The Project Gutenberg EBook of Forever, by Robert Sheckley

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Title: Forever

Author: Robert Sheckley

Illustrator: Dick Francis

Release Date: July 22, 2009 [EBook #29487]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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FOREVER

By NED LANG

_Of all the irksome, frustrating,
maddening discoveries--was there
no way of keeping it discovered?_

Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS

With so much at stake, Charles Dennison should not have been careless.
An inventor cannot afford carelessness, particularly when his invention
is extremely valuable and obviously patentable. There are too many
grasping hands ready to seize what belongs to someone else, too many men
who feast upon the creativity of the innocent.

A touch of paranoia would have served Dennison well; but he was lacking
in that vital characteristic of inventors. And he didn't even realize
the full extent of his carelessness until a bullet, fired from a
silenced weapon, chipped a granite wall not three inches from his head.

Then he knew. But by then it was too late.

Charles Dennison had been left a more than adequate income by his
father. He had gone to Harvard, served a hitch in the Navy, then
continued his education at M.I.T. Since the age of thirty-two, he had
been engaged in private research, working in his own small laboratory in
Riverdale, New York. Plant biology was his field. He published several
noteworthy papers, and sold a new insecticide to a development
corporation. The royalties helped him to expand his facilities.

Dennison enjoyed working alone. It suited his temperament, which was
austere but not unfriendly. Two or three times a year, he would come to
New York, see some plays and movies, and do a little serious drinking.
He would then return gratefully to his seclusion. He was a bachelor and
seemed destined to remain that way.

Not long after his fortieth birthday, Dennison stumbled across an
intriguing clue which led him into a different branch of biology. He
pursued his clue, developed it