The jelly quivered once more. Borden, watching with keen eyes, said:

"On again."

The pile of jelly quivered a third time, but less violently. The first impact of the micro-wave beam had bothered it, but it had been able to adjust almost instantly. It perceived the micro-waves. That much was certain. But it could adjust to them.

Borden said furiously, "The damned thing can learn! It can think. It is smart as the devil! But if I am right, what it wants more than anything else is not to do anything. It has to be awake when we are near. It can't help itself, but it wants to sleep. We and our micro-waves are like mosquitos buzzing around a man's head. I thought they—"

He stopped short, but after a moment laughed unpleasantly.

"I get it. When it learns a pattern it can disregard it. Living things always act without pattern. So it can't disregard them. But it could disregard an unmodulated beam. Let's see what a modulated one will do. Jerry, the microphone."

When the talkie went on and its beam of micro-waves hit the monstrous, featureless thing, it did not even quiver. Then Borden said into the microphone:

"'Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow. And everywhere that Mary went—'."

The monstrous mass of ghastly jelly plunged toward him.

Ellen shot the ground car away. Borden's throat contracted. When his voice stopped, the frenzied movement of the horror ceased. It stood trembling in a gigantic, glistening heap. It seemed to wait. Borden considered grimly.

"It could make a sun-mirror now," he decided, "but not a very big one. We'd run away. It doesn't want to chase us away until that other arm of stuff gets behind us. If we run, it will follow. It could follow the original inhabitants of this planet for thousands of miles. Doubtless it would follow us as far.

"And there's always Sattell. We've got to kill it. How? I thought a walkie-talkie beam would irritate it. It can adjust to it. Then I thought, a modulated wave—voice-modulated—would exhaust it. But no. We need something new, right now!"

There was silence. Then Ellen said uneasily:

"Maybe this idea isn't sensible, but could it be that the walkie-talkie beam just wasn't 

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