"But he was dead!" Marcia said incredulously.
One of the men smiled. "He didn't go anyplace under his own power. He was dead, all right. The storm took his body out to sea, is all."
They stood there for a moment, gazing out across the black troubled water of the infant ocean on the infant earth. A billion years ago....
Slade was out there. Slade, dead. Out there with the tides and the waters and the frequent electric storms—
"Out there with a million bacteriological parasites on his dead body and in his dead body, which he brought with him," Marcia said, dreamily.
"What are you talking about, miss?"
Out there in the electric dawn of earth, with the bacteria which lived in his body as they lived in all other bodies. Out there with them, dead.
Food for them.
Food and water and air heavy with ozone and the electric storms.
Marcia laughed hysterically. It was a story she wanted to write.