uld not drink
those dregs alone!

* * * * *

In the chemical laboratory of the ship were all the elements of creative
force and life known to man. From the four corners of the earth they had
been garnered, and some had come from sister planets. Here were the
ingredients of creation. For thousands of years man had been able to
create various forms of life. He had evolved many pulsing, squirming
things. He had even made man-like apes possessing the instinct of
obedience, and which he used for servants, and much of his animal food
also had been created in this manner.

Being skilled in all branches of biology and chemistry Omega would
create a comrade to share his long wait for death. So he set to work and
the task eased the pain in his heart. He placed his chemicals in the
test tube and watched the cell evolve until it pulsated with life.
Carefully nursing the frail embryo he added other plasms, then
fertilized the whole with warm spermatozoa and placed it in the
incubator over which glowed a violet, radio-active light.

The young life developed quickly and soon began to take form within the
glass walls. In a month it half-filled the incubator, and at the end of
six weeks he released it, but it still grew amazingly.

At first Omega was appalled by the monstrosity he had created, for it
was a loathsome, repulsive creature. Its head was flat and broad and sat
upon its sloping shoulders without a connecting neck. Its legs were
short, but its arms were long, and when standing erect it carried them
well in front of an enormous torso. Its short hands and feet were webbed
like those of a duck. It had no visible ears, and its nostrils were mere
holes above a wide, grinning, thin-lipped mouth, which was always spread
in a grin. Its large, round, red eyes had no gleam of intelligence, and
its hairless skin, covered with minute, sucker-like scales, lay in
loose, ugly folds across its great chest. Most of its movements were
slow and uncertain, and it hopped about over the floor like a giant
toad, uttering guttural sounds deep within its chest. Omega had set out
to create an ape-man, but this thing was neither man nor beast, bird or
reptile, but a travesty on all--an unspeakable horror from the dead womb
of the past.

Yet hideous as this creature was Omega looked upon it with a certain
degree of gratitude. It was a companion at least, and it seemed to
reciprocate the respect of its creator by fawn