The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Leech, by Phillips Barbee

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Title: The Leech

Author: Phillips Barbee

Illustrator: Connell

Release Date: July 27, 2009 [EBook #29525]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[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 the sagging couch. His horn-rimmed
glasses were perched on his forehead, and he was snoring very gently.

"I'm awful sorry to disturb you," Conners said, pushing back his
battered felt hat. "I know it's your restin' week and all, but there's
something damned funny in the ditch."

The pale man's left eyebrow twitched, but he showed no other sign of
having heard.

Frank Conners coughed again, holding his spade in one purple-veined
hand. "Didja hear me, Professor?"

"Of course I heard you," Micheals said in a muffled voice, his eyes
still closed. "You found a pixie."

"A what?" Conners asked, squinting at Micheals.

"A little man in a green suit. Feed him milk, Conners."

"No, sir. I think it's a rock."

Micheals opened one eye and focused it in Conners' general