"So," said Borden matter-of-factly, continuing what he had been saying, as if there had been no interruption, "as long as Sattell is at large, why, we have to kill that 'thing.' I think I know how to do it. With a little overload, I believe that walkie-talkie will do the trick. You see, the 'thing' is terrifically vulnerable, now. It has conquered this planet. It was irresistible. Nothing could stand against it. So it will be easy to kill."
But in that opinion, Borden was mistaken. Living creatures moving toward the white spot should have had no reason to be suspicious. Traveling at high speed along the highway, they should have continued at high speed to the very border of the white spot, at least. More probably they should have entered the white-covered area filled with a mild curiosity as to what made it so white. And of course the white spot—the horror, the protaean protoplasm of which it was composed—would have engulfed them. But the car stopped. And the white spot was intelligent.
Twenty minutes after the first crackling impact of a heat-beam in the valley, Borden was out of the ground car and moving carefully to peer around a rocky column at the white spot.
Its appearance had changed. There was a rise in the ground level at the edge of the white spot now. The stuff which was the creature itself—which Ellen had aptly called a living jelly—had flowed from other places to form a hillock there. Borden regarded it with suspicion. Obviously, it could send out pseudopods. Amoebae can do that, and he had just seen this thing form a sun-ray projector of itself.
But Borden was not aware of the possibilities of a really protaean substance to take any form it desires.
He saw the pseudopod start out. He was astounded. It did not thrust out. The hillock, the raised-up ground level, suddenly sped out along the highway with an incredible swiftness. He regarded it with a shock that was almost paralyzing.
But not quite. He fled to the car, leaped into it, and sent it racing down the highway at the topmost speed he could coax from it. His face was gray and sweating. His hands shook.
Ellen gasped, "What, Dee? What's happened?"
"The beast," said Borden in an icy voice. "It's after us."