So sugar-plum went ahead, and I stalked out of the room. I went to my own turret and tried to read a magazine, but I couldn't get interested in the hokey adventures of a Patrolman on Io when I was buried alive in cosmic goo myself. So I fiddled with the dials again for a while. No soap. So pretty soon I got up and looked in my auxiliary cabinet. My Ampie was curled in inside, pale blue and shot full of tiny red sparks, sucking contentedly on an old-flashlight battery. I put on my rubber gloves. I went down to the engine loft.
Ampies live on energy. And Larkin had said the gelatinous mass engulfing us was at least partially composed of energy. Which made what I did seem, to me, quite logical. I pressed the button that extends the lug-sails of a freighter, heard the machinery creak into motion, lifted my Ampie out of its lead-foil container, and shoved it through the widening vent. Then I waited for things to happen.
They did happen! But not what I had expected. I had expected to see the Ampie gnaw a hole through that dough like a St. Bernard working out on a T-bone, rare. But instead, the Ampie touched one shimmering feeler to the mass of gray matter, hummed, sparked, and rolled backward across the room!
I said, "Aw, damn! He was right!" and started to close the lug-vent. But—
It wouldn't close! Because the writhing stickiness was welling into the ship with incredible, fluid swiftness. A heavy, saccharine stench was in the air. Gray streamers fingered toward me. I yelped, slammed tight the engine loft door, and raced for the control turret.
In the middle of the control turret I waited for my breath to catch up with me. Larkin spoke subconsciously from the depths of a deep ponder. "Shh!" he said.
"Shh!" repeated Lorraine. "He's thinking."
"Then tell him to think about pancakes!" I howled. "Because there's a shipful of gray molasses following me up the corridor!"
Larkin started. "What's that?"