"I can't. If I stand still long enough to manipulate the lock, these
stones will get me. Burt--"
"I'm coming!"
He switched on his equalizer and Johnny's, and still holding the boy
under one arm, he plunged across the rock. Something reached up and
tripped him, and he sprawled out flat. He had fallen over a small
out-cropping of rock--where no out-cropping had been before.
He got up, and then he reached the Pacemaker. He pushed Johnny in front
of him, and the boy stood with his sister. Marcia looked up:
"How are we going to get inside, Burt?"
"You just open the lock. Come on, now."
She turned her back and went to work on the dials. Burt stood there,
waiting for the stones that would come, hunching himself over, trying
to cover the three of them--
No stones came.
Instead, he heard an ominous cracking sound, a rumbling....
Off where the spongy ground joined the hard rock a crack appeared.
It was small, but it grew. And it moved. It snaked along the ground,
slowly, twisting, heading for the ship. Now it was half as wide as
Johnny's body, and now it was wider.
Burt pushed Marcia away and attacked the lock with clumsy fingers.
His hand trembled, but Marcia huddled against the side of the hull,
sobbing, and he knew she could not have handled the dials in time.
_Three around and then four over: damn it, there's the blue light, but
he still needed the white and red. Five around and one over--ah, the
white! Two around and six over--red, white, and blue!_
He pushed Johnny and Joan in front of him, then he grabbed Marcia
around the waist and hurled her inside. The crack was half as wide as
the Pacemaker now, rumbling, churning--and growing.
He ran to the controls and he kicked the engine over. He felt the
ship poise on the brink, as he had seen the Havelock do before it had
plunged within a similar hole. He felt the ship totter, and then he
fired the studs for all the aft rockets at once. The ship roared once
and he was shoved back hard in his seat. Then they hurtled furiously
sky-ward.
* * * * *
Below them now, the planetoid was a writhing, twisting mass, shooting
pulpy tentacles miles into space, groping for them, seeking. But they
were out of reach. Burt circled a few times, watching the stone globe
which now was a living entity.
Behind him, Marcia watched too. "It's--alive," she said.
"Yes. Sleeping when we arrived, but it's alive now. Twenty years ago it
ate the people of that Havelock, and then it became sluggish. Evidently
it does not need much food, for all its vast bulk. It became sluggish
and it slept, and when we landed we stirred it and it finished the job
on that Havelock. Then it wanted us...."
"But _alive_?"
"Why not?" Burt said. "Part plant, part animal, it's warm with its own
life. It breathes slowly, holding the thin atmosphere to its body,
growing plants for photosynthesis when it needs oxygen, a perfectly
co-ordinated being."
"So big, Burt. It's so big."
"Sure. On Mars the native life is bigger than on earth. Why?"
"Why? I don't know."
"Because Mars has a weaker gravity pull, being smaller than the earth.
And here, out in space, there is no gravity to keep life down. A plant
grows and grows as long as it lives, unlike an animal. This huge
asteroid has been growing for ages, millions of years, maybe. What's to
stop it? No gravity pressing down. Perhaps it can live purely on the
mineral matter of the meteors which fall. Maybe it's only a seed, with
food-matter stored up inside. Who knows?"
* * * * *
Johnny and Joan came out from the galley. Joan said:
"Mama, I'm hungry."