The creature chuckled. "You will be serving a noble purpose—a far more noble purpose than as though you had merely fulfilled the prosaic biological destiny for which you were born."
"But you will not have to kill us!" she exclaimed. "You take the germ cells from gorillas without killing them. When you have taken some from us, you will let us go?"
The creature rose and came close to the bars. His yellow fangs were bared, in a fiendish grin. "You do not know all," he said. A mad light shone in his blazing eyes. "I have not told you all that I have learned about rejuvenation. The new body cells are potent, but they work slowly. I have found that by eating the flesh and the glands of youth the speed of the metamorphosis is accelerated.
"I leave you now to meditate upon the great service that you are to render science!" He backed toward the far door of the other apartment. "But I will return. Later I shall eat you—eat you both. I shall eat the man first; and then, my beauty, I shall eat you! But before I eat you—ah, before I eat you!"
Chuckling, he backed through the doorway and closed the door after him.
XXVI
TRAPPED
"It looks like curtain," said the girl.
"Curtain?"
"The end of the show."