His eyes were adjusting to the pale grey light now. He could see better. He wished he couldn't. Because the thing that had brushed his hand ... the slimy, gelatinous thing that now was making the flesh crawl over every inch of his body ... was a monstrous, many-eyed, pseudopodal horror he couldn't even classify. But it could classify him, apparently; for already its amoeboid protrusions were eddying in close to his feet with tiny, obscene sucking noises. Heart pounding, blood chilling, Dane gripped the yat-stick till his knuckles ached. At last--at last he knew why that hatch-lid overhead had been painted such a vivid scarlet. It led into the spaceship's bem-tank! CHAPTER III Even as the realization of where he stood at last burst upon Dane with full, nerve-shattering force, the creature confronting him moved forward, closing in about him in a half-moon arc that reached from wall to wall. How large it was, Dane could only guess, for it extended farther into the dimness than he could see, piling up in great, semi-transparent folds almost as high as his head in places, like some monstrous, shapeless jellyfish speckled with eye-spots. Now, while Dane watched, rigid, the creature put forth another pseudopod. Stickily, the protuberance crept along the metal tank-wall, closer and closer. A trickle of icy sweat rilled down Dane's spine. Numb, shallow-breathed, he drew back from the advancing tentacle of protoplasm. In the same instant a chill, moist, odorous Something spewed onto the back of Dane's neck and shoulders; another pseudopod, moving in while the first held his attention. With a wild yell, Dane lunged for the ladder; tried to claw his way up it. But the pseudopod clung to him like some loathesome growth, part of him. Before he could tear free of it, the living wall about him swept in, a tide of protoplasm that in seconds mired him to the ankles ... the knees ... the waist.... Dane shrieked aloud. New strength flooded through him, born of sheer terror. Frantically, he lashed out with the yat-stick, flailing this way and that at the encroaching extraterrestial horror that any moment now might swallow him completely. But to no avail. Here and there where he struck, the monster's jelly-like tissue quivered a little under impact. That was all. And still it oozed higher about him. It was to his chest now. His armpits. Abruptly, Dane stopped flailing. What was the point of it, as things stood now? The best he could hope for was a quick and easy death. Yet what a place to die, after all his efforts! Here, sealed away in a spaceship's bem-tank! Chances were no one would ever so much as find his body, nor any clue as to what had happened to him. Which would be a joke of sorts on Pfaff ... something to try to account for to Nelva Guthrie and his own superiors.