their breaks. Stay close to me and the pain willnot be more than you can endure."
The night remained dark and there was no sound, but Baker's body archedand twisted in panic as he fought against invisible hands that seemed totouch with fleeting, exploratory passes over him.
"I don't want to be healed," he whispered. "There is nothing that can bedone. I'm dying. I want to die! Can't you understand that? I want todie! I don't want your help!"
He had said it. And the shock of it jolted even him in the depths of hishalf-conscious mind. Could a man really _want_ to die?
Yes.
He had forgotten what terror he had left so far behind. He knew onlythat he wanted to move forever in the direction of the flowing peace.
Like probing fingers, Sam Atkins' mind continued to touch him. Itscanned the broken organs of his body, and, in some kind of detachedway, Baker felt that he was accompanying Atkins on that journey ofexploration, even as Sam had asked.
They searched the skeleton and found the splintered bones. They examinedthe muscle structure and found the torn and shattered tissue. Theysearched the dark recesses of his vital organs and came to injury thatBaker knew was hopeless.
"You built this once," Sam Atkins' voice whispered. "You can build itagain. The materials are all here. The blood stream is still moving. Thenerve tissue will carry your instructions. I'll supply thescaffolding--while you build--"
He remembered. Baker examined the long-untouched record of when he haddone this before. He remembered the construction of cells, the buildingof organs, the interconnection of nerve tissue. He felt an infinitesadness 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 themwas the crystal-projected image of Baker's body.
Fenwick felt the cold touch of some mysterious unknown prickle hisscalp. Sam Atkins seemed remote and alien, like the practitioner ofancient and forbidden arts. Fenwick found the question tumbling over andover in his mind, who is this man? He felt as if the very life energy ofSam Atkins was somehow flowing out through the crystal, across space, tothe distant broken body of Bill Baker and was supporting it whileBaker's own feeble energy was consumed in the rebuilding of hisshattered organs.
Though Fenwick and Ellerbee held their own crystals, Sam had somehowshut them out. They were in faint contact with Baker, but they could notfollow the fierce contact that Sam's mind held with him.
Ellerbee's face showed worry and a trace of panic. He hesitantly reachedout to touch the immobile figure of Sam Atkins, who sat with closed eyesand imperceptible breath. Fenwick sensed disaster. He arrested themotion of Ellerbee's hand.
"I think you could kill them both," he whispered. The life force of oneman, divided between two--it was not sufficient to cope with unexpectedshocks to either, now.
Ellerbee desisted. "I've never seen anything like this before," he said."I don't know what Sam's doing--I don't know how he's doing it--"
Fenwick looked sharply at Ellerbee. Ellerbee had discovered thecrystals, so he and Sam said. Yet Sam was able to do things with themthat Ellerbee could not conceive. Fenwick wondered just who wasresponsible for the crystals. And he resolved that some day, when and ifBaker pulled out of this, he would learn something more about SamAtkins.
Time moved beyond midnight and into the early morning hours of the day,but this meant nothing to William Baker. He was in the midst ofeternity. Because the old pattern was there, and the ancient memorieswere clear, his reconstruction moved at a pace that was limited only bythe materials available. When these grew scarce, Sam Atkins showed himhow to break down and utilize other structures that could be rebuiltleisurely at a later time. There was remembered joy in the building and,once started, Baker gave only idle wonder to the question of whetherthis was more desirable than death. He did not know. This seemed theright thing to do.
In the presence of Sam Atkins everything he was doing seemed right, anda lifetime of doubts, and errors, and fears seemed distant and vague.
But Sam said suddenly, "It is almost finished. Just a little farther andyou'll have to go the rest of the way alone."
Terror struck at Baker. He had reached a point where he was absolutelysure he could _not_ go on alone without Sam's supporting presence. "Youtricked me!" Baker cried. "You tricked me! You didn't tell me I wouldhave to be reborn alone!"
"Doesn't every man?" said Sam. "Is there any way to be born, exceptalone?"
Slowly, the world closed in about Baker.
Light. Sounds.
Wet. Cold.
The impact of a million idiot minds. The coursing of cosmic-rayparticles. The wrenching of Earth's magnetic and gravitational fields.Old and sluggish memories were renewed, memories meant to be buried forall of his life.
Baker felt as if he were suddenly running down a dark and immensecorridor. Behind were all the terrors spawned since the beginning oftime. Ahead were a thousand openings of light and safety. He raced forthe nearest and brightest and most familiar.
"No," said Sam Atkins. "You cannot go that way again. It is the way youwent before--and it led to this--to a search for death. For you, it willlead only to the same goal again."
"I can't go on!" Baker cried. The terrors seemed to be swiftly closingin.
"Take my hand a moment longer," said Sam. "Inspect these more distantpaths. There are many of them that will be agreeable to you."
Baker felt calmer now in the renewed presence of Sam Atkins. He passedthe branching pathway that Sam had forbidden, that had seemed so bright.He sensed now why Sam had cautioned him against it. Far down, in thedepths of it, he glimpsed faintly a dark ugliness that he had not seenbefore. He shuddered.
Directly ahead there seemed to be the opening of a corridor of blazingbrightness. Baker's calmness increased as he approached. "This one," hesaid.
He heard nothing, but he sensed Sam Atkins' smile, and nod of approval.
He remembered now for the first time why he had wanted to die. It was toavoid the very terrors by which he had been pursued through the darkcorridor. All this had happened before, and he had gone down the pathwaySam had forbidden. Somehow, like a circle, it had come back to this verypoint, to this forgotten experience for which he had been willing to dierather than endure again.
It was very bewildering. He did not understand the meaning of it. But heknew he had corrected a former error. He was back in the world. He wasalive again.
Sam Atkins looked up at his companions through eyes that seemed all butdead. "He's going to make it," he said. "We can get the car out and pickup Baker now."
* * * * *
They used Sam's panel truck, which had a four-wheel drive and mud tires.Nothing else could possibly get through. Fenwick left his own car atEllerbee's.
It was still raining lightly as the truck sloshed and slewed through themuck that was hardly recognizable now as a road. For an hour Sam foughtthe wheel to hold the car approximately in the middle of the brownishooze that led them through the night. The three men sat in the cab.Behind them, a litter and first-aid equipment had been rigged for Baker.Sam told them nothing would be needed except soap and water, but Fenwickand Ellerbee felt it impossible to go off without some other emergencyequipment.
After an hour, Sam said, "He's close. Just around the next bend. That'swhere his car went off."
Baker loomed suddenly in the lights of the car. He was standing at theedge of the road. He waved an arm wearily.
Fenwick would not have recognized him. And for some seconds after thecar had come to a halt, and Baker stood weaving uncertainly in the beamof the lights, Fenwick was not sure it was Baker at all.
He looked like something out of an old Frankenstein movie. His clotheswere ripped almost completely away. Those remaining were stained withblood and red clay, and soaked with rain. Baker's face was laced with anetwork of scars as if he had been slashed wi
th a shower of glass nottoo long ago and the wounds were freshly healed. Blood was caked andcracked on his face and was matted in his hair.
He smiled grotesquely as he staggered toward the car door. "About timeyou got here," he said. "A man could catch his death of cold standingout here in this weather."
* * * * *
Dr. William Baker was quite sure he had no need of hospitalization, buthe let them settle him in a hospital bed anyway. He had some thinking todo, and he didn't know of a better place to get it done.
There was a good deal of medical speculation about the vast network ofvery fresh scars on his body, the bones which X rays showed to have beenonly very recently knit, and the violent internal injuries which gavesome evidence