Part 2

The mass-cell radiographs did seem identical and Dr. Crander seemed certain. Taken altogether, the evidence was overwhelming. There had been no mistake--he was Dan Merrol, though it was not difficult to understand why Erica couldn't believe he was her husband.

"You did a fine job," he said. Recalling the picture of the wreckage, he knew they had. "But couldn't you have done just a little better?"

* * * * *

Crander's eyebrows bounced up. "We're amazed at how well we have done. You can search case histories and find nothing comparable." His eyebrows dropped back into place. "Of course, if you have a specific complaint...."

"Nothing specific. But look at this hand...."

The doctor seized it. "Beautiful, isn't it?"

"Perhaps--taken by itself." Dan rolled up his sleeve. "See how it joins the forearm."

Crander waggled it gravely. "It coordinates perfectly. I've observed you have complete control over it. The doctor's eye, my boy. The doctor's diagnostic eye."

The other just didn't understand. "But the size--it doesn't match my arm!"

"Doesn't _match_?" cried the doctor. "Do you have any idea of the biological ways in which it _does_ match? True, it may not be esthetically harmonized, but here we delve into the mysteries of the human organism, and we can hardly be striving for Botticelli bodies and Michelangelo men. First, your hand moves freely at the joint, a triumph of surgical skill." He moved the hand experimentally, to show Merrol how it was done. He dropped the hand and hurried to a screen against the wall.

Crander drew his finger across the surface and the mark remained. "You know about Rh positive and negative blood. Mixed, they can be lethal. This was discovered long ago, by someone I've forgotten. But there are other factors just as potent and far more complex."

He scribbled meaningless symbols on the screen with his finger. "Take the bone factors--three. They must be matched in even such a slight contact as a joint ... this was done. Then there are the tissue factors--four. Tendon factors--two. Nerve-splice factors--three again. After that, we move into a complex field, hormone-utilization factors--seven at the latest count and more coming up with further research.

"That's the beginning, but at the sensory organs we leave the simple stuff behind. Take the eye, for instance." Merrol leaned away because Dr. Crander seemed about to pluck one of Dan's eyes from its socket. "Surgical and growth factors involved in splicing a massive nerve bundle pass any layman's comprehension. There are no non-technical terms to describe it."

* * * * *

It was just as well--Merrol didn't want a lecture. He extended his arms. One was of normal length, the other longer. "Do you think you can do something with this? I don't mind variation in thickness--some of that will smooth out as I exercise--but I'd like them the same length."

"There were many others injured at the same time, you know--and you were one of the last to be extricated from the ship. Normally, when we have to replace a whole arm, we do so at the shoulder for obvious reasons. But the previously treated victims had depleted our supplies. Some needed only a hand and we gave them just that, others a hand and a forearm, and so on. When we got to you, we had to use leftovers or permit you to die--there wasn't time to send to other hospitals. In fact there wasn't any time at all--we actually thought you were dead, but soon found we were wrong."

Crander stared at a crack in the ceiling. "Further recovery will take other operations and your nervous system isn't up to it." He shook his head. "Five years from now, we can help you, not before."

Merrol turned away miserably. There were other things, but he had learned the essentials. He was Dan Merrol and there was nothing they could do for him until it was too late. How long could he expect Erica to wait?

The doctor hadn't finished the medical session. "Replacement of body parts is easy, after all. The big trouble came when we went into the brain."

"Brain?" Dan was startled.

"How hard do you think your skull is?" Crander came closer. "Bend your head."

Merrol obeyed and could feel the doctor's forefinger slice across his scalp in a mock operation. "This sector was crushed." Roughly half his brain, it appeared. "That's why so many memories were gone--not just from shock. In addition, other sectors were damaged and had to be replaced."

Crander traced out five areas he could feel, but not see. "Samuel Kaufman, musician--Breed Mannly, cowboy actor--George Elkins, lepidopterist--Duke DeCaesares, wrestler--and Ben Eisenberg, mathematician, went into the places I tapped."

