men with human bodies and limitations.

Tom came back as the last transformer was being swung up and in by the donkey engine hoist. “Dad phoned he was coming out this afternoon to check up on your progress,” he said. “Should be here any minute.”

“Good.” Thorne liked Tom’s father better than anyone else he’d seen since the accident; the physician worked on bodies but respected only brains. “Abbot’s dropping over, too, to let me understand just what each day’s delay costs him.”

“He would, of course. He was decent enough about it all when we still had you back at City, but now he thinks there’s no more excuse.” Tom glanced back toward the door and waved. “There’s Dad now—hey! Watch it there!”

The friction clutch on the hoist holding the transformer was slipping and the mass of metal began to fall, wobbling sidewise. At Tom’s yell, Hennessy, who was waiting for it, started to jump back quickly, but the awkwardness of fright tripped him. He sprawled flat, clawing wildly, and the transformer began slipping more rapidly.

Boyd had no time to think of the signals his brain must send out. He shot full power into the magnets and jumped forward in two twenty-foot leaps that brought him under it, his arms up to catch it. His head spun with sudden giddiness, but the weight in his arms slowed reluctantly, came to a stop, and he stood straining at the pull of it. It threatened to carry him down, but the full strength of the body they had given him resisted, fighting to hold it and retain his balance.

The other men shut their mouths and darted in now, pulling Hennessy out from under; the man had fainted. Then they came forward to catch at the transformer and help Boyd, but Tom’s quick voice barked out. “Stop it! You’ll do more harm than good.”

Slowly Boyd moved it, edging his way forward half an inch at a time until it came to rest over its supports. He let his knees flex slightly as it settled, then it was still, ready to be bolted in. As he let go, a sick weight seemed to leave his mind. A few pounds or seconds more would have been too much.

He stopped to examine the metal on one arm, looking for dents or scratches, and finding none. For the first time, the full realization of the strength that was his came to him; four ordinary men would have buckled under the load. But there was no pride in it—the achievement was really that of the Meisners, who had built the body, not of himself. And the other men could hardly admire him for doing a mechanical job well with a machine for a body.

But the remarkable recuperative powers of his synthetic circulation system came into play almost at once, freeing his brain of the toxins of its efforts in commanding full power from the muscle piles, and he felt no ill effects. Meisner stood beside him, raging at him hotly.

“Nincompoop! Maybe it’s mountains you’ll move next, eh? Is it no gratitude that you should try to destroy the life I gave you? One slip and—ploosh!—it squashes you flat on the thin abdominal walls, and your nice new heart is kaput! Maybe you could live without a heart, eh? So? I think not!”

Boyd looked at the surgeon and there was a grin in his mind, though no change could show on his face. “Why all the fuss? You wanted to test me; there’s your test.”

“So. Maybe it is. And there is nothing now wrong with you but that you think too much about yourself and how different you are. You should forget that.”

One of the men tapped Meisner’s shoulder. “Did—you mean the accident might have killed him?” he asked.

“And why not? The brain he has—maybe—is as soft as yours, the fool. Did you think he was solid iron?”

“No. No, I guess not.” The man shook his head doubtfully and moved back to his fellows, where the unconscious Hennessy was slowly coming around.

A voice coughed from the doorway, and they turned to see Abbot standing there.

“Nice work, Thorne,” he commented. “Those transformers cost money, and having a man killed here might cause trouble.”

“As much as a day’s delay?”

“More.” Abbot chuckled. “All right, no talk of money today, then. How’s it coming?”

“Most of the new stuff is in. Be ready to make a trial next week,” Boyd decided. “And I’m glad you let me hire Tom, here. He’s been doing some fine work, and the men do well under his instructions.”

Abbot frowned slightly. “Mm-hm. A week, you say? But—All right, I said I wouldn’t say anything about it today, and I won’t. There’s someone I want to bring out when you go through with it. This…person insists on being present.”

Meisner glanced at him quickly. “You mean—Maybe it should be. The—person might benefit by it, even.”

“It’s dangerous enough for me alone, without a stranger.”

Tom stuck his oar in, shaking his head at Boyd. “It’s okay. I know whom they mean, and I think you should do it, danger or not.”

