"Veer away," gasped Nick. "We don't want to be tumbled into that chasm."
Timbie's fingers darted over the controls, and they were lurched sidewise as the Columbia went off at a tangent to their former course. The bewilderment of what they had just seen still lay upon them; their minds were numb with the incredibility of it.
Dorothy's eyes met Nick's. "Are we dead?" she whispered. "Were we all killed in that collision and is this but the last flickers of my consciousness?"
"I was wondering that, too," came Nick's voice over the space-phones. "But it couldn't be so if it occurred to you, too. There's some simple explanation for all this, but for the life of me, I can't think what it is."
"Oh-oh," said Timbie. "More fireworks!"
BEFORE them loomed a vast cliff wall, so high that they could not see its top. It had not been there an instant before. Somehow, they could not feel the horror of a few moments back, yet they braced themselves again for a shock.
A sudden jolt wrenched them away from the stanchions; the ship came to a stop as a warning light flickered ominously on the control board. Yet, as they picked themselves up, the cliff had disappeared; it was not behind them, and before them stretched the familiar surface of Hastur, above them the velvet of space, flecked with pinpricks of light.
"A puncture!" cried Nick. He grabbed the speaker.
"Nick," came the voice of Marquis. "There's a hole about the size of a soup plate in sector seven. Don't worry; we'll be sealing it off directly, and we've locked it off. Call you back when it's done."
"Okay, be careful."
He turned to the others. "We'll be on our way shortly. Anybody see that pit we turned off our course to avoid?"
"It's gone, Nick," said Hartnett, "but the show's still on." He nodded toward the port.
Something was coming over the horizon, something that looked partly like an arm, and partly like a molten river. It was both a flow and a wriggling, and, as they watched, another glowing thing snaked up from behind the distant ridges. This second thing went straight up into the sky, curving out as if looking for something upon which to swoop.
And now the main body of the thing began to be visible. It was vaguely conical, with the apex inverted, the arms of it issuing forth from the sides. A single glowing eye bulged from the top.
"It looks nasty," said Nick, "but I don't think it's very powerful." "It might bang us up a bit, though," added Timbie.
"The beastie is after something. Look at the way those three arms are swishing around."
The thing was virtually monochrome except for the jet black of the single etye. The arms were flailing in the general direction of the ship, coming closer with each east. But apparently it had not reached them yet.
"Do you suppose it can't see well?" asked Dorothy.
Before anyone could answer her the creature had already acted. For caught now in one of the brilliant arms was a flattish many-legged thing, looking more like a centipede than anything else. It had a barbed tail like a scorpion, and was writhing and trying to spear the other desperately. But the hunter had calculated well and encircled its prey in such a manner that the barb could not reach it. Closer to the brilliant body the struggling thing was borne, then a slit appeared in the side of the victor, and a deep red orifice grew. The flattish creature was popped into this; the cavity closed with a snap and again the shell of brilliant cone-thing seemed to be unbroken.
"Nice fauna here," remarked Nick. "Did your party ever meet up with that beauty?"
Hartnett grinned. "In a way. But watch closely, now. There's more to come."
The bright cone rested motionless on the ridge, two of its three arms lying motionless. They couldn't see the third, but supposed that it, too, was at rest. Unwinking, the huge eyes stared apparently upward.
But off in another direction what looked like a cloud was approaching. It drifted easily, dropping to the surface now and then and lazing along for a while, then rising up again. The size of it made them gasp. It seemed to be larger than the Columbia.
Now the cone-thing was aware of its approach and the bright arms was in play again. Like a fisherman casting after trout, the arms threw out. The cloud came on until it hovered over the cone-creature, then suddenly it dropped down enveloping it. An instant later it rose and the cone-creature was gone; the whitish cloud started to drift away.
But something was wrong. It didn't move as easily as it had done before; it lurched in a distressed manner.
"What's wrong with it?" murmured Nick.
"Look, it's changing color," cried Dorothy.
A rusty stain had suddenly appeared in the cloud. Before their eyes it grew rapidly, the core of it an angry red, the spreading stain rust. The cloud-thing rose up slowly, but the red spot grew. And as they watched, a bulge appeared in the red, grew like a blister and finally burst. From the cavity the brilliant arms of the cone-thing appeared, followed by the rest of the creature.
It lingered in the opening as the stricken cloud sank slowly to the surface of the planetoid. Now the red stain had almost completely blotted out the normal white of the cloud and they saw that the thing was beginning to crumble where the cone-creature had emerged. It dissolved into a sort of dust leaving the cone-thing in much the same position it had been in before, with the single great eye staring up at the stars.
"I'll be damned," murmured Nick. "It must have poisoned the cloud. But why did the cloud try to eat it, then?"
"These creatures haven't any intelligence at all, apparently," explained Hartnett. "I've seen that happen any number of times. I'd say offhand that the cloud-mass is attracted by something in the cone-creature—perhaps that scorpion-thing it just ate, because the clouds can envelope them without danger. But the cone-creature is rather well developed as you saw."
THE light on the control board winked. Timbie picked up the phone. "It's Marquis," he said. "They've got the patch on the puncture and we'll be able to go ahead shortly."
"Okay," said Nick. "Tell them to wink when all's ready." He turned to the others. "It doesn't look as if we'll make the equator."
Hartnett smiled grimly. "Well, if we can't get off, we can at least gather some valuable data here on such things as the Doppler effect, the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction effect, the Einstein effect—"
"Hey!" burst in Dorothy, "did you say Einstein?"
"That's right. This will be the first opportunity anyone's ever had to get real observational data for primary sources."
"Wait a minute," she continued. "According to Einstein, there's an increase in mass with an increase in speed, isn't there?"
"Correct, but why get so excited about it?"
"Lots of reasons, Nick. We're dopes, that's why. There's no sense in our going to the equator; our mass would be so terrific there that we could never get off.
"But, if there's a point where the centrifugal force will throw us off, it's between here and the equator."
"She's right!" screamed Edgar. "And I'm a seventh order moron not to have thought of it myself. If such a point exists, we must be pretty close to it now."
The light flickered again. "All set," said Joe. "Get ready; we're moving."
Again they grasped the stanchions, their hearts hammering in hopeful anticipation. Now the effect that Timbie had mentioned was painfully apparent. They saw him press the firing button, counted beneath their breath as they waited for the light which would indicate that the rocket had fired correctly—ordinarily, that light flicked so soon after the button was pressed that it appeared simultaneous—then braced themselves for a spurt ahead.
When it came the scene outside had altered again. Now the entire topography of Hastur seemed to be a vast concavity and they were climbing up the rim of the great cup. Ahead of them strange wrinkles appeared in the surface which became normal again as they approached nearer; behind them, the planetoid had become an incline sloping down to the edge where the great globes of stars wheeled in the abyss.