There were papers on the desk, a litter of papers scrawled over, in the careless writing of indifferent students, with the symbols of chemistry and long mathematical computations. The man at the desk pushed them aside to rest his lean, lined face on one thin hand. The other arm, ending at the wrist, was on the desk before him.
Students of a great university had long since ceased to speculate about the missing hand. The result of an experiment, they knew-a hand that was a miss of lifeless cells, amputated quickly that the living arm might be saved-but that was some several years ago, ancient history to those who came and went through Professor Eddinger's class room.