"Then we must follow--fast!" Phil said, staggering to his feet. "He
may get to the sphere first; he'll go up by himself even yet! I'm all
right!"

Despite his words, he could not run, and could only command an awkward
walk. Sue lifted one of his arms around her shoulder, and her father
took the other, and without a backward glance they labored ahead. But
Phil's strength quickly returned, and they raised the pace until they
had broken once more into a stumbling run.

How far ahead James Quade was, they did not know, but obviously they
could follow where he had gone. Once again the draft was strong on
their backs. They felt sure they were on the last stretch, headed for
the earth-borer. But, unless they could overtake Quade, he would be
there first. They had no illusions about what that would mean....

CHAPTER V

_A Death More Hideous_

Quade was there first.

When they burst out of a narrow crevice, not far from the
funnel-shaped opening they had originally entered, they saw him
standing beside the open door of the sphere as if waiting. The
searchlight inside was still on, and in its shaft of light they could
see that he was smiling thinly, once more his old, confident self. It
would only take him a second to jump in, slam the door and lock it. He
could afford a last gesture....

The three stopped short. They saw something he did not.

"So!" he observed in his familiar, mocking voice. He paused, seeing
that they did not come on. He had plenty of time.

He said something else, but the two men and the girl did not hear what
it was. As if by a magnet their eyes were held by what was hanging
above him, clinging to the lip of the hole the sphere had made in the
ceiling.

It was an amoeba, another of those single-celled, protoplasmic mounds
of flesh. It had evidently come down through the hole; and now it was
stretching, rubber-like, lower and lower, a living, reaching
stalactite of whitish hunger.

Quade was all unconscious of it. His final words reached Phil's
consciousness.

"... And this time, of course, I will keep the top disintegrators on.
No other monster will then be able to weigh me down!"

He shrugged his shoulders and turned to the door. And that movement
was the signal that brought his doom. Without a sound, the poised mass
above dropped.

James Quade never knew what hit him. The heap of whitish jelly fell
squarely. There was a brief moment of frantic lashing, of tortured
struggles--then