Moments ago the creature in the tank had rested in another tank in another station and the materializer had built up a pattern of it -- not only of its body, but of its very vital force, the thing that gave it life. Then the impulse pattern had moved across the gulfs of space almost instantaneously to the receiver of this station, where the pattern had been used to duplicate the body and the mind and the memory and the life of the creature now lying dead many lightyears distant. And in the tank the new body and the new mind and memory and life had taken form almost instantly -- an entirely new being, but exactly like the old one, so that the identity continued and the consciousness (the very thought no more than momentarily interrupted) so that to all intent and purpose the being was the same.