It had no shape, no arms, no features—yet it was alive. It moved sluggishly toward the bank like a great solidified wave that towered a hundred feet in the air. It glowed with the phosphorescent fire of the ocean, and preceding it came a tangible aura of unspeakable menace.
"God!" Johnson croaked, "what is it?"
Val Kenton holstered his handguns, caught up his rifle, blasted a charge of unleashed energy into the vast bulk rising from the ocean. The thing seemed to jump, and the flame of the shot glowed deep within its bulk.
Then it settled again, without sound, moved closer to the beach.
"It's alive!" Val Kenton gasped, and knew instinctively why the other expeditions' ships were crushed and empty hulls on Venus.
The thing was a great blob of gelatinous substance that quivered and shook as it approached the land. Val Kenton fired twice more, gaped in incredulous surprise when the atomic fire did absolutely nothing in the way of stopping it.
He backed slowly from the water's edge, the other men moving backward as though by common consent; and they stopped only when their shoulders touched the ship.
The sea-thing was almost at the beach now. It halted its forward movement momentarily; and a pseudopod flicked from its glowing surface and settled over the shattered body of a great crab. One second the pseudopod settled there, and then was withdrawn with incredible speed.
And where the crab had been was nothing.
"Protoplasm!" Johnson gasped, "it's living protoplasm!"
Val Kenton felt a dull horror clutching at his heart. He had seen experiments with tiny bits of living protoplasm, and he knew the insatiable appetite of the mindless thing. But never in even his most horrible of dreams had he visioned a blob of sentient life that was fully a hundred yards in diameter and which must have weighed hundreds of tons.
The protoplasm touched the beach, seemed to flow out of the water. Living ropes of itself flipped out of itself, settled over the living and dead crabs; and an instant later the pseudopods flipped back and the ground was bare and sterile.
Val Kenton fired again and again, then stopped in sheer futility. For although his shots had blown bits of the creature away—each of the bits moved with insatiable greed the moment it lit, always flowing toward the nearest source of food.
And then the crabs were gone, and the protoplasm was flowing like warm, whitely-glowing tar toward the four Earth people and their ship.
Val Kenton whirled, took charge of the situation as though he was still the patrolman he had once been. He jerked his head toward the open port.
"Tony," he snapped, "get inside and bring out that catalyst feed. We can't fight this thing for long; we've got to make a run for it."
The patrolman moved without hesitation, swinging into the port, leaving his guns outside. His face was strained and white as he cast one last look at the hungry horror that moved so slowly, so implacably, up the beach.
Val Kenton set the control on his rifle. "Set your guns for flame," he said sharply, whirled and helped Elise to the ground, "we haven't enough power for atomic fire for any length of time; our only hope lies in holding that thing at bay until Tony gets the feed."
They stood, the three of them, shoulder to shoulder at the ship's side, and their guns hissed like high pressure jets as they fired in unison at the insensate monster.
Steam rose and swelled from the protoplasm, and the great blob seemed to draw back. Val Kenton felt a flame of exultation flare momentarily in his heart.
"Maybe?" he whispered to himself.
Then the weird cohesive slime surged forward again. The three guns raved and wailed with unleashed power, and the steam and horrible odor filled the air. Great areas of the protoplasm disappeared under the continuous fire, but the power of the guns was not enough to stop the horror from its relentless advance.
It moved faster now, seeming to have had new energy released within it from the dozens of crab bodies it had assimilated, and its pseudopods were great flicking blind loops of death questing before it for further sustenance.
The rifles went dead, and the two men and the girl lifted the hand guns. The flame from the guns did not have the power of the rifles, and the terror moved even closer. A four foot blob of protoplasm shot from the main body, smashed into the ship, dropped toward the three below. Johnson flicked it out of existence with full power from his gun, and the gun went dead.
"Tony!" Val Kenton yelled, fighting the fear that cramped at his muscles, when he saw the instant holes eaten in the ship's side.
And then Tony Andrews was dropping from the port, and they were sprinting toward the tunnel Val Kenton had disrupted in the jungle two hours before.
They gasped as they ran, their feet stumbling on the vine and creepers that had grown with incredible speed in the tunnel. They glanced back in time to see the tunnel's end blocked off by the surging protoplasm. There was the rending sound of trees and ferns being crushed behind them, and they ran ever faster.
"It can move almost as fast as we," Val gasped.
Elise fell, was brought to her feet by Johnson's clutching hand. The entire group ran as they had never run before in their lives, fighting their way through the jungle, blood spurting from innumerable cuts, their lungs clamoring for air.
