 What is so significant about the surgiscope?
The ship that they boarded on Moon Nine was one of the newer ships that could attain a hundred-mile-per-second velocity and take a hyperbolic path to Earth, but it would still require fifty-four days to make the trip. The actual cutting instrument of the surgiscope was an ion stream. The principle was the same as that used in operation of remote control “hands” in atomic laboratories to handle hot material, and with the surgiscope very delicate operations could be performed at the cellular level. Dr. Mansard and his wife had disappeared into the turbulent atmosphere of Jupiter just after his invention of the surgiscope, and it had been developed by Dom Blessing.
 It can perform fine operations at a microscopic level
 It can allow a surgeon to permanently alter a person's DNA  It can perform fine operations at a microscopic level  It can be used to turn a human into an android  It can probe the brain of any creature, dead or alive