“Anyway, I’m still in charge of the station,” Abbot pointed out smoothly. He took Boyd’s reluctant consent for granted. “Good, it’s settled then. Want to ride in with me, Dr. Meisner?”

“I think so, yes. I’m not needed here. And Boyd, I shall expect to be present here when already you start the test.” Meisner slapped the metal chest and followed Abbot out. Tom and Boyd turned back to the men who were finishing their work.

One of the men gestured, and they stopped. “Well, Hennessy?”

Hennessy hesitated, looking uncomfortable, but another man urged him on. “Look, boss, I—Well, some of us are going to town tonight, boss, to take in a show, and we thought…well—want to come with us?”

For once Boyd was glad that his face was expressionless as he looked at the others and saw that they were all in on the invitation. But it wouldn’t do to embarrass them in town with his presence, especially now that they had suddenly thawed. “Thanks, boys,” he answered. “I appreciate the offer, but there’s a full night’s work waiting for me. I’m on a twenty-four-hour schedule this week.”

There was no look of relief on their faces, as he had expected, but only the look to be found whenever a friendly invitation is turned down for good reason. “Any idea what happened?” he asked Tom as they moved away.

“A little. For one thing, you saved Hennessy when they couldn’t, at some risk to yourself. They heard Dad say you could be killed, and men are funny, that way; they’re just selfish enough to dislike anyone who can’t be hurt, because they’d like that ability themselves and can’t get it. Now, because you stand about as good a chance of getting killed as they do, they’re back on even footing with you.”

Whatever the reason, it would be a blessing to work with them as a man again, even though their social life was in another world. Boyd had a mental picture of himself at a show, and it didn’t appeal to him. Companionship, even when offered, was impossible for him.

VI

There was a hint of snow in the air, and the temperature outside was so low that Boyd had been forced to wear heavy rubbers to keep the dampness from getting onto his feet and freezing the joints stiff. He clumped around in them now, thoroughly enjoying the ribbing the men were giving him about catching pneumonia. They had loosened up remarkably in the last week.

Now preparations for the test were complete, and they were waiting for Abbot and Meisner to arrive before starting. Tom was still begging to go in with him while the test was run, but Boyd was firm.

“No soap, Tom. Having this whosit of Abbot’s is bad enough. I wanted to take the risk alone, since I could probably stand another explosion fairly well, but I don’t want three in there. You’d be needed anyway to build me a new body if this one gets wrecked.” He wiggled his shoulders uncomfortably and scratched at his back. “Darn it, there’s a place on my back that itches.”

Tom grinned, then saw that he was serious. “How could it?”

“I don’t know, but it does. Every time I get cold, it itches. You must have put a defective thermostat in there, or gotten some nerves mixed up.” He tapped his back sharply. “There, that does it. A light blow works sometimes.”

“I’ll have a look at you later when Dad’s around,” Tom offered. “Maybe I’d better increase your foot heaters at the same time. Anyhow, it’s a good thing we fixed it so you had electrical heat over your whole body if you insist on running around in the cold. Otherwise, your lubrication might stiffen up.”

Boyd grunted, looking down the road. “Here comes Abbot, and your father must be with him—there are two in front, and it looks a little like someone behind. I’d rather not talk to them now, Tom, so I’m going inside, and you meet them here. Send in whosit, if Abbot still insists. By the way, is he dry behind the ears yet?”

“Partly. Had a little science in college and been studying since, but it’s mostly scientific curiosity. You’ll have no trouble, though.” Tom grinned at him, but Boyd could see nothing funny as he went into the experimental building. Even a well-trained helper might be a nuisance, and sending in a greenhorn was as idiotic a thing as he could think of.

He couldn’t help thinking of another person filled with incessant craving to know. Work and the need of relearning himself had filled his time until Joan had been pushed into the background, but now her image came surging up, bringing futile longings to his mind. Always in the background, he had missed her prying eyes and bubbling saucy grin. But they still told him that Joan was sick, too sick to see him. That was probably an excuse to spare his feelings.

Love, he supposed, was gone, since that was basically a physical sensation, but respect, fondness, and desire for her company persisted. He needed her now, more than ever.

Meisner had been right; he did think too much of himself and his own differences. Life to him was a serious thing at best, and in his new body it had assumed a tragic mood. He knew it, but with the queer twist of his brain, the knowledge only made it worse. He needed someone to laugh at him, to love him, and to show him the gaiety and humor that lay all about him, someone like Joan who could lend him her eyes and let him forget his own brooding.

