“Some parts inside the mouth might be a little more tractable,” Barlennan replied. “However, it would be easier for me to nip off pieces for you, if you’ll tell me the sizes and parts you want. Will that be all right, or do your scientific procedures demand that the samples be removed with metal instruments for some reason?”
“Not that I know of — thanks a lot; if the big boys don’t like it they can come down and do their own carving,” returned Lackland. “Go right ahead. Let’s follow your other suggestion, too, and get something from the mouth; I’m not really sure I’m through skin here.” He waddled painfully around the head of the stranded behemoth to a point where gravity-distorted lips had exposed teeth, gums, and what was presumably a tongue. “Just get bits small enough to go in these bottles without crowding.” The Earthman tentatively tried the scalpel once more, finding the tongue somewhat less obdurate than the earlier sample, while Barlennan obediently nipped off fragments of the desired size. An occasional piece found its way to his mouth — he was not really hungry, but this was fresh meat — but in spite of this drain the bottles were soon filled. ‘
Lackland straightened up, stowing the last of the containers as he did so, and cast a covetous glance at the pillarlike teeth. “I suppose it would take blasting gelatine to get one of those out,” he remarked rather sadly.
“What is that?” asked Barlennan.
“An explosive — a substance that changes into gas very suddenly, producing loud noise and shock. We use such material for digging, removing undesirable buildings or pieces of landscape, and sometimes in fighting.”
“Was that sound an explosive?” Barlennan asked.
For an instant Lackland made no answer. A boom of very respectable intensity, heard on a planet whose natives are ignorant of explosives and where no other member of the human race is present, can be rather disconcerting, especially when it picks such an incredibly apt time to happen; and to lay that Lackland was startled would be putting it mildly. He could not judge accurately the distance or size of the explosion, having heard it through Barlennan’s radio and his own sound discs at ‘the same time; but a distinctly unpleasant suspicion entered his mind after a second or two.
“It sounded very much like one,” he answered the Mesklin-ite’s question somewhat belatedly, even as he started to waddle back around the head of the dead sea monster to where he had left the tank. He rather dreaded what he would find. Barlennan, more curious than ever, followed by his more natural method of travel, crawling.
For an instant, as the tank came in sight, Lackland felt an overwhelming relief; but this changed to an equally profound shock as he reached the door of the vehicle.
What remained of the floor consisted of upcurled scraps