Dan raised his head. Some things were clearer. The memories were authentic, but they weren't his--nor did the other wives belong to him. It was no wonder Erica had cringed at their names.

"These donors were dead, but you can be thankful we had parts of their brains available." Crander delved into the file and came up with a sheet.

"Here are some body part contributors." He read rapidly. "Dimwiddie, Barton, Colton, Morton, Flam and Carnera were responsible for arms and hands. Greenberg, Rochefault, Gonzalez, Tall-Cloud, Gowraddy and Tsin supplied feet and legs."

* * * * *

He was not a man, Merrol thought. Not now. If anything, he was a convention and one body was not a large enough hotel to hold it in comfort.

"These were the major human donors, but there were others I didn't bother to read, for the kidneys and so on. And I think our four-footed friends deserve some mention." He looked up. "The skin on your face is from a pig embryo."

That explained why it was hard to shave. "_Oink?_" he said. "I mean did it have to be a pig?"

"You'd be surprised how hard it is to transplant human skin," commented Crander. "Besides, we wanted to give you a masculine look. The finest face there is, genuine pigskin."

Merrol felt like a wallet.

The doctor droned on through the list, but Merrol scarcely listened. Only once did he interrupt, to ask incredulously, "Did you say a _horse_?"

"Is there anything wrong with a horse?"

Merrol thought back. Come to consider it, there was nothing wrong--in fact, compliments were more in order.

"The skill that went into matching the unrelated parts that are now you is a landmark in medical history, quite comparable to Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood," said Dr. Crander. "I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't participated in it myself. There have been limb and brain replacements before, but never on such a scale. One of these days, we'll get out a report that will astound the medical world."

Without doubt, it would. Merrol tried to feel grateful, but gratitude refused to come. They had saved him--but was it worth it?

Puzzled, Crander frowned at the buzzer. He'd been pressing it intermittently for the past few minutes. "Doesn't seem to be working," he muttered, heading toward the door through which Merrol had entered. "Wait here--I'll be back. I have to cancel an appointment."

* * * * *

As soon as the door closed, a voice behind Merrol hissed. "I fixed the buzzer. He went for the guards."

He whirled. Miss Jerrems stood in the doorway that led into the filing room on the opposite side of the office. "Guards?" he repeated.

"Of course--guards for the violent patients."

"What does that have to do with me?"

"You escaped once, didn't you?"

He hadn't escaped, he had merely walked out when he felt he could. Did that qualify him as violent? It might. "What of it? I'm no longer a patient. The doctor said I had recovered."

"That's what he said to _you_. But even if he means it, there's always psychotherapy, post-re-growth orientation."

Orientation--he hadn't thought of that. They'd want to keep him under observation for several days and he had no desire to stay hospitalized. Erica would come to the hospital in a few hours. Perhaps she was there now, waiting to see someone. Come to think of it, he had got past the receptionist with remarkable ease. At any rate, if she was insistent about it, she must eventually get to see the evidence he had just studied.

And then there would be orientation--for both of them.

Without doubt, he would be taught to accept himself as he was, and Erica would be trained to look at him without laughter, and together they would know that beneath his piebald exterior lurked a lovely personality. Then, well adjusted, they would go home and live happily ever after. Or would they?

"Don't stand there, if you want to get away," Miss Jerrems whispered urgently. "Next time they won't take any chances."

They wouldn't. He would be confined to a room he couldn't break out of with guards disguised as nurses. Blindly he moved toward the door.

"Not there," she exclaimed. "Do you want to walk right into them? This way. They won't look for you in here." She clasped his hand in her bony fingers and led him through the maze of files to an elevator. "This takes you to the ground floor," she said. "Once outside, you can get away."

He probably could--it was a large building and it would take a prolonged search to determine that he was not inside it.

She smiled peculiarly, clearing her throat. "Thirty-seven Brighton Drive."

