"Wait a minute Dallas," Scotty interrupted. "Randall's right. Take a look at that big pile of rocks over there ... to the left, Dallas!"
"By the red-tailed Picaroons on Jupiter's satellites!" Dallas swore swiftly. "I've seen a lot of queer sights, but nothing like this!" he exclaimed. Suddenly he turned to Randall. "How do you know it's alive? For all we know it's just a globe of radio-active energy native to this hell-spot."
Randall colored, hesitated and finally blurted out. "I ... I just felt it was alive. I sensed it trying to contact my mind.... Oh, I know it sounds crazy, I know you'll laugh, but the thing was trying to probe my brain, Dallas!"
Scotty suddenly thought of Captain Brooke and Tom Jeffery who had gone on an exploratory trip. "I wonder about the Captain and Tom," he said in alarm. "If there's one of these whirling demons on this rock there's sure to be others." He raced to the communications set and turned it on. But it was silent.
Dallas gazed at Randall for a second with a faint, scornful smile. "Alive, eh? We'll see." He patted the atom-blast at his hip.
"Never saw nothin' dangerous yet that this couldn't put a hole through!" He exclaimed inelegantly.
"Hold on, Dallas!" The more prudent Scotty tried to dissuade him. "If that thing's radio-active, it may be deadly! We're not afraid of it, man ... but we don't know what it is."
"You boys stay and play the radio!" Dallas turned lightly on his feet for all his tremendous bulk and soon the airlock had hissed open and he was gone.
Both Scotty and Randall watched him half-fearful, half in admiration as he strode away from the cruiser. The luminous, iridescent sphere hovering over the rocks, whirled faster and faster as Dallas moved away from the ship. Rapidly the whirling accelerated until it was a pulsing vortex of exquisite hues of living light. Then, it began to move slowly forward toward the walking man.
In the macabre landscape of the planetoid, the rotund Dallas was not unlike a sphere himself, as gun in hand he unhesitatingly went forward to meet the globe. Calmly he aimed the atom-blast and suddenly there was a flash from the muzzle of the gun. But the flood of vicious atomic energy failed to harm the globe, on the contrary, it seemed to flame in a cataract of colors, flaming into living light. Then the fluorescent flare died down to normal again and the sphere stopped, motionless as if it were appraising Dallas.