"Remember that planet we struck on the first trip, that had an atmosphere composed mostly of gaseous chlorin? In our ignorance we assumed that life there was impossible, and didn't stop. Well, it may be just as well that we didn't. If we go back there, protected as we are with our rays and stuff, it wouldn't surprise me a bit to find life there, and lots of it—and I've got a hunch that it'll be a form of life that'd make your grandfather's whiskers curl right up into a ball!"
"You do get the weirdest ideas, Dick!" protested Dorothy. "I hope you aren't planning on exploring it, just to prove your point?"
"Never thought of it before. Can't do it now, anyway—got our hands full already. However, after we get this Fenachrone mess cleaned up we'll have to do just that little thing, won't we, Mart? As that intellectual guy said while he was insisting upon dematerializing us, 'Science demands it.'"
"By all means. We should be in a position to make contributions to science in fields as yet untouched. Most assuredly we shall investigate those points."
"Then they'll go alone, won't they, Peggy?"
"Absolutely! We've seen some pretty middling horrible things already, and if these two men of ours call the frightful things we have seen normal, and are planning on deliberately hunting up things that even they will consider monstrous, you and I most certainly shall stay at home!"
"Yeah? You say it easy. Bounce back, Peg, you've struck a rubber fence! Rufus, you red-headed little fraud, you know you wouldn't let me go to the corner store after a can of tobacco without insisting on tagging along!"
"You're a...." began Dorothy hotly, but broke off in amazement and gasped, "For Heaven's sake, what was that?"
"What was what? It missed me."
"It went right through you! It was a kind of funny little cloud, like smoke or something. It came right through the ceiling like a flash—went right through you and on down through the floor. There it comes back again!"