"How can I?" Van retorted mildly. "I haven't touched a handwheel." He was wondering vaguely whether this lunar seed would grow in earthly soil; what sort of a plant it would produce under the new environment.

Kelly was becoming nervous now. It seemed that little was to be gained by hanging around this crazy man's laboratory. He had a sizable fortune in rough stones already. That big one alone, when properly cut into smaller stones, would make him independent. Maybe there weren't any more, anyway. And the longer he stayed the greater chance there was of getting caught.

The advent of another of the pods decided him. A quick blow with the b.u.t.t of his pistol stretched Van on the floor and Kelly fled the scene.

Bart was pounding furiously on the cellar door when Van first took hazy note of his surroundings. Several uncertain minutes pa.s.sed before he was able to stagger across the room and release his friend.

"Where is he?" Bart demanded, swaying on his feet and blinking in the sudden light.

"Gone. Socked me and beat it with the diamonds." Van was mopping the blood from his eyes with a handkerchief. "Are you hit bad?" he inquired.

"No, just a flesh wound. Hurts like the devil, though. How about yourself?" Bart limped to his side and sighed with relief when he examined his bleeding scalp. "Not so bad yourself, old man. Where's your first aid kit?"

Van was still somewhat dazed and merely pointed to the cabinet. "Fine pair we turned out to be!" he grumbled after his head had cleared a bit under Bart's vigorous cleansing of the cut on his temple. "Here we stood, meek as a couple of lambs, and let that guy get away with murder."

"Yeah, but those forty-fives made the difference. Ouch!" Bart winced as his friend poured fresh iodine over the wound in his leg. "Have a heart, will you?"

They were startled into silence by a hoa.r.s.e, strangled scream that came from outside the laboratory. "Help! Help!" someone repeated in a panicky voice--a voice which at once ended on a gurgled note of despair.

"It's Kelly!" Bart whispered. "He's come back. Something's happened to him." He started for the open door.

"Wait a minute. It may be a trick to get us outside where he can pop us off."

"No, it isn't. For G.o.d's sake, look!" Bart had reached the door and was pointing at the ground with shaking forefinger.

The entire clearing seemed to be alive with wriggling things--long rubbery tentacles that crawled along the ground, reaching curling ends high in the air and had even started climbing the trees at the edge of the clearing. Blood red they were, and partially transparent in the light of the setting sun; growing things, attached by their thick ends to swelling mounds of red that seemed anch.o.r.ed to the ground.

Translucent stalks rose from the mounds and sprouted huge buds that burst and blossomed into flaming flowers a foot in diameter, then withered and went to seed in a moment of time. But always the weaving tendrils shot forth with lightning speed, reaching and feeling their uncanny way along the ground and over tree stumps into the woods. One of them emerged from a hollow stump with its slender end coiled around the tiny body of a chattering gray squirrel.

"The moon flowers!" Van cried.

"What do you mean--moon flowers?"

"Dried seed pods. They came over into the bowl, and Kelly threw them out. Now look at the d.a.m.ned things. They're alive!"

Kelly's voice came to them once more from behind the barrier of rapidly growing vegetation. "Help!" he screeched. "I'll give back the diamonds--anything! Only get me away from the things!"

"Ought to let 'em get him," Van growled.

Bart shivered. "Too horrible, Van. Got an ax or anything?"

"There's a hatchet around back. Maybe we can--"

But the young broker had scuttled around the corner of the building and Van looked after him anxiously. The vile red tendrils were reaching for the east wall of the laboratory, and he saw that their inner surfaces were covered with tiny suckers like those on the arms of a devil-fish. Carnivorous plants, undoubtedly, these awful half-animal, half-vegetable things whose seed had been transported across a quarter million miles of s.p.a.ce. Man eaters! Deadly, and growing with incredible speed. Even the short-lived flowers were fearsome, as they opened their scarlet pansy-like faces and stared a moment before they folded up and shriveled into the seed cases like those that had materialized in the crystal bowl.