Mechanically he repeated the number. "What is it?"

"That's where you can find out."

"Find out what?"

"What they did to you here. I can't tell you now," she whispered nervously. "Oh, _do_ hurry!"

If he had to move fast, this seemed a good time. The elevator dropped him to the street level and, looking cautiously around, he walked out. In a few minutes, he was blocks away. It was mid-morning, and he swung along, hands thrust into his jacket. There was a wad of paper inside and he fished it out and examined it--money, neatly folded with a note around it.

The note was from Erica, saying that the money was meant for him. The sum was not great, but she must have given him everything she had in the house. Mistily, he counted it out.

III

Dan hadn't been stopped and didn't expect to be. He wasn't a criminal, but until the hospital released him, he was technically a mental case. But Crander would hardly be anxious to report to the police that a patient was missing--not until he had tried everything else.

Merrol took the elevator. It was a bright new apartment building, which conferred some social status and not much else on those living in it.

Miss Jerrems opened the door. "Come in," she said, looking around furtively as he slipped past her.

He sat down gingerly, watching her scurry about. He tried to protest, but nothing he said had any effect on her aggressive hospitality. She thrust a cup of watery coffee in his hand and placed a tray of breakfast rolls beside him.

She sat facing him. Their knees almost touched--it was a narrow room. "I came home at once," she said, not very successful in her attempt to control her excitement. "I told them I was upset and, after my long years of service, they didn't question me. I tore my dress and told them you had done it. I said that you ran up toward the top of the building."

He appreciated her motives, but thought she shouldn't have tried so hard to convince them. Now they had reason to think he was violent.

"Until today, I've been devoted to Doctor Crander," she said sternly.

He recalled the first look on her face in the doctor's office--and the one after she had seen him. In seconds, her whole attitude had changed. Why?

"I heard what he told you." She hissed the word--"Lies."

Dan stared at her skeptically. "They didn't do what he said?"

"Oh, the facts were straight enough," she said bitterly. "It was the reasons he concealed. They thought you didn't have a chance, so they did all sorts of strange things they never tried on anyone else. You were an experiment, that's all--but you surprised them."

The hospital was looking for the wrong mental case. They had one working for them and didn't know it. He didn't doubt that she was right--about his being an experiment--but her observations were wrong. It was due entirely to their unorthodox procedures that he was alive.

She looked him over carefully and he knew that the halves of his face didn't match by a ridiculous margin, that one shoulder was heavier than the other, that his hair was in three colors. Even in repose and fully clothed, so that some of the discrepancies of his physique were hidden, he was hardly presentable.

"When I saw you standing there today, I realized what they had done to you and my loyalty to the institution and the doctor vanished," she said earnestly. "And the psychotherapy isn't to help you, it's to make sure you won't protest over what they've done. That's why I had to get you away. They've ruined you and now _you_ must ruin _them_."

He had half-suspected it would come to this--but he hadn't been sure. "I don't want to ruin them," he said slowly. "I'd rather be alive, even as an experiment. And if you're thinking of a malpractice suit, you saw the files. I couldn't win against that."

"I ought to know about the files--I worked on them." Her eyes sparkled and her voice lowered. "What if the evidence is missing?"

* * * * *

He sat back. With her co-operation, the vital parts of the file could vanish and, with that gone, he could collect a staggering amount from the institution. He had only to appear and no jury or panels of experts would decide against him. Is that what she had planned so swiftly in the director's office--that she would share the money with him? Somehow, he couldn't believe money meant that much to her. "I can't permit it," he said. "In spite of everything, I feel obligated."

She flung herself across the narrow space. "I expected you to be noble," she sobbed. "One look at you, and I knew I had met the loneliest person in the world."

Like called to like, at least for her, and that explained why she had grimaced when she had first seen him. It was her counterpart of the receptionist's reaction. It explained, too, why she was willing to turn against the doctor she had previously adored. As for the money, she didn't want it for herself, but as bait for him--and he'd have to take her with it.

