... For some time, he had experienced a growing sensation that he was being observed, that someone or something was behind him, watching. He closed his eyes. Space nerves. That's all it was. There was no one else in the SD-4. He was alone. And yet, the feeling persisted. He felt the small hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, and a cold shiver shook him. He had to turn around. He couldn't resist the impulse. Slowly, he opened his eyes and swiveled in his chair.
The floor in the corner where he had hung his space suit was alive! A spreading, pulsating jelly ... quivering in the half-light of the cabin. This was a living thing—growing.
For a moment, all he could do was sit and stare in hypnotic horror at the tremelloid monstrosity quaking in the corner. Even as he watched, another section of the floor was obscured by the viscous transparency.
He crouched against the instrument panel and drew his disinteray. Fighting down the sick, panic that swelled in his throat, he fired, time after time, into the undulating, pulpy mass on the floor. The impact had no visible effect. Still he could see it growing ... spilling with soft, slobbery noises across the ship toward him.
Frantically, he threw up a temporary barricade between himself and the Thing: some filing cabinets, a desk, an up-ended chair. Perhaps that would check its terrible, oozing progress for a little while.
At the instrument panel, he checked his position. With a little luck, he might reach Terra before the thing got through to him. It depended on how rapidly it was growing. As he strained to hear, a sort of sucking sound came from it now as it worked behind the barricade.