F. E. Hardart

“ Scooping the small beast up under his good arm, he quickly climbed the steep, slimy slope of the cave. The other arm in his suit hung empty. That empty arm in the spacesuit told the story of an earthman become voluntary exile, choosing the desolation of space to the companionship of other humans who would deluge him with unwonted sympathy. The spacehound was friendly in its own fashion ”

“ Nat straddled Digger's writhing body, held the spacehound motionless between his legs. At short range, he seared off the imprisoning tentacles, knowing that it would take far more than a heat-bolt to damage the well-nigh impregnable creature. He swooped the dog up under his good arm and fled from the madly-pursuing spheres, thanking nameless deities that the gravity here permitted such herculean feats. The spheres rolled faster, he soon found, than he could jump ”

“ He unscrewed the man's helmet, tried to pry the jaws open. They would not move; the airless void surrounding the tiny planetoid had frozen the body [87] until now it was as solid as the quartz cave-walls. There was but one thing to do: the other door must be melted down.
He leaped halfway across the room toward the door in the opposite wall. Could it be possible that he was in time? Anxiously he flung a bolt of energy from his heat rod toward the lock, holding a flashlight under the other stump of an arm. The molten metal flowed to the floor like a rivulet of lava. ”

“ Nat had barely raised his ship from the Asteroid Moira when he saw the small planetoid lurch suddenly, bounding off its orbit at almost a right angle. The sudden combined driving force of all the rockets within the cave had sent it hurtling away like a rocket itself.
The asteroid housing the monster was heading into the Flora group of Asteroids. There the fifty-seven odd solid bodies of that group would grind, crack, and rend that dangerous beast into harmless, dead fragments. ”

“ With those large, incredibly hard claws, designed for rooting in the metal make-up of the asteroids for vital elements, the spacehound could easily have shredded the man's spacesuit and helmet, could, at any time, tear huge chunks out of men's fine ships. ”

“ We know why and how those people disappeared. It would take the Space Patrol ship at least a month to arrive here; I don't intend to perch on the back of this devil as long as that. And if we leave, old thing, it'll just lure other chivalrous fools to very unpleasant ends. ”

“ But the next leap carried him into the main cave. Abandoning the chair, he leaped once more, out through the cave's mouth, pursued by the waving tentacles of the sensory spheres.
He had lost precious minutes eluding that deadly acid. It would take at least five minutes to get his ship away from the asteroid; he must hurry before all those rocket motors were thrown into action, or it would be too late.
Leap and leap again. It seemed ages, but he reached the ship, bolted the door shut. Thumps against the door as the pursuing globes ran up against it. A thought came to him ”

“ It did not seem like the work of pirates, [85] more likely unknown intelligent beings.
He turned to examine the televisor. It, too, was an earth product. The mechanism was of old design; evidently it had been taken from the first of the ships to land here. Outside of the telecaster and the solitary robot, there was nothing to be seen in this cave.
A sound behind him. He whirled, heat-rod poised for swift, stabbing action. Nothing—except—small bowling-ball things rolling in through a narrow door. Ridiculous things of the same yellowish-quartz material as composed the cave-walls. ”

“ The singing spheres act as its sensory organs, separated from the body and given locomotion. It uses these to lure victims into its stomach in the first cave. I escaped its lure at first because of the 'squeaker' I carried with me. ”