She had guessed wrong on all counts. He would have thrust her away, but it would have been too cruel. He tried to comfort her, and she dried her eyes on his shoulder. "Darling," she sniffled. "I've never yielded to any man, but if it will help you...."

She pressed close and he couldn't get away without breaking through the thin walls of the cramped apartment. He had never known a female form could be shaped around so many bones. "These things take time," he said, though they didn't. "Let's not rush into anything we'll regret." He seemed to arouse the motherly instinct in some women, if only in the future tense.

Presently, she sat up, blowing her nose and looking ardently at him through tear-rimmed eyes. "You can stay here. You've no place else to go, and they'll be looking for you."

"Well," he said--but it was true. He shouldn't be wandering on the streets.

He slept that night on a sink that converted to a bed. It would have been more comfortable unconverted.

* * * * *

He crept out in the morning before she was awake. He paused outside to scribble a note, principally to throw her off his track. You never could tell with so unstable a person. Implicated in his escape, she might nevertheless report to the hospital. He shoved the note under the door and left quickly and quietly.

His first move was to buy a hat, which entailed further trouble. The doctors had overcompensated in replacing the missing brain tissue and, in piecing a skull together, had constructed an outsized head on which nothing seemed to fit. By careful shopping, he found something that did fit and, when he'd clapped it on, he happily noted it concealed the tricolor hair ... one item less to attract attention.

He ate and afterward walked to the rocketport. It was a long distance and formerly he might have complained, but now he didn't mind it. The miles seemed to have shrunk to furlongs.

He found the big _Interplanet_ sign and examined the place minutely from the outside. Once he had worked there, technically he still did. Some memories came back, but not many. He needed at least an hour inside to enable him to forget the hospital and its psychotherapy.

Once cleared, he would be free for a while to concentrate on what to do about Erica.

The hospital evidently had yet to call in the police. He was still safe on the streets, but the medicos must have notified _Interplanet_ and all other places at which he might show up. However, the company was too big for everyone to know about him this soon. More likely there would be only a few who could have information on him as yet. The trick was to bypass those individuals who might try to detain him and still get where he wanted.

Normally, he'd go to the front office after an accident. This time, he went to the side gate and when the guard looked at him questioningly, mumbled, "Reporting for duty." Which got him through.

Inside, there were more memories awaiting him. Depending on them, he walked rapidly through hall after hall and finally found the desk he sought. The man behind it looked up. "Are you sure you're in the right place?" he asked.

Merrol would soon know. "Reporting for duty," he stated.

This reply elicited a puzzled expression. "The devil you are. We haven't hired anyone new."

"I'm not new. I've been injured, and this is my first time back. Dan Merrol's my name."

"Okay, where's your slip?"

"Slip?" he asked, stalling. This was something he ought to know about, but didn't.

"Sure, the release from the front office after an injury."

"They said they'd send it down," he replied, holding his breath.

* * * * *

The clerk pawed through the stack. "They don't send nothing down," he growled. "I'll call and find out." His hand reached out and then he relaxed. "No use bothering them, it'll get here tomorrow." He looked up and laughed. "Red tape," he said by way of explanation. "Why should I doubt you? If you said they released you, then they did."

Merrol was glad to see one man who wasn't impressed by office routines. Still, his behavior was a little puzzling.

The man screened on. The communication unit was behind the desk, tilted so he couldn't see it. The volume was low, but Dan could hear the conversation from this end. "Got a case for you. Name is Dan Merrol. I don't know, he's before my time."

The reply was faint and Dan didn't catch it. But the clerk added, "He seems okay. What? Sure he's got a release. Would I send him in?"

He cut the connection and looked up. "Go over to Psych. They'll test you. If you pass, we'll put you back on schedule." He started to turn away and saw Merrol standing there. "What's the matter?"

"I don't know where Psych is."

"I see. We must have moved things since you were here." The man got up and pointed. "Down there and turn left at the second corner. You can't miss."

