* *

"The damned fools," General O'Donnell said. "Why did they have to panic?
You'd think they'd never been trained." He paced the ground outside his
tent, now in a new location three miles back.

The leech had grown to two miles in diameter. Three farming communities
had been evacuated.

Micheals, standing beside the general, was still stupefied by the
memory. The leech had accepted the massed power of the weapons for a
while, and then its entire bulk had lifted in the air. The Sun had been
blotted out as it flew leisurely over North Hill, and dropped. There
should have been time for evacuation, but the frightened soldiers had
been blind with fear.

Sixty-seven men were lost in Operation Leech, and General O'Donnell
asked permission to use atomic bombs. Washington sent a group of
scientists to investigate the situation.

"Haven't those experts decided yet?" O'Donnell asked, halting angrily in
front of the tent. "They've been talking long enough."

"It's a hard decision," Micheals said. Since he wasn't an official
member of the investigating team, he had given his information and left.
"The physicists consider it a biological matter, and the biologists seem
to think the chemists should have the answer. No one's an expert on
this, because it's never happened before. We just don't have the data."

"It's a military problem," O'Donnell said harshly. "I'm not interested
in what the thing is--I want to know what can destroy it. They'd better
give me permission to use the bomb."

Micheals had made his own calculations on that. It was impossible to say
for sure, but taking a flying guess at the leech's mass-energy
absorption rate, figuring in its size and apparent capacity for growth,
an atomic bomb _might_ overload it--if used soon enough.

He estimated three days as the limit of usefulness. The leech was
growing at a geometric rate. It could cover the United States in a few
months.

"For a week I've been asking permission to use the bomb," O'Donnell
grumbled. "And I'll get it, but not until after those jackasses end
their damned talking." He stopped pacing and turned to Micheals. "I am
going to destroy the leech. I am going to smash it, if that's the last
thing I do. It's more than a matter of security now. It's personal
pride."

That attitude might make great generals, Micheals thought, but it wasn't
the way to consider this problem. It was anthropomorphic of O'Donnell to
see the leech as an enemy. Eve