"The moon flowers!" Van cried.
"What do you mean—moon flowers?"
"Dried seed pods. They came over into the bowl, and Kelly threw them out. Now look at the damned things. They're alive!"
Kelly's voice came to them once more from behind the barrier of rapidly growing vegetation. "Help!" he screeched. "I'll give back the diamonds—anything! Only get me away from the things!"
"Ought to let 'em get him," Van growled.
Bart shivered. "Too horrible, Van. Got an ax or anything?"
"There's a hatchet around back. Maybe we can—"
ut the young broker had scuttled around the corner of the building and Van looked after him anxiously. The vile red tendrils were reaching for the east wall of the laboratory, and he saw that their inner surfaces were covered with tiny suckers like those on the arms of a devil-fish. Carnivorous plants, undoubtedly, these awful half-animal, half-vegetable things whose seed had been transported across a quarter million miles of space. Man eaters! Deadly, and growing with incredible speed. Even the short-lived flowers were fearsome, as they opened their scarlet pansy-like faces and stared a moment before they folded up and shriveled into the seed cases like those that had materialized in the crystal bowl.