The examiner was scanning a card as he entered. "Lots of experience," he commented. "We'll pass over the written stuff. That's for kids, to make sure they've studied their lessons. After you've been out this long, you can almost feel a course faster than anyone can figure it."

It was a relief. Merrol didn't know how much theory he remembered, but was sure he could still lift a ship as well as the next man.

The examiner made a notation on the card and tossed it into a machine that snapped it up and clicked furiously over it. "Let's take the biggest thing first, if you're up to it."

"I feel fine." It was not true, but it was the customary answer. Anything else, and he'd be shunted off into a series of meaningless tests, each designed to verify the results of previous tests. An ingenious scheme rigged up by the psych crew in their spare time to see how complicated they could make any given system. Answered straightforwardly, they rushed a man through with a minimum of officiousness.

"Okay, let's take the trip."

He accompanied Dan into a room unlike the others. For one thing, it might have been the control room of a ship. Forward, there was the usual clear view. The stars were there too, in an adaptation of the planetarium. Outside, arranged to give any effect from top acceleration to free fall, were a number of gravity coils. Except for the pilot--and Merrol would play that role--there was a full complement of officers who were invisible.

* * * * *

The tester flicked on a machine. "I'll give you Mars, because that's your usual run. This is a short drive, because you're in a favorable position. Got it?"

Merrol nodded and climbed into the seat, facing the instruments.

"I've turned on the best crew simulators, better than you'd ever actually get. Don't worry about them, just take the data and flit the way you think you should." The tester clamped a mike inches away and adjusted the visio-recorders firmly on his head, where electron beams could sneak in and tap his optic centers. "The first trip after you've been away is rough, but you'll make it."

Merrol strapped himself in and hoped the other man was right.

The examiner went to the door, turned and grinned. "Watch out for the interplanetary goose," he called and snapped the switch.

Merrol was now in a ship. In the back of his mind there was some doubt of his ability, but it didn't reach as far as his fingers. Rockets vibrated beneath him. Outside, he could see the glazed earth-slick. He touched the power and climbed above the clouds. The sky turned black and there were stars.

He checked position. The tester had given him a setup. The Moon was out of the way and the run to Mars was the shortest on record. If he couldn't handle this, he wasn't a pilot.

The seat jabbed him suddenly. That's what he'd been warned about--he'd been expecting it and still wasn't prepared. The tempathy drugs flooded into him and the needle was withdrawn.

Takeoff and landing were always rehearsed on the pilot's own time. The ends of a voyage were critical and it was essential to have an undistorted reaction. Besides, neither took long.

The time between one planet and the next was long and nothing much happened, so it could be shortened without deleterious effect on the results. Tempathy drugs shortened it, though not completely. Part of a man's consciousness went along at normal speed and the rest, that which counted in jockeying rockets, was enormously telescoped.

It telescoped on Merrol. He couldn't see. Rather, part of him could but, for the other fraction, images passed in front of his eyes too fast for his mind to evaluate. Weeks flipped past in minutes. It was a dream world turned inside out--the roles of consciousness and unconsciousness were reversed.

There was something wrong with the sounds he half-heard. He could get emotions, though he couldn't separate them into sense. There were additional voices that shouldn't be there--the mechanical crew spoke to him giving silent data--but there were other actual voices, fearful or consolatory. He tried to speak, but his vocal cords were preempted.

He was doing it all, speaking, moving the controls, directing the ship between planets. It ought to be easier than takeoff, but it wasn't. He shouldn't be afraid of anything he might find out there--which was nothing--but that didn't alter conditions. He was profoundly disturbed, and he hoped the tester noticed it.

The examiner did spot trouble. He opened the door and reversed the switch. Lights went on, and another needle speared him, counteracting the effects of the tempathy drugs. Slowly the ship disappeared, space along with it, and the room whirled back into view and settled down. Something handed him back his eyes and ears.