"No germs. No dust. Why--that means there's no disease in this place! No disease." He began to laugh, then caught himself. "No disease," he whispered, "and every one of us is going to die of cancer." Mussdorf came up through the trap and passed out the sun-blasters. They buckled them around their waists while Mussdorf swung the bolts of the door. He threw it open, and clean air, and faint tendrils of whitish mist came swirling into the ship. Nichols took a deep breath and his boyish face split with a grin. "I feel like a kid again on a Spring day back on Earth. You know, with a ball and a glove under your arm, with the sun beating down on you, swinging a bat and whistling. You felt good. You were young. Young! I feel like that now." They grinned and went through the door, dropping to the street. They turned. It was coming across the square, flowing along on vast black tentacles towering over twenty feet high, with a great torso seemingly sculpted out of living black marble. A head that held ten staring eyes looked down at them. Six arms thrust out of the torso, moving like tentacles, fringed with cilia thick as fingers. "Lord," whispered Mussdorf. "What is it?" "Don't know," said Emerson. "Maybe it's friendly--" "Friendly?" queried Mussdorf harshly. "_That_ doesn't know the meaning of the word! I'm going to let it taste a blast--" His hand dove for the sun-blaster in his holster; yanked it free and upward, firing brilliant yellow jets as he jerked the trigger. "Look _out_!" yelled Emerson. The thing twisted sideways with an eerie grace, dodging the amber beams of solar power that sizzled past its bulbous head. As it moved, its tentacled arms and legs slithered out with unthinkable rapidity, fell and wrapped around Mussdorf. The big Earthman was lifted high into the air, squeezed until his lungs nearly collapsed. He hung limp in a gigantic tentacle as Emerson ran to one side, trying for a shot without hitting Mussdorf. But the thing was diabolically clever. It held Mussdorf aloft, between itself and Emerson, while its other arms stabbed out at Gunn and Nichols, catching them up and shaking them as a terrier shakes a rat. "Hold on," called Emerson, dodging and twisting, gun in hand, seeking a spot to fire at. The thing dropped the Earthmen suddenly; its legs gathered beneath it and launched it full at Emerson. Caught off guard, the Earthman lifted his sun-blaster--felt it ripped from his fingers, knew a hard blackness thrashing down at him. He went backwards, sickened.... * * * * * Irgi stared at the things that lay on the white flagging. Queer beings they were, unlike anything Irgi had ever conceived. Only two legs, only two arms. And such weak little limbs! Why, an Urgian cat would make short work of them if an Urgian cat existed any more, and Irgi had never rated cats very highly.