Yet we were warned against complacency. The bug—we always spoke of it in the singular, even though we knew the original mites had spawned in our blood streams—could not act quickly enough to save our lives in the event of major damage to essential organs or the brain. Also, we could drown. Or we could die in a fall from a great height. Or starve to death.
The first intimation we had that all was not well had started as a rumor. Two of the staff biochemists had been experimenting with transplants of the bugs in fruit flies. They had turned up something sensational.
Zealley was not present when I received the disastrous news. At the end of what would normally be a twenty- or thirty-year cycle—the chemists were not able to estimate it any closer—the symbiotes evolved into tiny winged insects.
At that stage they acquired size and flying strength by devouring the tissues of their hosts.
In twenty or thirty years, then, our benign cohabitants would kill us—and spread out by the millions to infest other available animal life. Unless they were destroyed, not only would Zealley and I die, but all humanity on all the worlds would face the prospect of becoming infested.
Zealley must have surmised what was coming. He had disappeared a week earlier. Before he left, I had noticed considerable change in our body and facial features. He would very soon be impossible to identify.
The only lead the authorities ever got on him was that he had fled to Earth. At that particular time Earth and New Nebraska were involved in one of the more serious interworld bickerings. Citizens of each were denied admittance to the other, which was probably the reason Zealley had chosen Earth as a haven.