The Beast of Space | Page 6

Was it stirring in its shell? Most
of the globes had disappeared; now a nauseatingly sweet odor
penetrated the screen in his headpiece, which permitted him to smell
without allowing the oxygen to escape. He hurried around to the rear of
the ship, an apprehensive, sickening feeling at the pit of his stomach. A
thick jelly-like wave of liquid was rolling over the floor--the reeking,
deadly juices from the beast's stomach. If the liquid touched him, it
would eat through the heavy fabric, exploding the air pressure from
around his body. How was he to escape from the cave?
The answer came to him suddenly. Quickly he darted back toward the
nearest vessel. Two of the screaming spheres blocked his way; he sent
bolt after searing bolt into them, more of a charge than he had given
any of the others. The lights in the globes went out; their voices ceased.
And they burst into slowly mounting incandescence. Yet, they were not
consumed by their fire, only glowed an intense white light like that of a
lighthouse.
"Lighthouse!" The word flashed through his mind clearly, strongly.
They glowed like the "zirconia lights" of a lighthouse. Why hadn't he
recognized the greasy, quartz-like material before? It was zirconia, a
compound of zirconium, of course. A silicate base creature could easily
have formed a shell of it about itself.
Zirconia--one of the compounds he'd intended prospecting for on the
moons of Saturn. Worth over a hundred dollars per pound. Because of
its resistance to heat, it was used to line the tubes of rockets; Terra's
supply had long been used up. Here was a fortune all around him; but
that fortune was about to be destroyed, he along with it, if he did not
hurry.
If he could only reach the timing mechanism to yank from it the wires
connecting it to the other ships. It was at the other end of the line. He
started in that direction, but a surge of fatal, thick acid rolled before
him, reaching for him with hungry, questing tongues.
When it was almost touching his toes, he leaped. As he floated toward
the floor, he placed a chair beneath him so that his feet landed on the

seat. The legs of the chair sank slowly into the liquid.
Again he leaped, his moment retarded by the fluid which now reached
halfway up the chair legs, sucked and clung there. The sweetly-evil
smelling stuff was rising rapidly. But the next leap carried him into the
main cave. Abandoning the chair, he leaped once more, out through the
cave's mouth, pursued by the waving tentacles of the sensory spheres.
* * * * *
He had lost precious minutes eluding that deadly acid. It would take at
least five minutes to get his ship away from the asteroid; he must hurry
before all those rocket motors were thrown into action, or it would be
too late.
Leap and leap again. It seemed ages, but he reached the ship, bolted the
door shut. Thumps against the door as the pursuing globes ran up
against it. A thought came to him; swiftly he opened the door,
permitted a few of them to enter, then slammed it shut. With the heat
gun he sheared off their tentacles; he could sell the zirconia in the
entities. Then he turned to the controls and the ship zoomed up and out.
Nat had barely raised his ship from the Asteroid Moira when he saw the
small planetoid lurch suddenly, bounding off its orbit at almost a right
angle. The sudden combined driving force of all the rockets within the
cave had sent it hurtling away like a rocket itself.
The asteroid housing the monster was heading into the Flora group of
Asteroids. There the fifty-seven odd solid bodies of that group would
grind, crack, and rend that dangerous beast into harmless, dead
fragments.
"A good job," said a weak, but softly friendly voice behind him. He
whirled. The girl stood in the doorway of the pilot room, supporting
herself against the door frame. Digger rubbed thoughtfully against her
legs.
"We'll just follow that asteroid, Miss," he said, "and see if we can't pick

up some odd fragment of zirconia when it's smashed in the grindstone
there. Then we'll light out for Terra."
She smiled. Earth, to him, seemed like a very good place to go as soon
as possible.

Transcriber's Note:
This e-text was produced from Comet July 1941. Extensive research
did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this
publication was renewed.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Beast of Space, by F.E.
Hardart
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