He was nude and emaciated; yet he kept his humor, and a certain dignity. A thin hand made a slight gesture. To Scharber and me and the others, he said: "This will be the easiest trick, learned among the micro-Xians. Simple tissue-replacement, cell by cell. Improved protoplast in place of protoplasm. That's all. Well, wish me luck." The anesthetic that had been injected into his veins worked. He slumped down gently. The gelatins closed in over his face, and the month of slow gestation toward rebirth began. I saw his body at various stages of the process; little changed in appearance except for much increased robustness. Other duties intervened, so I did not observe his actual removal from the tank nor his reawakening. But Jan and I met him a few hours later, as he left the small hospital of our lab. The old gray suit he wore, hardly fitted him. He still had his ragged blond mustache. You could tell that he was he--with many years subtracted. He looked about as old as I was--twenty-three. But these were the only signs. He grinned like a kid, jubilant, but a bit self-conscious. He said, half joshing: "Look me over--the miracle of the era, the successor to natural man; and no casual observer could ever tell that I'm not as humans have always been. I eat, I breathe oxygen; I need some foods with a different mineral content, it is true. I sleep if I want to. Given a mate of like substance, I can reproduce my own kind. But I won't age. Cut a finger off me, and it would manage to live independently for a long time. Wound me terribly, and I'd probably manage to heal up someway. Deprive me of air, or common chemical foods, and my body would try to seek out other sources of energy--sunlight, radioactivity, or whatever is available. Even change my basic tissue fluid from water to--" It sounded a little like bragging, so Jan cut in with a feminine tease: "Yes, Dr. Lanvin. But put on your overcoat. People will think it odd that you're carrying it on such a sharp winter afternoon." Doc laughed back, and obliged her almost with embarrassment, and we were three old friends together. "People get injured," I said, "or just grow old; and though limited rejuvenation and repair is possible, this is a far better way. That's how it should go, Doc; and you'd think that no one with sense would want to stop it. In months there'll be thousands of androids. But here we are again--unsure of how it'll all be taken. Like you say, this is succession to natural man. It can be conceived of as the old Threat of the Robot idea, with refinements. A force of staggering newness, wonderful to the point of being terrifying. We're almost certain that there'll be trouble." The story of all we'd learned among the micro-Xians, and its repercussions here at home, was mostly regarded as a fantastic rumor at first. It was talked of lightly on the newscast, and wherever people gathered: