They were startled into silence by a hoarse, strangled scream that came from outside the laboratory. "Help! Help!" someone repeated in a panicky voice--a voice which at once ended on a gurgled note of despair. "It's Kelly!" Bart whispered. "He's come back. Something's happened to him." He started for the open door. "Wait a minute. It may be a trick to get us outside where he can pop us off." "No, it isn't. For God's sake, look!" Bart had reached the door and was pointing at the ground with shaking forefinger. * * * * * The entire clearing seemed to be alive with wriggling things--long rubbery tentacles that crawled along the ground, reaching curling ends high in the air and had even started climbing the trees at the edge of the clearing. Blood red they were, and partially transparent in the light of the setting sun; growing things, attached by their thick ends to swelling mounds of red that seemed anchored to the ground. Translucent stalks rose from the mounds and sprouted huge buds that burst and blossomed into flaming flowers a foot in diameter, then withered and went to seed in a moment of time. But always the weaving tendrils shot forth with lightning speed, reaching and feeling their uncanny way along the ground and over tree stumps into the woods. One of them emerged from a hollow stump with its slender end coiled around the tiny body of a chattering gray squirrel. "The moon flowers!" Van cried. "What do you mean--moon flowers?" "Dried seed pods. They came over into the bowl, and Kelly threw them out. Now look at the damned things. They're alive!" Kelly's voice came to them once more from behind the barrier of rapidly growing vegetation. "Help!" he screeched. "I'll give back the diamonds--anything! Only get me away from the things!" "Ought to let 'em get him," Van growled. Bart shivered. "Too horrible, Van. Got an ax or anything?" "There's a hatchet around back. Maybe we can--" * * * * * But the young broker had scuttled around the corner of the building and Van looked after him anxiously. The vile red tendrils were reaching for the east wall of the laboratory, and he saw that their inner surfaces were covered with tiny suckers like those on the arms of a devil-fish. Carnivorous plants, undoubtedly, these awful half-animal, half-vegetable things whose seed had been transported across a quarter million miles of space. Man eaters! Deadly, and growing with incredible speed. Even the short-lived flowers were fearsome, as they opened their scarlet pansy-like faces and stared a moment before they folded up and shriveled into the seed cases like those that had materialized in the crystal bowl.