And then they were in a tiny clearing, and Val Kenton was clutching Tony Andrews' sleeve.
"Let them go on," he half-screamed, "Johnson can fit the feed; we'll try to hold that thing back for a moment or two."
Tony Andrews nodded, gasped out instructions for Johnson to follow. Elise whirled when she heard the orders, came close to the Patrolman, held him tight.
"Hurry, Tony," she cried. "Don't take any more chances than you must." Tears sparkled in her eyes. "You know that I'd hate to lose a husband on our honeymoon."
"Husband?" Val Kenton gasped incredulously.
Tony Andrews nodded. "Yes, we were married just before we started; this was to be our honeymoon."
Val Kenton didn't move, but his hate then was a terrible thing that shook him with its intensity. Now he had a double reason for slaying this dishevelled man who stood at his side. He forced his voice to remain comparatively calm, seeking to hide the feelings that tortured him.
"Run," he said to Elise and Johnson, "we haven't much time."
And then Val Kenton and Tony Andrews were alone in the clearing, and the sounds of the flowing death behind them grew louder as the seconds passed.
Val Kenton backed to one side, watched with flame-bright eyes as the Patrolman lifted his gun in a futile attempt to stall the monster for precious seconds. He lifted his own gun, centered it on the Patrolman's broad back, and his finger tightened on the firing stud.
He fired—and in the same split second that he fired, a great crimson hood flashed down over his head and body and tightened about his waist, pinning his arms to his sides.
Val Kenton screamed then, his cry reverberating into his ears as the monster, carnivorous flower tightened its grasp. He smelled the sickly sweet odor of the blossom, and giddiness tugged at his senses. His body surged again and again in a futile attempt to break the rubbery-like tension of the plant, fought agoniziedly when he felt the first exquisite agony of the digestive juice biting into his shoulder.
Then he was free, retching in the clean air, his body being helped erect by Tony Andrews' firm hands.
"Whew!" Tony Andrews breathed raggedly, "I thought you were a goner for a moment!"
Val Kenton straightened then, reading something in the clear eyes of his former friend that he had thought he would never see again in the eyes of any man. He fought the lump in his throat for seconds, then whirled.
"Let's get to the ship," he said. "It's foolish to try and do anything here."
They dodged down the path, the fetid odor of the pursuing protoplasm following them on the light wind. Val Kenton thought many things then, the thoughts racing through his mind with quicksilver-like speed. And in those flashing seconds, he found the answers to many things that he had refused to face in the past.
And then they were at the ship, and Elise was waiting at the port.
"Tony," she called, "Johnson can't make the adjustment; he needs your help."
Val Kenton caught the Patrolman's arm in a grip of steel. "Give me your coat and cap," he snapped, "and get into the pilot's seat." He swallowed heavily.
"Get Johnson into the control cabin with you. I'm going into the rear emergency port, and repair that jet. I don't know if the ship will carry all of us, but you've got to make the try. Do you understand?"
"Yes, but—" Tony Andrews began puzzledly.
"No time for talk," Val Kenton snapped. "I'll brace myself in that repair space, and tap when I'm ready. After that, it's up to you."
He shrugged into the Patrolman's coat and cap, straightened his shoulders in the familiar set of the coat.
He spun on one heel, went toward the emergency port, then retraced his steps. "Will you shake hands, Tony?" he asked.
A moment later, he climbed into the port, his eyes blurred because of his emotion at the warm pressure of Tony Andrews' hand. He squirmed into position, fought with the stubborn catalyst feed. Within seconds, he had it fixed. He drew a deep breath, then pounded the agreed signal on the metal bulkhead.
The Patrol cruiser staggered a bit in its upward flight, then fled for the clouds high over the water world. And at the moment of its takeoff, the monster blob of protoplasm burst through the surrounding trees, halted as though it knew its prey had escaped. Then it moved a bit, and a blind pseudopod came questing from its body.
Val Kenton watched it move toward him, and he waited its coming unflinchingly. He stood straight and proud, the Patrol cap cocked jauntily on his head, his shoulders square in the blue coat that bore the crossed comets of the Patrol Service.
He lit a cigarette, watched the protoplasm coming ever closer. He fired the last charge in his gun, laughed aloud at the instant withdrawal of the pseudopod.
He saluted gravely, as he had done years before. Then, the cigarette canted in firm lips, he went forward—a Captain in the Space Patrol moving forward, never backward, facing danger as tradition demanded.