de and brought it down smartly on the object. When it
hit, he almost dropped the spade. He had been gripping the handle
rigidly, braced for a recoil. But the spade struck that unyielding
surface and _stayed_. There was no perceptible give, but absolutely no
recoil.

"Whatcha think it is?" Conners asked.

"It's no stone," Micheals said. He stepped back. "A leech drinks blood.
This thing seems to be drinking dirt. And spades." He struck it a few
more times, experimentally. The two men looked at each other. On the
road, half a dozen Army trucks rolled past.

"I'm going to phone the college and ask a physics man about it,"
Micheals said. "Or a biologist. I'd like to get rid of that thing before
it spoils my lawn."

They walked back to the house.

* * * * *

Everything fed the leech. The wind added its modicum of kinetic energy,
ruffling across the gray-black surface. Rain fell, and the force of each
individual drop added to its store. The water was sucked in by the
all-absorbing surface.

The sunlight above it was absorbed, and converted into mass for its
body. Beneath it, the soil was consumed, dirt, stones and branches
broken down by the leech's complex cells and changed into energy. Energy
was converted back into mass, and the leech grew.

Slowly, the first flickers of consciousness began to return. Its first
realization was of the impossible smallness of its body.

It grew.

* * * * *

When Micheals looked the next day, the leech was eight feet across,
sticking out into the road and up the side of the lawn. The following
day it was almost eighteen feet in diameter, shaped to fit the contour
of the ditch, and covering most of the road. That day the sheriff drove
up in his model A, followed by half the town.

"Is that your leech thing, Professor Micheals?" Sheriff Flynn asked.

"That's it," Micheals said. He had spent the past days looking
unsuccessfully for an acid that would dissolve the leech.

"We gotta get it out of the road," Flynn said, walking truculently up to
the leech. "Something like this, you can't let it block the road,
Professor. The Army's gotta use this road."

"I'm terribly sorry," Micheals said with a straight face. "Go right
ahead, Sheriff. But be careful. It's hot." The leech wasn't hot, but it
seemed the simplest explanation under the circumstances.

Micheals watched with interest as the sheriff tried to shove a crowbar