Then he noticed that the pods were opening and spreading more of the terrible seed. Nothing could stop this weird growth, now. It would cover the country like a sea of flaming horror, overcoming and devouring every living thing. Cold fear clutched at Van as he realized the enormity of the calamity that had come to the earth.

Bart was skirting the edge of the clearing with the hatchet in his hand, and Van tried to call out to him, to warn him. But his voice caught in his throat, and instead he ran to his a.s.sistance, circling the spreading menace to get around behind where Kelly was still shouting. d.a.m.n Kelly anyway! This never would have happened if he hadn't come on the scene!

Kelly was in the woods, wedged into the crotch of a tree and striking wildly at the clutching tendrils with his clubbed pistol. They mashed easily and dripping red, but were not to be deterred from their ghastly purpose. Kelly's time would have indeed been short had not his erstwhile victims come to the rescue. One of the thickest of the twining things encircled his body and had him pinned to the tree. His breath was coming in gasps as its tightening coils increased their pressure. His coa.r.s.e features were livid and his eyes bulged from their sockets.

Bart hacked and hacked at the rubbery growth until he had him free; jerked him from his perch, blubbering and whining like a schoolboy.

His shirt had been torn from his breast and they saw a great red welt where the blood had been drawn through the pores by those terrible suckers.

"Look out, Bart!" Van shouted.

Another of the creeping things had come through the underbrush and was wrapping its coils around Bart's ankle. Another and another wriggled through, and soon they were battling for their own freedom. Kelly staggered off into the woods and went crashing down the hill, leaving them to take care of themselves as best they might.

The stench of the viscous liquid that oozed from the injured tendrils was nauseous; it had something of a soporific effect; and the two friends found themselves fighting the terror in a growing mist of red that blinded and confused them. Then, miraculously, they were free and Van a.s.sisted Bart as they ran through the forest. When they reached the road, weak and out of breath, they were just in time to see Kelly's roadster vanish around the bend.

"Yeah, he'd give back the diamonds--the swine!" Van muttered vindictively. Then, shrugging his shoulders, "Well, they won't be much good to him, anyway. Wouldn't be any good to us either, as far as that goes."

"What do you mean? Aren't they real?" Bart was raising himself painfully into the seat of Van's car, his wounded leg suddenly very much in the way.

"Sure they're real. But don't you realize what this thing means--this unG.o.dly growth that's started?"

"Why--why, no. You mean it'll keep on growing?"

"And how! Those inner stalks drop a new batch of seeds every five minutes or so. Presto!--a flock of new plants spring up ten feet from the first; dozens of them for every pod that drops. You know how geometrical progression works out. They'll cover the whole country--the whole world. Lord!"

"Man alive, this is terrible! I hadn't thought of that before. What'll we do?"

"Yeah, that's the question: what can we do?" Van started his motor and jerked the car to the road. "First off, we're going to get away from here--fast!"

Bart gripped his arm as he shifted into second gear. "Look, Van!" he babbled. "They're out of the woods already. Loose! The red snakes are loose from their stalks. They're alive, I tell you!"

It was true. Several of the slimy red things were wriggling their way over the macadam like great earthworms, but moving with the speed of hurrying pedestrians. Free, and untrammeled by the roots and stems of the mother plants, they had set forth on their own in the search for beings of flesh and blood to destroy. Millions of their kind would follow; billions!

In sudden panic Van stepped on the gas.

Fifteen minutes later, with shrieking siren, a motorcycle drew alongside and forced them to the curb. "Where's the fire?" the sarcastic voice of a stern-visaged officer demanded, when Van had brought his car to a screeching stop. Seventy-five, the speedometer had read but a moment before.

"It's life and death, officer," Van started to explain. "We must get to the proper officials to warn the--"

"Aw, tell it to the judge! Come on now, follow me."

"But officer, there's death on its way from the hills, I tell you.

Red, creeping things that'll be here in a couple of hours--"

"Get away, from that wheel. I'll drive you in meself. You're fulla applejack."