The Complete Fiction by Harry Walton

Author:Harry Walton [Walton, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-04-26T00:00:00+00:00

DAVE shouted hoarse encouragement. In one swift movement he was beside her, tugging at the glossy, inflexible coils. She made frantic efforts to reach the flame gun holstered at her side. He ripped his gun free an instant before leathery thongs curled about his ankles.

Flame spat and surged. Beneath it those ebony cables blistered but did not burn. Steadily he and the girl were drawn closer to the ghastly heart of the thing.

He held his fire. The tentacles were impervious to flame. The girl suddenly went limp, her feet at the edge of that frightful mouth. Despite Hilton’s hold about her waist, she was slowly being drawn downward.

Abruptly he scrambled nearer the pit, thrust his gun-arm down, and sprayed flame into the black heart of the thing. Grayish smoke spiraled up. The undulating fronds shrank and crumpled before the flame gun’s withering blast. A shudder ran along the black tentacles. Hilton kicked his feet free.

He lifted the girl and carried her into the ship. She was breathing regularly when he removed her helmet. After forcing a stimulant tablet between her teeth, he bathed her face and temples with cold water. Her eyes opened, but it took a moment before full awareness came to them.

“Stupid of me—to faint. I’m sorry I caused you—such annoyance.”

“If you’d kept your eyes in front of your feet,” he retorted, “it wouldn’t have been necessary.”

“You can be sure it won’t happen again.”

“I wish I could,” he answered savagely. “But if I know your kind, you’ll get out of one scrape and into another.

“If I get into any further trouble,” she stated, “please understand that I’ll get out of it alone or not at all.”

He grunted, slid open the air-lock door fiercely. When the outer port had clanged shut behind him, he strode angrily away. The Sun glowered just above the horizon. Whether it would sink lower, he didn’t know. Fortunately his actinic torch would provide light.

He tried it now. Its beam cut a swath of brilliance through long shadows of meteors and fungus growth, slashed through the pale forest, glinted from the hull of the girl’s ship, deep-sunk in dust.

A flicker of movement by the limp tentacles of the thing he had destroyed caught his eye—another of the creeping transparent patches. He watched in astonishment as it advanced through the rootlets that had defied his flame gun. Fragments fell apart behind it.

He picked one up and with his sheath-knife tried to cut it. The blade turned in his fingers, producing little more than a surface scratch. Yet the film had sliced through it readily.

Why not? Effective pressure increases as area decreases. Ordinary writing pressure on the point of a pencil—half a pound over an area one sixty-fourth of an inch square—amounts to over a ton per square inch. A thin blade cuts because it exerts pressure along a tiny area. The creeping transparency must be thinner than any knife-edge, perhaps as thin as a mono-molecular film. The interference bands seen when light struck it were proof of that.

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