Mallory climbed swiftly into his space-suit. Its weight disappeared as he touched the grav control button; the heat which had begun to oppress him fled, too, when he closed the face-port. He touched Lane's shoulder, thrust the remaining bulger at him.
"I'll hold them while you get into it!"
And he did. It was an unequal battle, though. The proto-balls were the next thing to imperishable. The needle-gun could not destroy them, it only slowed them down. An occasional perfect bull's-eye shot, striking a vulnerable spot, would burst a proto-ball into a thousand pieces—but when that happened, each of the pieces, amoeba-like, curled instantly into a tiny daughter proto-ball and surged forward again.
Yet there must have been some elementary nervous-system in these creatures, for while it could not kill them, still they seemed to fear the flaming ray of the needle-gun. And it was to this fear that the trio of Earthlings owed their existence during those next hectic minutes while they stumbled, ever backward and upward, giving ground steadily, toward the cave-mouth Captain Lane had pointed out on the hillside.
Tim did not even know the cave was near. Shoulder to shoulder with the old space-captain, he maintained a rear-guard defense against the proto-balls, gun flaming without cessation, his eyes aching from the strain of constant watchfulness against an unexpected flank attack. And then—
And then, suddenly, incredibly, a shadow fell under his stumbling feet; at that line of division between glowing sun and somber shade the proto-balls stopped, quivering and oozing viscous droplets of slime, hesitated, and turned away.
Lane's roar was gleeful. "Good work, young fellow! We made it!"
They were safe in the black harbor of the cave.
When he turned to stare into the depths beyond him, at first he could see nothing but a great orange ball, which was his photo-image of the dazzling sunlight whence they had fled. Then tortured nerves surrendered to the soothing dark and he could see that they stood at the mouth of not a cave but a great, many-corridored cavern that stretched—for all Mallory could tell—clear down into the murky bowels of Venus.