"Perhaps it is too bright," said Marillyn. "If you'd just move it over there—"

The Bryd was delighted. In the process of moving the chair, it got its figurative hands on the bottle and disintegrated it. Then it said, "Miss, don't you think you will get well?"

Marillyn said calmly, resignedly, "There's no chance. None whatever. When brain-tissue is gone, there is nothing medical science can do. They can't build tissue, you know."

"Oh?" said the Bryd.

"Only a miracle," said Marillyn. "And miracles don't happen in medical science."

The Bryd almost snorted aloud. Oh, they didn't, hey? It—

The head nurse came striding up, her leather heels clacking on the tile floor. "Miss—" She looked puzzled. "Who are you, anyway?" she demanded. "I've never seen you before."

These women! Maybe the Bryd was getting peevish in its old age, but why couldn't people mind their own business for a change?

It resolved itself into a doctor, and it was gratified to watch the head nurse's eyes shoot open.

"Madam," the Bryd said in its best baritone, "were you addressing me?"

"I—" The head nurse swallowed. "No, sir, I—I beg your pardon, sir." She recovered slightly. "Have I seen you before, sir?"

Oh, bother! Details, details! Humans wouldn't be happy if they weren't tied up in details all the time. The Bryd dematerialized and went inside the sanatorium by the simple process of flowing through the spaces around the nuclei of the atoms in the wall. Then, on second thought, it went back and erased some memories from the mind of the head nurse; then it took Marillyn through the wall into the sanatorium. It went into her mind and did some repair work that would have amazed the finest brain surgeons on Earth. In a few months Marillyn's paralysis would be gone and she would be well and happy. Miracles, did they say? Well, they'd asked for it.

The Bryd was somewhat irked with itself for having interfered—but it had been for the best.

It got on a tight beam and went back to sun-station No. 18. Dale Stevenson's finger was just starting to move the button. There was maybe a fiftieth of a second left.

The Bryd carefully implanted the knowledge of Marillyn's 

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