seethed and struggled in the brilliance of their lights.

MacGregor was persisting in his theory. "Keep the lights on it!" he
shouted. "It can't stand the light."

While they watched, the hideous, bubbling beast oozed over the side of
the broken shell to shelter itself in the shadow beneath. And again
Thurston sensed the pulse and throb of life in the monstrous mass.

* * * * *

He saw again in his rage the streaming rain of black airplanes; saw,
too, the bodies, blackened and charred as they saw them when first they
tried rescue from the crashed ships; the smoke clouds and flames from
the blasted city, where people--his people, men and women and little
children--had met terrible death. He sprang from the car. Yet he
faltered with a revulsion that was almost a nausea. His gun was gripped
in his hand as he ran toward the monster.

"Come back!" shouted MacGregor. "Come back! Have you gone mad?" He was
jerking at the door of the car.

Beyond the white funnel of their lights a yellow thing was moving. It
twisted and flowed with incredible speed a hundred feet back to the base
of the cliff. It drew itself together in a quivering heap.

An out-thrusting rock threw a sheltering shadow; the moon was low in the
west. In the blackness a phosphorescence was apparent. It rippled and
rose in the dark with the pulsing beat of the jellylike mass. And
through it were showing two discs. Gray at first, they formed to black,
staring eyes.

Thurston had followed. His gun was raised as he neared it. Then out of
the mass shot a serpentine arm. It whipped about him, soft, sticky,
viscid--utterly loathsome. He screamed once when it clung to his face,
then tore savagely and in silence at the encircling folds.

* * * * *

The gun! He ripped a blinding mass from his face and emptied the
automatic in a stream of shots straight toward the eyes. And he knew as
he fired that the effort was useless; to have shot at the milky surf
would have been as vain.

The thing was pulling him irresistibly; he sank to his knees; it dragged
him over the sand. He clutched at a rock. A vision was before him: the
carcass of a steer, half absorbed and still bleeding on the sand of an
Arizona desert....

To be drawn to the smothering embrace of that glutinous mass ... for
that monstrous appetite.... He tore afresh at the unyielding folds, then
knew MacGregor was beside him.

In the man's hand