The Slizzers

Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced Science Fiction Stories 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
The main trouble is that you'd never suspect anything was wrong; you'd enjoy associating with slizzers , so long as you didn't know....
hey're all around us. I'll call them the slizzers , because they sliz people. Lord only knows how long they've been on Earth, and how many of them there are....
They're all around us, living with us. We are hardly ever aware of their existence, because they can make themselves look like us, and do most of the time; and if they can look like us, there's really no need for them to think like us, is there? People think and behave in so many cockeyed ways, anyhow. Whenever a slizzer fumbles a little in his impersonation of a human being, and comes up with a puzzling response, I suppose we just shrug and think. He could use a good psychiatrist.
So ... you might be one. Or your best friend, or your wife or husband, or that nice lady next door.
They aren't killers, or rampaging monsters; quite the contrary. They need us, something like the way we'd need maple trees if it came to the point where maple syrup was our only food. That's why we're in no comic-book danger of being destroyed, any more than maple trees would be, in the circumstances I just mentioned—or are, as things go. In a sense, we're rather well-treated and helped along a bit ... the way we care for maple trees.
But, sometimes a man here and there will be careless, or ignorant, or greedy ... and a maple tree will be hurt....
Think about that the next time someone is real nice to you. He may be a slizzer ... and a careless one....
How long do we live?
Right. About sixty, seventy years.
You probably don't think much about that, because that's just the way things are. That's life. And what the hell, the doctors are increasing our lifespan every day with new drugs and things, aren't they?