To a lesser extent, Allan Moss had done the same, and he was another that Boyd missed. The old physicist’s theories and plans were familiar to him now, but he still would have welcomed the firm guidance of the scientist, now more than ever. Instead of that, they were sending a science bug to add to his troubles.

Then a metallic clanking behind him broke through his thoughts, and he swung quickly away from the control panel toward the door. Cold wonder caught at him as he saw the creature moving toward him. It was larger than a man, its shiny metal body topped by a head without either chin, neck, or face, save for tubes to serve as eyes. In every line and pattern, it might have been a mirror image of himself!

The figure moved forward calmly, holding out a hand. “Tom Meisner told me you were all ready to begin. It’s good to see you, Thorne!”

Thorne! Boyd groped numbly, hunting some streak of light. Only Moss and a few others had used his first name, and now—It had to be Moss! If he had escaped, the physicist might have also, though in little better shape. Since it had apparently taken long to recuperate and relearn, he must have been even worse hit. And Abbot had made them say he was dead so that Boyd would be willing to rush things through before the other could come out. That made sense.

He stretched out a metal hand quickly, feeling confidence again for the first time since his return to the station. “And I can’t say how glad I am to see you, sir. I’ve been trying to carry on, but you’re needed here. Want to take over?”

A funny choking sound came from the other. “I’m afraid you’ll have to do it all this time, Thorne. I’m not… I won’t be much help to you. Any idea of what caused the failure before?”

“Some idea,” he said doubtfully, taking the control seat and pulling out the chair for the other. Obviously, Moss hadn’t entirely recovered from the shock, but his mere presence helped. “It doesn’t entirely suit me, and I’d rather not mention it until I find out whether it was purely mechanical defects that caused the field to collapse. Ready?”

“Ready.”

Boyd closed the switches and watched power drain into the big shell, his eyes glued to the indicators that shifted erratically before he could balance them accurately. Then they found their marks and held. Nothing seemed wrong there. One second went by, then others followed it. He counted slowly to fifty, and still there was no sign of failure. The power needle that indicated energy release within the shell quivered and began to climb, and all was still in balance. Boyd settled back somewhat, relief spreading through his mind. It was working.

Plop! A thin red light cut on quickly and the needles quivered suddenly, crazily. He tensed himself for movement, wondering whether he could make the switch in time, and looked down. His hand was resting quietly on the switch and every needle was dead! His new arm had moved before the thought was more than beginning in his mind.

Quick reactions and no damage! That had been the trouble before; the ordinary motor impulse had traveled along Moss’s arm at a comparatively slow speed, in common with all neural impulses, and things had happened before he could reach the switch. But Boyd’s nerves were filaments of silver and the electrical impulse traveled down them with almost the speed of light, while the muscle packs threw the hand forward faster than the eye could see, before the field had entirely failed.

His companion stirred uneasily. “Is it over?”

“That test is, and a failure. Thank heaven, not a fatal one, this time.” He gathered up the kit of high-tension testing meters they used and moved from the control seat toward the shell. Now he was more than willing to have the other here. Of all the men he could have chosen for a helper, Moss in his new body alone had reaction lime quick enough for the work.

“You’ll have to watch the board, sir,” he said. “It’s in balance now, do just throw the switch on when I signal, and keep your eyes glued on the panel. If a red light comes on or the needles bob, cut it off. You’ll be able to do it in time.”

He set up the meters quickly, cutting in through the insulation mound the transformers and the box to the shell. At his motion, the switch was thrown, and his pointers began pouring out their messages, registering the surprisingly delicate balance of current on his dials. Then, while he was still analyzing them, they went dead.

“Failure again,” the other reported. “Find out what the trouble was?”

Boyd assorted the results in his head until the jigsaw pattern shaped up. “Yes. It’s simple enough, though we’d never have guessed it before that first attempt because of that simplicity. Back E.M.F. of a sort, you might say. When power starts feeding in, it induces a back pressure in our field coils, like the back current generated in a running electric motor. That current gets into the transformers and throws the balance of power feeding into the field off kilter, with the results we’ve seen. I think I know where the trouble starts.”

