"Microscope my left foot! Those things are real! They're dangerous! They're the lowest form of life, but what happened is probably that they couldn't develop into any higher forms on this cold planet, so they simply grew to gigantic size. Let's get out of here."
He took off in a long soaring step that carried him jerkily six feet through the water, Jake following. They had progressed perhaps three leaps, when the engineer's voice was suddenly loud inside Adam's helmet—"Look! On the left there!"
Adam checked himself in mid-leap and saw a dark figure in the green gloom of the undersea world, with one of the giant amoebas swooping toward it. "A man!" came Jake's voice. "It's attacking one of the crew. Stand still you, we're coming!"
There was no answer; the other diver only put up his arms to ward the thing off, and they saw his hands were empty, weaponless. Another leaping step carried them almost within reach of the hideous thing that at the first touch of the other diver's hands had suddenly formed itself into the huge ingestion funnel. Adam swung his arm back to stab the amoeba with his explosive spear, but Jake's voice came through the earphones.
"Too close, Mr. Adam. He's right on top of that man; you'll blow him to pieces. Let me try to attract him away."
Jake was holding out the harmless end of the spear. He prodded the giant amoeba briskly, and he did so, the jelly-like creature again opened a huge funnel and swooped with a speed surprising for so large and formless an object. Jake dodged and flattened to the sea-bottom, shouting "Give it to him!"
