So sugar-plum went ahead, and I stalked out of the room. I went to my own turret and tried to read a magazine, but I couldn't get interested in the hokey adventures of a Patrolman on Io when I was buried alive in cosmic goo myself. So I fiddled with the dials again for a while. No soap. So pretty soon I got up and looked in my auxiliary cabinet. My Ampie was curled in inside, pale blue and shot full of tiny red sparks, sucking contentedly on an old-flashlight battery. I put on my rubber gloves. I went down to the engine loft. Ampies live on energy. And Larkin had said the gelatinous mass engulfing us was at least partially composed of energy. Which made what I did seem, to me, quite logical. I pressed the button that extends the lug-sails of a freighter, heard the machinery creak into motion, lifted my Ampie out of its lead-foil container, and shoved it through the widening vent. Then I waited for things to happen. * * * * * They did happen! But not what I had expected. I had expected to see the Ampie gnaw a hole through that dough like a St. Bernard working out on a T-bone, rare. But instead, the Ampie touched one shimmering feeler to the mass of gray matter, hummed, sparked, and rolled backward across the room! I said, "Aw, damn! He was right!" and started to close the lug-vent. But-- It wouldn't close! Because the writhing stickiness was welling into the ship with incredible, fluid swiftness. A heavy, saccharine stench was in the air. Gray streamers fingered toward me. I yelped, slammed tight the engine loft door, and raced for the control turret. In the middle of the control turret I waited for my breath to catch up with me. Larkin spoke subconsciously from the depths of a deep ponder. "Shh!" he said. "Shh!" repeated Lorraine. "He's thinking." "Then tell him to think about pancakes!" I howled. "Because there's a shipful of gray molasses following me up the corridor!" Larkin started. "What's that?" I told him. "--it looked like a good idea," I finished, "only it wasn't. Now the stuff's in, and I can't get it out again. It'll fill the whole damned ship--" But Cap Bowman is no dope. He had already sprung to the audio, was barking orders to other parts of the _Pegasus_. "Seal port and loft sections of the ship immediately. Lock emergency doors! Get all men into safe sectors!" Lorraine looked at me worriedly. "What--what is it, Sparks?" "Nothing much," I told her grimly, "except that I've just about killed us all. That stuff will ooze through every crack and crevice in the ship, swallow everything just like it swallowed the ship. That's probably what happened to those other explorers. There must have been one dope like me aboard each of them. With a bright idea that--I'm sorry, Mrs. Larkin. I've sure put the final touch on your happy honeymoon."