“But can we fix it today?”

“Why not? I suspected it, and there’s everything here to work with. We can do it together in half an hour and not bother the men.” It was strange to be explaining things to Moss and be giving orders, but the other seemed to expect it. Boyd motioned as the robot came down. “We’ll yank this section of the shell out. If my idea works, we can shunt it around harmlessly.”

Again he was thankful for the presence of his companion. Mechanical bodies, he was finding, had very definite points of superiority. They had prevented disaster twice already, and now they promised to save the necessity of making room for a crew of men and machines that would have been needed for the job. Even with Moss’s odd hesitation and uncertainty, sheer brute force coupled with good mental co-ordination could work wonders.

The half hour was only slightly past when he pulled the control chair up and cut the switch in again. There was the usual lag, and then the power needle began climbing, took a sudden lurch, and settled down at the highest mark on the dial. There was a smooth high drone in the air that continued minute after minute, spelling out power in unbelievable quantities and fully under control.

“Okay, sir,” Boyd said finally. “We’ve done it, and I’m glad you were where you could see it.”

The other figure stirred uncomfortably, then looked up at him with a sound that held amusement. “Are you, Pickleface? You didn’t seem to want me where I could see it before.”

Something that should have been the pit of Boyd’s stomach went numb, and his eyes shifted erratically out of focus. Gulping sounds came from his vocal apparatus, but they made no sense. Why should they? There was no sense left in the world itself.

Something that approximated a soft laugh came from the other. “Dad told me I wasn’t to let you know until after the experiment and warned me you might think I was Dr. Moss. You should have heard the fight I put up to get here!” Again she giggled. “Poor old Pickleface. Don’t you like me, now that I’m hairless and ugly?”

“Joan!” The numbness left him in a rush, and he dived for her, only to realize what the loss of lips meant. “Joan, you crazy little fool! So that’s what I heard before the explosion?”

Her voice was flat, as usual, but he sensed mockery and guilt in her words. “Mm-hmm. I sneaked in and hid before it began, behind the transformer bank. That’s what saved me, I guess. From what they told me, we landed not three feet apart, though I didn’t come to until I was in City Hospital. Father thought that if you had a chance at life, I should have the same. Mad at me, Thorne?”

Even without lips, he showed her he wasn’t.

Later, when some of the shouting was over and Abbot had gone in to stand over the big shell and gaze fondly at the power indicator, they found Meisner alone in the office. The doctor made room for the two big bodies, grinning at them paternally.

“So it’s married my model patient and my not-so-model one shall be, eh? Abbot has told me already.”

Boyd relaxed on the seat, realizing that his mind had refused to rest and be peaceful for months. It was almost a novelty. “Married we shall,” he answered, “though I suppose it’s mostly a formality with us. Funny thing, Abbot seems willing enough now, for some reason.”

“That isn’t so funny, is it, Papa Meisner? Dr. Moss left you his interests in this, and you’re almost rich now. Anyway, just picture poor Dad trying to get anyone else to marry me now!” Joan twisted one of his big fingers possessively. “This time, Mr. Thorne Boyd, there’ll be no convenient accidents to save you. I won’t let you out of my sight until it’s over.” Meisner patted Boyd’s metal chest. “Me, I think I shall also see there are no more delays. So. And be maybe your best man. Life is not so bad, eh?”

“With twenty-four hours a day for years and years together and never a gray hair or a wrinkle?” Joan kicked her heels together and giggled. “Even Pickleface should be happy now.”

The change had made no difference in her, Boyd thought, wondering when she would tire of the nickname; well, if she kept using it, he’d have to learn to like it yet. No, life wasn’t so bad. There was work for him now, with men who respected him, a rough friendship with Meisner and Tom, and most important of all, companionship with his own kind.

“I’m growing rather attached to this body,” he admitted. “Except for one thing. I can’t smoke. A cigarette is too small for my air vents, and any holder I’ve tried is liable to get stuck in them or else it scratches some of the filters off. If I hold it in front, I get just enough nicotine to tantalize me. Think you can fix it?”

Meisner chuckled and winked at Joan. “Never satisfied, this man of yours, I think. Well, we can fix that, maybe.” He held out a silvered case. “Try a cigar.”

Boyd grunted. He hadn’t thought of that!