In the same instant a chill, moist, odorous Something spewed onto the back of Dane's neck and shoulders; another pseudopod, moving in while the first held his attention.
With a wild yell, Dane lunged for the ladder; tried to claw his way up it.
But the pseudopod clung to him like some loathesome growth, part of him. Before he could tear free of it, the living wall about him swept in, a tide of protoplasm that in seconds mired him to the ankles ... the knees ... the waist....
Dane shrieked aloud. New strength flooded through him, born of sheer terror. Frantically, he lashed out with the yat-stick, flailing this way and that at the encroaching extraterrestial horror that any moment now might swallow him completely.
But to no avail. Here and there where he struck, the monster's jelly-like tissue quivered a little under impact. That was all.
And still it oozed higher about him. It was to his chest now. His armpits.
Abruptly, Dane stopped flailing. What was the point of it, as things stood now? The best he could hope for was a quick and easy death.
Yet what a place to die, after all his efforts! Here, sealed away in a spaceship's bem-tank! Chances were no one would ever so much as find his body, nor any clue as to what had happened to him.
Which would be a joke of sorts on Pfaff ... something to try to account for to Nelva Guthrie and his own superiors.
No doubt it would baffle the other man too, Dane decided—the Being-Without-A-Name, the mind-talker who'd spent so much time and effort trying to force subservience upon him.