Metamorphosis by Charles V. De Vet (e books for reading txt) 📗

said, taking the key from his hand.

"I suppose it will be all right," he murmured doubtfully.

"Thank you," I called back over my shoulder. "I may be a while. I want to look it over carefully." I ignored the fact that he seemed to have more he wanted to say.

The office was small, but that made little difference to me. There was a clear view of the street from the window. That was all I cared about.

In one corner was a small packing case, left by the former tenant. I dragged it over by the window and sat down. From my grip I took a rifle barrel and stock and assembled them, and filled the magazine with ammunition. I kept part of my attention on the building down the street while I worked.

I hoped I had guessed right—that Zealley would get free of the police, and that he would return to his office.

The day-shift workers had begun to pour from the Mining building before a taxi drew up to the curb and a man in a yellow hat alighted.

Zealley had come.

He was alone. I aligned the sights of my rifle on his head, waited until I had a clear shot, and squeezed the trigger.

The yellow hat sprang upward and Zealley sank from sight among the hurrying workers.

The job was done.

Finding a way back to New Nebraska took me a year, for I no longer fitted my passport picture and description at all.

"Except for the danger to others," I said when I reported in, "I wouldn't have bothered coming back."

"A good thing for you that you did bother to come back here," I was told.

The biochemists had gone on with their work through the years I'd searched for Zealley. They had learned that the symbiotes' life cycle developed in three distinct stages: five years of propagation, fifteen years in the dormant aging process, an undetermined number of years in the final form.

If the blood of a carrier was replaced any time during the first five years, the bugs in the residual blood in the body began to propagate again, delaying the aging process another five years.

"In other words," I was told, "we can control the symbiote. Mankind can reap the benefits—with not a single one of the dangers."

Except poor Zealley, I thought pityingly, but wonderingly. The hogs, the smart boys who have every angle figured in getting the jump on everybody else—how is it they never figure the last angle?

He should have waited instead of grabbing.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Metamorphosis, by Charles V. de Vet