ntainhead of life, and
there is no real reason for assuming my enemy is terrestrial. He could
just as well be aquatic. I'll find out today--maybe. Just to be doing
something positive--even thinking--makes me feel better....

* * * * *

_Got it!_ I know where it is! And I know how to kill it. Fact is, I've
already done it! Now there's no more pressure. God--what a relief! This
morning I burned the meadow and cut down the nearest trees surrounding
this clearing and nothing happened. I expected that. Then I checked the
water. Nothing in the stream, but the pond was _green_!--filled almost
to the edge with a mass of algae! A hundred-foot platter of sticky green
slime, cohesive as glue and ugly as sin. It _had_ to be it--and it was.
I never saw algae that cohered quite like that. So I gave it about fifty
gallons of rocket juice--red fuming nitric acid--right in the belly.
Then I sat down and let the tension flow out of me, revelling in its
pain, laughing like crazy as it turned brown--and the pressure
disappeared. No tension at all now. The place is as quiet and peaceful
as the grave. I want to laugh and laugh--and run through the burned
meadow and roll in the ashes so grateful am I for my deliverance.

Got the idea of killing the monster from a splash of rocket fuel on the
bank of the stream and my memory of the pain in the early feelings. But
it was nothing compared to the feeling when the acid hit that damned
mass of green slime! Even though my brain was screaming at me, I felt
good. I should put a couple of hundred gallons into the stream just to
make sure--but I can't afford it. I need the fuel to run the generators
to propagate the wave that'll bring me home if someone hears it. And
they'll hear it all right. My luck is in. Now I'm going to sleep--_sweet
sleep that knits the ravelled sleeve of care_--Shakespeare, old man, you
had a phrase for everything! I love you. I love everything. I even feel
sorry for that poor plant ... of guilt. It couldn't help the fact that
my jets set up a mutation. And being intelligent it _had_ to be
curious. Of course, no one would believe me if I started talking about
intelligent algae. But what's so odd about that? Even the most complex
life forms are just aggregations of individual cells working together.
So if a few individual cells with rudimentary data-storage capacity got
the idea of uniting why couldn't they act like a complex organism?

*