"Where are you taking us now?" Praana asked.
"You shall see! I feel it is best that you understand fully what we have accomplished here, and it is only the beginning. Our plans are far-reaching!"
Far-reaching. Ric thought he knew what that meant, but he remained silent and watchful. A few miles further they entered a region of pallid, purplish vegetation. There were vast patches of it, acres wide, growing from the surface. And they saw the Phobians. Hundreds of these frail, pallid people were working listlessly into the growth, harvesting it, placing it in small fibroid carts to be hauled away.
"You asked about the nature of the spores," Kueelo said to Ric. "Touch it, then. I want you to see for yourself."
Ric examined it curiously. It grew in thick masses close to the stone, almost lichen-like. It was the strangest stuff he had ever seen. It seemed literally to crawl! Carefully he reached out a hand. A faint tingling, almost radioactive, went through his skin.
"Touch it with metal," Kueelo said.
Ric searched his pockets, found a small silver coin. Gingerly he extended it. When the metal was yet a few inches from the fungoid growth, it seemed to be snatched from his fingers! The growth reached swiftly upward at it, and the metal dissolved away. For a three foot radius the growth turned from the pallid purple to blood red ... seemed trying to tear itself from the stone. Ric could even feel a faint heat from it.
So this was Gorak's weapon! This was the stuff he had launched, somehow, upon Mars. It was diabolic ... and Ric could understand, now, how Mars had been devastated in a matter of weeks! Questions were pounding in his brain; but before he could speak, Kueelo was saying with supreme confidence:
"You wonder how we control it. We have only partially done that, by use of the new allotropic metal from Mercury. Under special processing in our atomic furnaces we have been able to strengthen the atomic structure of the Mercury metal, at least to the point where it will counter-act the spores temporarily. With that accomplished, it was a simple matter to propel them on robot-control across the short space to Mars."
"And upon landing there," Tal Horan's voice came fraught with hate, "the spores broke down the metal and were free to spread on Mars! It's diabolic!"