e door and
was pointing at the ground with shaking forefinger.

* * * * *

The entire clearing seemed to be alive with wriggling things--long
rubbery tentacles that crawled along the ground, reaching curling ends
high in the air and had even started climbing the trees at the edge of
the clearing. Blood red they were, and partially transparent in the
light of the setting sun; growing things, attached by their thick ends
to swelling mounds of red that seemed anchored to the ground.
Translucent stalks rose from the mounds and sprouted huge buds that
burst and blossomed into flaming flowers a foot in diameter, then
withered and went to seed in a moment of time. But always the weaving
tendrils shot forth with lightning speed, reaching and feeling their
uncanny way along the ground and over tree stumps into the woods. One
of them emerged from a hollow stump with its slender end coiled around
the tiny body of a chattering gray squirrel.

"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--"

* * * * *

But 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.

Then he noticed that the pods were opening and spreading more of the
terrible seed. Nothing could stop this weird growth, now. It would
cover the country like a sea of flaming horror, ov