1
The Leech, by Phillips Barbee
The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Leech, by Phillips Barbee This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net
Title: The Leech
Author: Phillips Barbee
Illustrator: Connell
Release Date: July 27, 2009 [EBook #29525]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LEECH ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
[Illustration: Illustrated by CONNELL]
the Leech
By PHILLIPS BARBEE
A visitor should be fed, but this one could eat you out of house and home ... literally!
The leech was waiting for food. For millennia it had been drifting across the vast emptiness of space. Without consciousness, it had spent the countless centuries in the void between the stars. It was unaware when it finally reached a sun. Life-giving radiation flared around the hard, dry spore. Gravitation tugged at it.
A planet claimed it, with other stellar debris, and the leech fell, still dead-seeming within its tough spore case.
One speck of dust among many, the winds blew it around the Earth, played with it, and let it fall.
On the ground, it began to stir. Nourishment soaked in, permeating the spore case. It grew--and fed.
* * * * *
Frank Conners came up on the porch and coughed twice. "Say, pardon me, Professor," he said.
The long, pale man didn't stir from t