"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.
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 of panic. He hesitantly reached out to touch the immobile figure of Sam Atkins, who sat with closed eyes and imperceptible breath. Fenwick sensed disaster. He arrested the motion of Ellerbee's hand.