Abruptly the wind-carved, rust-colored hills came to an end. The
highway curved slightly and reached out toward the horizon. But the
horizon was not, now, a mere unending expanse of dunes and desert.
A bare few miles distant, the desert was white. There were no dunes.
A vast, vast flat mass of nothing-in-particular, not even raising the
level of the ground, reached away and away to this world's edge. It
looked remarkably like a space on which a light snowfall had descended,
shining in the sunlight until melting should come. The towers of the
city in the midst of it also were shimmering white.
But it all was not a completely quiescent whiteness. There were
ripplings in it. A pinnacle rose abruptly, and Borden backed the
vehicle fiercely as the pinnacle formed a cuplike end of gigantic size,
and the interior of that cup turned silvery.
The rust-colored hills blotted out just as a beam of purest flame
licked from it to the spot where the ground car had been the moment
before. Rocks split and crackled in the heat.
The beam faded. The light vanished.
"So," said Borden matter-of-factly, continuing what he had been saying,
as if there had been no interruption, "as long as Sattell is at large,
why, we have to kill that 'thing.' I think I know how to do it. With a
little overload, I believe that walkie-talkie will do the trick. You
see, the 'thing' is terrifically vulnerable, now. It has conquered this
planet. It was irresistible. Nothing could stand against it. So it will
be easy to kill."
But in that opinion, Borden was mistaken. Living creatures moving
toward the white spot should have had no reason to be suspicious.
Traveling at high speed along the highway, they should have continued
at high speed to the very border of the white spot, at least. More
probably they should have entered the white-covered area filled
with a mild curiosity as to what made it so white. And of course
the white spot--the horror, the protaean protoplasm of which it was
composed--would have engulfed them. But the car stopped. And the white
spot _was_ intelligent.
* * * * *
Twenty minutes after the first crackling impact of a heat-beam in the
valley, Borden was out of the ground car and moving carefully to peer
around a rocky column at the white spot.
Its appearance had changed. There was a rise in the ground level at
the edge of the white spot now. The stuff which was the creature
itself--which Ellen had aptly called a living jelly--had flowed
from other places to form a hillock there. Borden regarded it with
suspicion. Obviously, it could send out pseudopods. Amoebae can do
that, and he had just seen this thing form a sun-ray projector of
itself.
But Borden was not aware of the possibilities of a really protaean
substance to take any form it desires.
He saw the pseudopod start out. He was astounded. It did not thrust
out. The hillock, the raised-up ground level, suddenly sped out along
the highway with an incredible swiftness. He regarded it with a shock
that was almost paralyzing.
But not quite. He fled to the car, leaped into it, and sent it racing
down the highway at the topmost speed he could coax from it. His face
was gray and sweating. His hands shook.