The water was very dark, the color of bottle glass, splotched here and there with darker, purplish shadows. Far above her, Paulette could see the faint shimmering line of light that marked the space ship. It looked to be hundreds of feet above her. Five steps in any direction, she knew, would blot it out completely. She had no great fear of getting lost, as the compass guide at her belt was tuned to the ship's control compass and would always point to it. Somewhere down here in the dark around her Adam and Jake were also exploring the bottom. Although she couldn't see them, the thought gave her courage. She stepped tentatively forward. One—two—three—four—five—at each step floating a little before she came down. She could no longer see the faint, comfortable lights of the ship somewhere above her, and for a brief moment, panic tore at her throat. She fought it down. Silly! She peered around her, as though the thought of Jake and Adam would make them materialize. There! There they were. She could see them dimly, like shadows, to her left. She turned and walked as swiftly as she could in the direction. How Adam would laugh at her for her fears. What a little coward—. She stopped suddenly, and cold, clammy fingers of fear rippled along her spine. The dark shadow before her wasn't Adam or Jake! It was something tall and thin. Something that seemed alive, weaving back and forth, and about the same color as the water. It seemed about ten feet high and six inches through, and was made up of sections like a string of sausages. Then over to the right she saw more of them—a regular forest.
Like the snapping of a brittle icicle, the tension broke. They were plants. Some form of natural flora, swaying to and fro in the icy currents of that dark sea. She laughed hysterically, and relief flooded her, bathing her in perspiration. But the experience had nevertheless unnerved her. Coward or not, she decided she had had enough, and turned to find her way back to the ship. Then she saw it! Behind and a little above her. Something big, whiter than the color of the water, hovering, drifting. She tried to hurry. Tried to tell herself it was just another surprising but inanimate form of life to be found in this strange planet, but as she glanced back and up, she saw the thing was keeping perfect pace with her. Horrified, she watched as it settled slowly toward her. Huge. White. Hideously opaque. She couldn't move. She could only stand, rooted as in some frightful nightmare, staring with bursting eyes as the thing drifted gently toward her. Then panic took her. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came from her strangling throat, and her tongue clove tightly to the roof of her mouth. She put her arms up, like a child trying to push aside a horrible dream. Her hands touched a soft, white pulpy body. Touched it, then to her utter horror passed through into the body itself! They were gripped in that opaque substance. And still the thing settled lower, like a great hideous, white cloak. It would cover her completely. Absorb her. As it had absorbed her hands. As it was even now absorbing her wrists—her arms....
Adam and Jake Burchall had set out with the idea of tracing a circle of some 300 yards around the ship. In spite of the weak gravity, the pressure was against them, and at each long, floating step they paused while Adam probed into the silt of the ocean floor with a long rod. Rock surface was only inches down; what kind of rock he could not tell. At each step they encountered the same sausage-like chain-weeds Paulette had met, and twice Adam attempted to pull up one of the singular Plutonian plants, only to find it breaking into sections at a touch.
"I suspect," said Adam through his phone, "that these are some very low form of life. Look how they break along the joint, Jake. They probably reproduce in that fashion, breaking off to form an entirely new plant."
"Funny we haven't seen any other form of life."
"Yes. It would be more usual to find a couple of hundred on an ocean floor like this."
A surge in the water round them nearly swept the explorers from their feet. Adam looked up. Scarcely ten feet above him, a huge brownish globe shot past, twice his own height, its smooth surface studded with countless tiny arms that beat the water in unison. As he gazed at it, a paler, whitish mass soared through the twilight to leap on the brown globe, and twisting in each other's grip, they passed from sight.
Jake's gasp came through the earphones and then his giggle, "He—he—he, Mr. Adam, there's two more forms of life and we make another one, if we stay alive till we get back."
Another three steps, and they halted again at the sight of a shapeless, almost white mass looming through the fog of green ahead. It was alive; it moved, but flowing, rather than swimming, and as nearly as they could make out in the dimness was without eyes, mouth or visible organs of any kind, a huge, shapeless jelly. Adam reached for the rocket pistol at his belt, but Jake's eye had caught the motion and his voice came through the earphones, "Don't use that thing, Mr. Adam. It ain't—Holy catfish!"