went down. Those that could go down. Some weren't built for it. The suit
bumped up gently against one huge bulk, and a six-inch pale blue eye
looked at her for a moment as she went circling around it. "Eyes for
what?" somebody in the back of her mind wondered briefly. She glanced
into the suit's rear view screen and saw that the ones who had gone down
were getting up again, mixed with the ones who came crowding after her.
Thirty feet away!

Repulsive was doing it.

So far there weren't any guns. If they hit guns, that would be her job
and the suit's. The king plasmoid should be regretting by now that it
had wasted its experimental human material. Though it mightn't have been
really wasted; it might be incorporated in the stuff that came crowding
after her, and kept going down ahead.

Black ceiling, black floor seemed to stretch on endlessly. She kept the
suit moving slowly along. At last the beams picked up low walls ahead,
converging at the point toward which the suit was gliding. At the point
of convergence there seemed to be a narrow passage.

Plasmoid bodies were wedged into it.

* * * * *

The suit pulled them out one by one, its steel grippers clamping down
upon things no softer than itself. But it had power to work with and
they didn't, at the moment. Behind the ones it pulled out there were
presently glimpses of the swiftly weaving motion of giant red
worm-shapes sealing up the passage. After a while, they stopped weaving
each time the suit returned and started again as it withdrew, dragging
out another plasmoid body.

Then the suit went gliding over a stilled tangle of red worm bodies. And
there was the sealed end of the passage.

The stuff was still soft. The guns blazed, bit into it, ate it away,
their brilliance washing back over the suit. The sealing gave way before
the suit did. They went through and came out into....

She didn't know what they had come out into. It was like a fog of
darkness, growing thicker as they went sliding forward. The light beams
seemed to be dimming. Then they quietly went out as if they'd switched
themselves off.

In blackness, she fingered the light controls and knew they weren't
switched off.

"Repulsive!" she cried in her mind.

Repulsive couldn't help with the blackness. She got the feeling of
direction. The blackness seemed to be soaking behind her eyes. She held
the speed throttle steady in fingers slippery with sweat, and that