arkling, bubbling, writhing,
partly-fluid-partly-viscous, obscenely repulsive mass of something
unknown and unknowable on Earth; a something which, Garlock now
recalled, had been thought of by the Arpalone Inspector as "golop."

As that unstoppable globe descended through office after office, it
neither sought out people nor avoided them. Walls, doors, windows,
ceilings, floors and rugs, office furniture and office personnel; all
alike were absorbed into and made a part of that indescribably horrid
brew.

Nor did the track of that hellishly wanton globe remain a bore. Instead,
it spread. That devil's brew ate into and dissolved everything it
touched like a stream of boiling water being poured into a
loosely-heaped pile of granulated sugar. By the time the ravening sphere
had reached the second floor, the entire roof of the building was gone
and the writhing, racing flood of corruption had flowed down the outer
walls and across the street, engulfing and transforming sidewalks,
people, pavement, poles, wires, automobiles, people-anything and
everything it touched.

* * *

The globe went on down, through basement and sub-basement, until it
reached solid, natural ground. Then, with its top a few inches below the
level of natural ground, it came to a full stop and--apparently--did
nothing at all. By this time, the ravening flood outside had eaten far
into the lower floors of the buildings across the street, as well as
along all four sides of the block, and tremendous masses of masonry and
steel, their supporting structures devoured, were subsiding, crumbling,
and crashing down into the noisome flood of golop--and were being
transformed almost as fast as they could fall.

One tremendous mass, weighing hundreds or perhaps thousands of tons,
toppled almost as a whole; splashing the stuff in all directions for
hundreds of yards. Wherever each splash struck, however, a new center of
attack came into being, and the peculiarly disgusting, abhorrent
liquidation went on.

"Can you do anything with it, Clee?" Belle demanded.

"Not too much--it's a mess," Garlock replied. "Besides, it wouldn't get
us far, I don't think. It'll be more productive to analyze the beams the
Arpalones are using to break them up, don't you think?"

Then, for twenty solid minutes, the two Prime Operators worked on those
enigmatic beams.

"We can't assemble _that_ kind of stuff with our minds," Belle decided
then.

"I'l