Then there were bright gleams in the visiplate, and Johnny, accompanied by three or four not-at-all eager sailors, entered the corridor. As he passed the visiplate, he looked up and grinned at us, nodded encouragingly. Then he ducked into one of the storage bins. He came out staggering under the load of a heavy, wooden crate. He began ripping the top off this frantically, motioned his assistants to get other similar boxes from the bin and open them. They did so, but one look at their pans told us they didn't like this business nohow! Finally he had the box open. He tore out a portion of the contents. And-- "Has he gone nuts?" raged Bowman. "That's only that medical junk for Mars! That zy-something extract!" Johnny made it perfectly clear what he was trying to do. He wrenched the cap off one bottle--and deliberately poured the contents into the nearest pseudopod of the matter now approaching within scant feet of him. Then another bottle; tossed into the mass this time. And another. And another. Lorraine screamed suddenly, "Daddy, look! He's trapped! Behind him!" She was right. From another cross-corridor had rolled more of the Caltechian effluvium. It formed a solid barrier through which Johnny and his co-workers could not now escape. They could move neither forward nor backward. In a few minutes the two sluggish tentacles of the syrupy monster would meet. And then-- I said, "Skipper, you'd better turn off the plate." Bowman nodded. He reached toward the button. Closer and closer, now. In seconds the two walls of matter would coalesce. The sailors had seen their peril. We couldn't hear their voices, but they were apparently pleading with Johnny to let them take refuge in the one, so far untouched, storage vault; seal that door. And he had refused. He was forcing them to hold their ground. All four of them, like himself, were desperately ripping corks from bottles, scattering the medical export into the substance closing in on them. And then one man slipped! His foot flew from under him, was avidly seized by a tentacle of that slimy mass. His eyes and mouth opened wide; I knew he was screaming. Larkin stepped forward to grasp his shoulders. The skipper hoarsed, "Look out, son! Behind you!" It happened all at once. One minute there were two towering walls of fleshy matter surging inexorably down upon the trapped quintet, and the next instant-- The walls collapsed! Just like that! Collapsed into running streams of blotched liquid scum. The sailor's leg slipped free. Johnny toppled over backward into the slippery puddle. A foolish look spread over his face. A look that was mirrored in the faces of his associates. His eyes rolled. He goggled up into the visiplate, kissed his fingers to us, and--and hiccuped! His lips formed a syllable. The syllable was, "_Wheeee!_" Bowman's shaking fingers sought his jowls. He cried, "My God, he--he's--" "He's what, Daddy? What?" "He's as boiled," roared Bowman, "as an owl!"