h. 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. We set up these two doors as a
protection from the beast while we stayed here to examine it. But the
monster got me when I fell and the 'squeaker' was broken. My daughter
rescued me after the acid of the pool had begun eating away my flesh.

"My Helena is locked in the room opposite this one. She has food and
water to last until July 8th. Oxygen seeps in there somehow--the beast
wants to keep her alive until it can get her out of the room to devour
her."

Here the writing became more cramped and difficult to read.

"I have put the key in my mouth to prevent the spheres from opening the
door should they force their way into this room. Some one must come to
save my Helena. I can't breathe--"

The writing ended in a long scrawl angling off the page. The pencil lay
some distance from the body.

July 8th! But that had been almost a week ago!

* * * * *

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 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.

The door, hanging off balance, screeched open; air swooshed past him in
its sudden escape from the room. He squeezed himself through, peered
carefully about to see a slim spacesuit start to crumple floorward in
a corner. The girl was alive!

He started toward her; the slim figure pulled itself erect again. He
saw a drawn, emaciated face behind the helmet. Then, with a fury that
unnerved him, she whipped out a heat rod, shot a searing bolt in his
direction. He felt the fierce heat of it as it whizzed past his
shoulder; in his brain Digger's thoughts of attack came to him, he
flung an arm around the spacehound, dragged it back as he withdrew
toward the door. The girl continued to fire bolt after bolt straight
ahead, her eyes wide and star