Since this account of my life and adventures is not being written
without some plan, it is no mere coincidence that this particular
section comes under Chapter Thirteen. Old Unlucky Thirteen covers ninety
days which I consider the most dismal ninety days of my life. Things,
which had been going along smoothly had, suddenly got worse.
We started with enthusiasm. They cut and they dug and they poked needles
into me and trimmed out bits of my hide for slides. I helped them by
digging my own flesh and letting their better telepaths read my results
for their records.
They were nice to me. I got the best of everything. But being nice to me
was not enough; it sort of made me feel like Gulliver in Brobdingnag.
They were so over-strong that they did not know their own strength. This
was especially true of the youngsters of Mekstrom parents. I tried to
re-diaper a baby one night and got my ring finger gummed for my efforts.
It was like wrestling Bad Cyril in a one-fall match, winner take all.
As the days added up into weeks, their hope and enthusiasm began to
fade. The long list of proposed experiments dwindled and it became
obvious that they were starting to work on brand new ideas. But brand
new ideas are neither fast in arriving nor high in quantity, and time
began to hang dismally heavy.
They began to avoid my eyes. They stopped discussing their attempts on
me; I no longer found out what they were doing and how they hoped to
accomplish the act. They showed the helplessness that comes of failure,
and this feeling of utter futility was transmitted to me.
At first I was mentally frantic at the idea of failure, but as the
futile days wore on and the fact was practically shoved down my throat,
I was forced to admit that there was no future for Steve Cornell.