Gnossos and Hurkos stepped behind him, moving toward the control cabin. Aiming for the center of the mass, Sam pulled the trigger. Blue lightning flashed outward, sparkling, and illuminated the passageway like a small sun going nova. Despite the light, there was no heat. In fact, the flame seemed to radiate coolness. It struck the jelly, sank into it. There was something like a scream from the writhing slop, though the sounds were most certainly not a voice. It was as if the very molecules of the mass had closed gaps and were rubbing one another. The jelly stopped.
Sam, trembling, released the trigger, started to let air out of his lungs.
And the jelly leaped!
He fired, caught it in mid-jump, sent it crashing backward, blue fire coursing through it like contained lightning flashing in a crystal paperweight. He aimed again, depressed the firing stud.
Nothing.
Nothing!
No blue, shimmering flame. No cool but deadly flame. Not even a lousy click! He raised the weapon to look at it, to see if some latch or bolt had not been thrown properly by the automatic mechanism. Then he saw the amber goo beginning to pulse out of the tip of the barrel. Suddenly his hand was burning furiously and there was amoeba slopping out of the powerpack casing inside the handle. He threw the gun down, wiped his hand on the wall, scraping his skin loose in the mad attempt to rid himself of every drop of the jelly.
“Explosives!” Gnossos shouted.
Sam turned, dashed into the armory once more. When he came out, he had three grenades. He ran to Gnossos and Hurkos, panting heavily, his eyes wide, his heart furious as a drum.
The jelly-mass was recovering and had slopped into the hall where it joined up with the smaller clump of stuff that had been the insides of the gun. The two touched each other, glowed purple where their surfaces met, then easily flowed together and became one.
“I think I see why the radio didn’t work,” Gnossos said. “It didn’t want to work!”
“The entire ship is alive,” Sam agreed.
Hurkos rapped a hand on the wall, listened to the solid sound of it. “It’s steel. I’ll be damned if it is anything but steel!”
“Inside,” Sam said, keeping an eye on the pulsating jelly-mass at the end of the passageway. “Deep inside the plating, there’s more goo.”
“But the hyperdrive—”
“There mustn’t really be a hyperdrive mechanism,” Sam said. “The jelly can build up a hyperspace field somehow. There are no machines aboard, I’d wager. Only jelly-cored shells.”
“Your fear of machines—” Hurkos began.
“Was gained from whoever — or whatever — built this… this ship-thing.”
The lump had begun to move again, pseudopods slapping wetly against the deck. It was six feet high, a good three hundred pounds.
“You two get into the suits,” Gnossos said, taking the grenades. He still had his own suit on, and his helmet lay within easy reach. “We’ll have to go across to my ship. This one won’t let us live long now that we know part of its secret.”
Sam and Hurkos struggled into their suits, fitted their helmets to the shoulder threads, attached their air tanks. Every little act, though performed at top speed, seemed to take hours. When they were dressed, Gnossos pulled the hatch shut, sealing the main cabin from the hallway where the thing was advancing warily. “Let’s see it get through that!” the poet said, putting on his helmet. “Now let’s get out of here.”
“I’m afraid there isn’t much hope of that,” Sam said from his position next to the control console. “I’ve pressed all buttons to depressurize the cabin and open the exit chamber, but I can’t seem to get any response from the ship.”
Hurkos, eyes wide, jumped to the console, flipped the comline to the computer open. “Let us out!”
But the computer was not a computer. There was a deafening roar from the wire and plastic voice plate. There were screams, thunders, explosions. A thousand rats burning alive. A million sparrows madly attacking one another in a battle to the death.
“Shut it off!” Gnossos shouted.
Hurkos slammed the switch shut. The noises continued. At first, it swept out in irregular waves, shredded them and put them back together. Then there was not even a pattern of waves, merely a constant din of overwhelming magnitude. And there was jelly spewing out of the speaker grid…
Jelly spewing out of the jack-holes…
Abruptly, the speaker grid was gone, thrust away by the surging pressure of the thing behind it. Parts of the console began to sag as the supportive jelly that had filled it was drained away, spat out.
Still the noise. “It’s the same sound,” Sam shouted into his suit phone, “that I heard when I was obeying the hypnotic orders — only it isn’t ordering anything.”
“The grenades!” Hurkos called above the roar as the jelly began to collect on the floor, changing from amber to pink-tan, rising in a pulsating mass. The other glob pressed against the hatch from the hallway. There was the screeching sound of metal being strained to its limits. Soon the hatch would give, and they would be trapped between two shapeless monsters. The jelly would cover them and do… whatever it did to flesh and blood and bone.
Gnossos flipped the cap that dissolved the anti-shock packing in the outer shell of the grenade. He tossed it. Nothing.
“The grenades are jelly too!” Hurkos shouted.
Sam snatched one of the remaining bulbs from the poet. “No. They aren’t machines, so there is no reason for the jelly to replace them with part of itself. It’s just a natural chemical that explodes without mechanical prompting. It just needs a jar. Gnossos didn’t throw it hard enough.” He wailed the second grenade against the viewplate.
All the world was a sun. A lightbulb. Then the filament began to die and the light went out completely. The force of the explosion had gone, mostly, outward. What had pressed in their direction had been caught by the second mass of jelly that rose to snatch at the grenade — unsuccessfully. Miraculously, they were tumbling through the shattered front of the ship, moving into the darkness and emptiness of space toward The Ship of the Soul, the poet’s boat that lay silently a short mile away.
Behind them, the jelly came, boiling away in the vacuum, tumbling and sputtering. Steaming, it lashed out with non-arms as it realized its chances for success were diminishing. The thunder of its non-voice was definitely not sound but thought. It bombarded their minds, unable to order them so quickly, unable to control them in their panic.
Hurkos was out ahead, his shoulder jets pushing him swiftly toward the ship’s portal. Then came the poet. Finally, Sam. A hand of false-flesh streaked around the latter, curled in front of him, attempting to cut him off from the others. Cut him off. Cut him off and devour him. He choked, maneuvered under the whip before it could sweep around and capture him in an acidic embrace.
And still it came. It grew smaller, boiled and bubbled itself away. But there seemed always to be a new central mass moving out from the hull, leaping the blackness and replenishing the withering pseudopods before they could snap, separate, and dissolve. Finally, however, there was nothing left except a speck of pinkish-tan. It turned amber-orange, then it too puffed out of existence. With it, went the noise.
Inside The Ship of the Soul, they stripped, collapsed into soft chairs without animate padding. This was a ship of comfort, not one of destruction. This was a ship built for six people, not for one man, one tool of an insane, unnamable entity without a face or a time. For a while, then, they were silent, composing themselves for what must be said. The moment the composing ended and the discussion began was signaled by a quiet suggestion from Gnossos that they get some wine to help loosen their tongues.