ly.

"What d'you suppose _that_ means?" James asked. "Afraid of water?"

"Damfino. Could be. Let's check ... mountains, too. Skip us back to
where we started--oceans and mountains both fairly close there."

The city had disappeared long since; for hundreds of almost-level square
miles there extended a sparkling, seething, writhing expanse of--of
what? The edge of that devouring flood had almost reached the
foot-hills, and over that gnawing, dissolving edge the _Pleiades_
paused.

* * *

Small lakes and ordinary rivers bothered the golop very little if at
all. There was perhaps a slightly increased sparkling, a slight
stiffening, a little darkening, some freezing and breaking off of solid
blocks; but the thing's forward motion was not noticeably slowed down.
It drank a fairly large river and a lake one mile wide by ten miles long
while the two men watched.

The golop made no attempt to climb either foot-hills or mountains. It
leveled them. It ate into their bases at its own level; the undermined
masses, small and large, collapsed into the foul, corrosive semi-liquid
and were consumed. Nor was there much raising of the golop's level, even
when the highest mountains were reached and miles-high masses of solid
rock broke off and toppled. There was some raising, of course; but the
stuff was fluid enough so that its slope was not apparent to the eye.

* * *

Then the _Pleiades_ went back, over the place where the city had been
and on to what had once been an ocean beach. The original wave of
degradation had reached that shore long since, had attacked its sands
out into deep water, and there it had been stopped. The corrupt flood
was now being reinforced, however, by an ever-rising tide of material
that had once been mountains. And the slope, which had not been even
noticeable at the mountains or over the plain, was here very evident.

As the rapidly-flowing golop struck water, the water shivered, came to a
weirdly unforgettable cold boil, and exploded into drops and streamers
and jagged-edged chunks of something that was neither water nor land; or
rock or soil or sand or Satan's unholy brew. Nevertheless, the water
won. There was _so_ much of it! Each barrel of water that was destroyed
was replaced instantly and enthusiastically; with no lowering of level
or of pressure.

And when water struck the golop, the golop also shivered violently, then
sparkled even m