PAGE 7
The Leech
by
It held. The energy was controlled, stimulating further growth. More cells took over the load, sucking in the food.
The next doses were wonderfully palatable, easily handled. The leech overflowed its bounds, growing, eating, and growing.
That was a taste of real food! The leech was as near ecstasy as it had ever been. It waited hopefully for more, but no more came.
It went back to feeding on the Earth. The energy, used to produce more cells, was soon dissipated. Soon it was hungry again.
It would always be hungry.
* * * * *
O’Donnell retreated with his demoralized men. They camped ten miles from the leech’s southern edge, in the evacuated town of Schroon Lake. The leech was over sixty miles in diameter now and still growing fast. It lay sprawled over the Adirondack Mountains, completely blanketing everything from Saranac Lake to Port Henry, with one edge of it over Westport, in Lake Champlain.
Everyone within two hundred miles of the leech was evacuated.
General O’Donnell was given permission to use hydrogen bombs, contingent on the approval of his scientists.
“What have the bright boys decided?” O’Donnell wanted to know.
He and Micheals were in the living room of an evacuated Schroon Lake house. O’Donnell had made it his new command post.
“Why are they hedging?” O’Donnell demanded impatiently. “The leech has to be blown up quick. What are they fooling around for?”
“They’re afraid of a chain reaction,” Micheals told him. “A concentration of hydrogen bombs might set one up in the Earth’s crust or in the atmosphere. It might do any of half a dozen things.”
“Perhaps they’d like me to order a bayonet attack,” O’Donnell said contemptuously.
Micheals sighed and sat down in an armchair. He was convinced that the whole method was wrong. The government scientists were being rushed into a single line of inquiry. The pressure on them was so great that they didn’t have a chance to consider any other approach but force–and the leech thrived on that.
Micheals was certain that there were times when fighting fire with fire was not applicable.
Fire. Loki, god of fire. And of trickery. No, there was no answer there. But Micheals’ mind was in mythology now, retreating from the unbearable present.
Allenson came in, followed by six other men.
“Well,” Allenson said, “there’s a damned good chance of splitting the Earth wide open if you use the number of bombs our figures show you need.”
“You have to take chances in war,” O’Donnell replied bluntly. “Shall I go ahead?”
Micheals saw, suddenly, that O’Donnell didn’t care if he did crack the Earth. The red-faced general only knew that he was going to set off the greatest explosion ever produced by the hand of Man.
“Not so fast,” Allenson said. “I’ll let the others speak for themselves.”
The general contained himself with difficulty. “Remember,” he said, “according to your own figures, the leech is growing at the rate of twenty feet an hour.”
“And speeding up,” Allenson added. “But this isn’t a decision to be made in haste.”
Micheals found his mind wandering again, to the lightning bolts of Zeus. That was what they needed. Or the strength of Hercules.
Or–
He sat up suddenly. “Gentlemen, I believe I can offer you a possible alternative, although it’s a very dim one.”
They stared at him.
“Have you ever heard of Antaeus?” he asked.
* * * * *
The more the leech ate, the faster it grew and the hungrier it became. Although its birth was forgotten, it did remember a long way back. It had eaten a planet in that ancient past. Grown tremendous, ravenous, it had made the journey to a nearby star and eaten that, replenishing the cells converted into energy for the trip. But then there was no more food, and the next star was an enormous distance away.