It lingered in the opening as the stricken cloud sank slowly to the surface of the planetoid. Now the red stain had almost completely blotted out the normal white of the cloud and they saw that the thing was beginning to crumble where the cone-creature had emerged. It dissolved into a sort of dust leaving the cone-thing in much the same position it had been in before, with the single great eye staring up at the stars.
“I’ll be damned,” murmured Nick. “It must have poisoned the cloud. But why did the cloud try to eat it, then?”
“These creatures haven’t any intelligence at all, apparently,” explained Hartnett. “I’ve seen that happen any number of times. I’d say offhand that the cloud-mass is attracted by something in the cone-creature—perhaps that scorpion-thing it just ate, because the clouds can envelope them without danger. But the cone-creature is rather well developed as you saw.”
The light on the control board winked. Timbie picked up the phone. “It’s Marquis,” he said. “They’ve got the patch on the puncture and we’ll be able to go ahead shortly.”
“Okay,” said Nick. “Tell them to wink when all’s ready.” He turned to the others. “It doesn’t look as if we’ll make the equator.”
Hartnett smiled grimly. “Well, if we can’t get off, we can at least gather some valuable data here on such things as the Doppler effect, the Lorentz-Fitzgerald contraction effect, the Einstein effect——”
“Hey!” burst in Dorothy, “did you say Einstein?”
“That’s right. This will be the first opportunity anyone’s ever had to get real observational data for primary sources.”
“Wait a minute,” she continued. “According to Einstein, there’s an increase in mass with an increase in speed, isn’t there?”