* * * * *
Later. Now started the golden days. I increased my control and did what
I could for my friends.
I got a good doctor for my old friend and roommate, Pete the python,
and he began receiving treatment for his indigestion. I got a jazzy
sports car for my friend Eustace imported from somewhere called Italy.
And I buried Margaret in mink, for she had a fix on the fur of that
mysterious animal. She enjoyed draping it about her in the form of
coats, capes, cloaks, mantles and stoles, though the weather didn't
really require it.
I had now won several banks, a railroad, an airline, and a casino in
somewhere named Havana.
"You're somebody now," said Margaret. "You really ought to dress
better. Or are you dressed? I never know. I don't know if part of that
is clothes or if all of it is you. But at least I've learned which is
your head. I think we should be married in May. It's so common to be
married in June. Just imagine me being Mrs. George Albert Leroy Ellery
McIntosh! You know, we have become quite an item. And do you know there
are three biographies of you out--_Burgeoning Blob_, _The Blob from Way
Out_, _The Hidden Hand Behind the Blob--What Does it Portend?_ And the
governor has invited us to dine tomorrow. I do wish you would learn
to eat. If you weren't so nice, you'd be creepy. I always say there's
nothing wrong with marrying a man, or a blob, with money. It shows
foresight on the part of a girl. You know you will have to get a blood
test? You had better get it tomorrow. You do have blood, don't you?"
I did, but not, of course, of the color and viscosity of hers. But I
could give it that color and viscosity temporarily. And it would react
negative in all the tests.
She mused, "They are all jealous of me. They say they wouldn't marry a
blob. They mean they couldn't.... Do you have to carry that tin ball
with you all the time?"
"Yes. It is my communication sphere. In it I record my thoughts. I
would be lost without it."
"Oh, like a diary. How quaint!"
Yes, those were the golden days. The grubs appeared to me in a new
light, for was not Margaret also a grub? Yet she seemed not so
unfinished as the rest. Though lacking a natural outer casing, she had
not the appearance of crawling out from under a rock. She was quite an
attractive "girl." And she cared for me.
What more could I wish? I was affluent. I was respected. I was in
control of my environment. And I could aid my friends, of whom I had
now acquired an astonishing number.
Moreover, my old space-ineptitude sickness had left me. I never felt
better in my life. Ah, golden days, one after the other like a pleasant
dream. And soon I am to be married!