tory passes over him.

"I don't want to be healed," he whispered. "There is nothing that can be
done. I'm dying. I want to die! Can't you understand that? I want to
die! I don't want your help!"

He had said it. And the shock of it jolted even him in the depths of his
half-conscious mind. Could a man really _want_ to die?

Yes.

He had forgotten what terror he had left so far behind. He knew only
that he wanted to move forever in the direction of the flowing peace.

Like probing fingers, Sam Atkins' mind continued to touch him. It
scanned the broken organs of his body, and, in some kind of detached
way, Baker felt that he was accompanying Atkins on that journey of
exploration, even as Sam had asked.

They searched the skeleton and found the splintered bones. They examined
the muscle structure and found the torn and shattered tissue. They
searched the dark recesses of his vital organs and came to injury that
Baker knew was hopeless.

"You built this once," Sam Atkins' voice whispered. "You can build it
again. The materials are all here. The blood stream is still moving. The
nerve tissue will carry your instructions. I'll supply the
scaffolding--while you build--"

He remembered. Baker examined the long-untouched record of when he had
done this before. He remembered the construction of cells, the building
of organs, the interconnection of nerve tissue. He felt an infinite
sadness at the present ruin. Yes--he could build again.

* * * * *

Sam Atkins' face was like that of a dead man. Across the table from him,
Jim Ellerbee and John Fenwick watched silently. Faintly, between them
was the crystal-projected image of Baker's body.

Fenwick felt the cold touch of some mysterious unknown prickle his
scalp. Sam Atkins seemed remote and alien, like the practitioner of
ancient and forbidden arts. Fenwick found the question tumbling over and
over in his mind, who is this man? He felt as if the very life energy of
Sam Atkins was somehow flowing out through the crystal, across space, to
the distant broken body of Bill Baker and was supporting it while
Baker's own feeble energy was consumed in the rebuilding of his
shattered organs.

[Illustration]

Though Fenwick and Ellerbee held their own crystals, Sam had somehow
shut them out. They were in faint contact with Baker, but they could not
follow the fierce contact that Sam's mind held with him.

Ellerbee's face showed worry and a trace