It came in erratic spurts. "The bubble is all blooming, sir. All around inside there are big yellow and purple growths. It started up above, and--and spread around. First there was just a clouding over of the sky, sir, and then--stalks shot out." For a moment Lawton felt as though all sanity had been squeezed from his brain. Twice he started to ask a question and thought better of it. Pumpings were superfluous when he could confirm Caldwell's statement in half a minute for himself. If Caldwell had cracked up-- Caldwell hadn't cracked. When Lawton walked to the quartz port and stared down all the blood drained from his face. The vegetation was luxuriant, and unearthly. Floating in the sky were serpentine tendrils as thick as a man's wrist, purplish flowers and ropy fungus growths. They twisted and writhed and shot out in all directions, creating a tangle immediately beneath him and curving up toward the ship amidst a welter of seed pods. He could see the seeds dropping--dropping from pods which reminded him of the darkly horned skate egg sheaths which he had collected in his boyhood from sea beaches at ebb tide. It was the _unwholesomeness_ of the vegetation which chiefly unnerved him. It looked dank, malarial. There were decaying patches on the fungus growths and a miasmal mist was descending from it toward the ship. The control room was completely still when he turned from the quartz port to meet Forrester's startled gaze. "Dave, what does it mean?" The question burst explosively from the captain's lips. "It means--life has appeared and evolved and grown rotten ripe inside the bubble, sir. All in the space of an hour or so." "But that's--_impossible_." Lawton shook his head. "It isn't at all, sir. We've had it drummed into us that evolution proceeds at a snailish pace, but what proof have we that it can't mutate with lightning-like rapidity? I've told you there are gases outside we can't even make in a chemical laboratory, molecular arrangements that are alien to earth." "But plants derive nourishment from the soil," interpolated Forrester. "I know. But if there are alien gases in the air the surface of the bubble must be reeking with unheard of chemicals. There may be compounds inside the bubble which have so sped up organic processes that a hundred million year cycle of mutations has been telescoped into an hour." Lawton was pacing the floor again. "It would be simpler to assume that seeds of existing plants became somehow caught up and imprisoned in the bubble. But the plants around us never existed on earth. I'm no botanist, but I know what the Congo has on tap, and the great rain forests of the Amazon." "Dave, if the growth continues it will fill the bubble. It will choke off all our air." "Don't you suppose I realize that? We've got to destroy that growth before it destroys us." * * * * *