The Project Gutenberg EBook of Clean Break, by Roger Dee

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.org

Title: Clean Break

Author: Roger Dee

Illustrator: Connell

Release Date: May 2, 2010 [EBook #32212]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CLEAN BREAK ***

Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction November 1953.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed.

CLEAN BREAK

By ROGER DEE

Illustrated by CONNELL

_A veteran veterinarian might have vamoosed--but Watts had
to help any sick animal...._

* * * * *

Nothing more exciting ever happened to Oliver Watts than being
rejected by his draft board for a punctured eardrum until, deferring
as usual to the superior judgment of his Aunt Katisha and of
Glenna--his elder and militantly spinster sister--he put away his
lifelong dream and took up, at the age of twenty-five, the practice of
veterinary medicine.

The relinquished dream was Oliver's ambition, cherished since
childhood, to become some day a hunter and trainer of jungle animals.
It had been discouraged firmly and at length by his Aunt Katisha, who
maintained that the skin of the last male Watts was not to be risked
in a pursuit so perilous; and his Aunt Katisha won. He would do far
better, Oliver realized finally, to resign himself to the quiet
suburban life of Landsdale, Florida, and to perpetuate the Watts line
by marrying some worthy and practical local girl. The quiet life, it
developed, was that of a D. V. M.; the worthy and practical girl, Miss
Orella Simms of Tampa, to whom he was now engaged.

To put it plainly, Oliver was until the moment of his Great
Opportunity a good-humored stooge with a cowlick and a sense of
responsibility, whose invariable cue was family obligation and whose
crowning virtue was docility. He was maneuvered into bec