Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction November 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.
CLEAN BREAK
By ROGER DEE
Illustrated by CONNELL
A veteran veterinarian might have vamoosed—but Watts hadto help any sick animal....
othing more exciting ever happened to Oliver Watts than beingrejected by his draft board for a punctured eardrum until, deferringas usual to the superior judgment of his Aunt Katisha and ofGlenna—his elder and militantly spinster sister—he put away hislifelong dream and took up, at the age of twenty-five, the practice ofveterinary medicine.
The relinquished dream was Oliver's ambition, cherished sincechildhood, to become some day a hunter and trainer of jungle animals.It had been discouraged firmly and at length by his Aunt Katisha, whomaintained that the skin of the last male Watts was not to be riskedin a pursuit so perilous; and his Aunt Katisha won. He would do farbetter, Oliver realized finally, to resign himself to the quietsuburban life of Landsdale, Florida, and to perpetuate the Watts lineby marrying some worthy and practical local girl. The quiet life, itdeveloped, was that of a D. V. M.; the worthy and practical girl, MissOrella Simms of Tampa, to whom he was now engaged.
To put it plainly, Oliver was until the moment of his GreatOpportunity a good-humored stooge with a cowlick and a sense ofresponsibility, whose invariable cue was family obligation and whosecrowning virtue was docility. He was maneuvered into becoming a D. V.M. (though to tell the truth the profession suited him well enough,being the nearest possible approach to realizing his ambition) solelybecause the veterinary college in Tampa was near enough to Landsdalefor commuting and because his later practice could be carried on underthe guiding aegis of his personal matriarchy. The virtuous, and vapid,Orella Simms became his fiancee by the same tactics and for the samereasons.
Oliver had considered rebellion, of course, but common sensediscouraged the idea. He had no intimates outside his family nor anyexperience with the world beyond Landsdale and Tampa, and hisfledgling self-confidence invariably bogged down in a welter ofintrospective apprehensions when he thought of running away. Wherewould he go, and to whom could he turn in emergency?
Such was the character and condition of Oliver Watts when his newlyundertaken practice of veterinary medicine threw him into the companyof "Mr. Thomas Furnay" and of a girl whose name, as nearly as it canbe rendered into English, was Perrl-high-C-trill-and-A-above. Theiradvent brought Oliver face to face for the first time in his sedentarylife with High Adventure—with adventure so high, as a matter of fact,that it took him literally and bodily out of this humdrum world.
he initial step was taken when Mr. Furnay, known to Landsdale as awealthy and eccentric old recluse who had recently leased a walledproperty on Federal Route 27 that had once been the winter retreat ofa Prohi