Half a dozen of the bounding red beasts surged about his feet. Their weight drove his right leg forward. He staggered, caught at his balance. The lead cell above his head began to slip.
"Watch it, Scott!" Durval's voice cracked in his ears.
Straining every muscle against the queer weightlessness of no gravity, Scott struggled to regain his balance. He expected another blow at his legs as the cats leaped for the ore. It was hard to breathe the over-heated air of his suit.
But the cats had spun away. As he caught his balance, he stared after them, uncomprehending for an instant. The cats ran twisting in a somehow sinister dance. The bodies were queerly bloated. Down the upper portion of their bodies ran a heavy indentation. As they leaped and twisted, the indentation became a fissure, a crevice.
Then two of the beasts leaped, slammed together in mid-air. But more than two cats fell to the floor.
Their sharply angled bodies whisking back toward the depleted uranium cells, four cats appeared with shocking suddenness.
Reproduction. Elemental fission.
Scott had to clean them out, and fast. Soon the ship would be overrun with the energy-hungry felines.
He dashed toward the open hatch. Outside the opening, a great lead box, eight feet by eight feet, gaped upward. Beyond, four men tensely supported a vast lead cover.
"Is the uranium poured into the box?" he barked sharply.