several ran low, but
after a few moments of punching levers and pulling chokes, the under
rockets thundered in the big room.

Taking care not to injure the motor compartments of the other ships,
using only the most minute explosion-quantities, he jockeyed each ship
around until all their noses pointed in one direction. The exhausts
pointed out through the wide doorway. It was well that the beast had
formed curved corners in the room, otherwise the scheme would not have
worked. The exhausts which did not point toward the door, directly,
were toward the curved walls which would deflect the forceful gasses
expelled doorward.

When he emerged from the ship, the spheres attacked. He seared off
their tentacles throughout what seemed to be eternities. His body was
becoming a mass of bruises from the lash of their tentacles. He burned
his way through the swarm on to ship after ship.

As he stepped from the last vessel there was a rumbling beneath his
feet. Did the monster understand his intent? Was it stirring in its
shell? Most of the globes had disappeared; now a nauseatingly sweet
odor penetrated the screen in his headpiece, which permitted him to
smell without allowing the oxygen to escape. He hurried around to the
rear of the ship, an apprehensive, sickening feeling at the pit of his
stomach. A thick jelly-like wave of liquid was rolling over the
floor--the reeking, deadly juices from the beast's stomach. If the
liquid touched him, it would eat through the heavy fabric, exploding
the air pressure from around his body. How was he to escape from the
cave?

The answer came to him suddenly. Quickly he darted back toward the
nearest vessel. Two of the screaming spheres blocked his way; he sent
bolt after searing bolt into them, more of a charge than he had given
any of the others. The lights in the globes went out; their voices
ceased. And they burst into slowly mounting incandescence. Yet, they
were not consumed by their fire, only glowed an intense white light
like that of a lighthouse.

"Lighthouse!" The word flashed through his mind clearly, strongly. They
glowed like the "zirconia lights" of a lighthouse. Why hadn't he
recognized the greasy, quartz-like material before? It was zirconia, a
compound of zirconium, of course. A silicate base creature could easily
have formed a shell of it about itself.

Zirconia--one of the compounds he'd intended prospecting for on the
moons of Saturn. Worth over a hundred dollars pe