Durk scratched his chin reflectively. "Hmmm, guess we won't need to put
you in irons. You won't try to run away in all that white sand."
Between several of the crew Rawson climbed out of the space-port. He
jerked his crane-like body almost double as he bent into a heavy, hot
searing wind like a breath from hell.
Toward one side the white, slimy ooze pond stretched like an oily sheet
of death between the steep white cliffs that pitted it. It was about
five times the width of the space ship and lay utterly lifeless, yet
Rawson had a feeling of danger lurking beneath its surface.
* * * * *
Rawson was the third man in the single file that fought its way on the
slippery, glassy surface of the narrow neck of rock that lay at the tip
of a finger of morass pointing at the slimy pool.
"We're gonna keep yah in one of them caves over there." Durk pointed
beyond the line of cliffs that hemmed in the morass. In back of these,
as far as Rawson's eyes could see, stretched white, bleak sand dunes.
A strong odor of swamp came to Rawson's nose. Swamp gas. Mixed with it
was the alkaline taste of the sand that the hot wind drove into their
mouth, eyes and nose.
Rawson carefully balanced himself on the isthmus of rock and stared
with misgiving into the pool.
The crew man ahead of Rawson slipped.
He clutched wildly at Rawson, missed him, and rolled down the glassy
slope into the pool.
The ooze parted heavily, with effort, and then surrounded him like a
huge, sucking mouth.