ed human flesh filled the room.

Then came a new sound, the hissing splash of spilled metal.

The pot was dumped.

Taylor dropped the rope and faced the sphere. He saw the charred
pile of ashes beside the inhuman creature. Nearby was a fused
tube of metal, all that was left of Pember's rifle.

"All right, you devil!" shouted Taylor. "Strike and be damned!
There's one thing you can't fix, and that's the metal pot. Your
spores are dead. Your mistake was in having a metal pot for a
mother!"

Taylor sensed understanding in the sphere. Those eyes that were
not eyes, but windows of the mind, seemed to fade. Flame licked
out again from the monster, but it did not launch toward Taylor.
Nor was Masters the target.

Instead, the flame reached toward the fading yellow hemisphere
and the cooling pool of metal on the floor. There lay the hopes
of the species on this planet, wrecked with a block and tackle.

_Plop_!

The hemisphere exploded like a bubble.

_Plop_!

The mourning sphere disappeared.

_Plop. Plop. Plop._

Three more spheres appeared in the opening in the roof and
vanished.

Masters tugged on Taylor's sleeve.

"Come on! We've got a chance, if we can get to the tunnel!"

Taylor shook his head.

"No need. We're safe now. If they've changed to radio energy, the
big broadcast is on."

The sky was filled with exploding spheres as the whispers sobbed
the tale of the disaster. A score of the energy monsters, bred
from the metal pot overnight, burst in the rays of the rising
sun. Energy, meeting resistance, was changing to something else.
The war of energy and matter might continue on the molten surface
of the sun, but on earth there would be only the wars of ideals.

* * * * *

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Whispering Spheres, by
Russell Robert Winterbotham

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