Destiny Uncertain
his legs. "Better take it easy until we check with fluoroscopy," he warned. "There's something mighty funny here. I examined the X-ray plates myself. The spinal break was unmistakable!"

Half an hour later Lin was relaxed on the table in the X-ray lab, while a full half dozen doctors studied him through the fluoroscope screen and all talked at once, with every once in a while one of them going to an illuminated plate and tracing what was quite obviously a wide gap in a spinal column.

"I think I could walk without any trouble if you'd let me get up," Lin remarked.

"Good heavens no!" one doctor gasped.

"I don't see why not," another said. "If we had nothing to go on but what we see now you'd agree nothing's wrong with him. Why not let him try?"

There were uneasy mutterings that gradually drifted into a majority opinion that he should try. The technician moved the fluoroscope screen out of the way.

Lin sat up, swiveled gently ninety degrees and lowered his legs over the edge of the table. Cautiously he eased his feet to the floor. Even more cautiously he let his weight gradually settle on them. While the doctors watched without seeming to breathe, he stood up and took a timid step, a more bold one, and then walked several steps and turned around, coming back to the table.

"Feels perfectly natural," he said. "I guess you'll have to admit you were wrong about that spinal cord break."

"But we weren't wrong!" It was the doctor who had had charge of Lin in the first place. "The X-rays prove it!"

"Are you sure they weren't mixed up with those of some other patient?" another doctor suggested.

"Find me another patient in this hospital who has a spinal break half an inch wide and I'll—I'll—"

"Eat him?" Lin suggested.

"Yes. I'll eat him. Gladly. There was definitely no error. A miracle is more possible than those X-ray plates getting mixed up."

"Does this fix me up then?" Lin asked. "Can I leave the hospital?"

"Not for another two or three days under any circumstances," his doctor said. "Personally I think we should put you on display. Permanently. The first proven miracle in two thousand years. Or more! But we'd like 
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