not life—not life in quantity proportional to the stimulus, it yielded, anyhow. The modulated micro-waves impressed its consciousness as a steam whistle at his ear impresses a man. The sensation was intolerable. It was maddening.

In less than an hour, Borden had returned to the end of the valley and was beaming micro-waves at the white spot across the few miles of desert in between. He was beginning to be weary now, and his memory for recitative verse was running thin.

"Take over and keep talking, Ellen," he said into the microphone. He handed it to her.

Ellen said steadily. "I don't know how this is doing what it does, but—'My name is John Wellington Wells, I'm a dealer in magic and spells, in hexes and curses and ever-filled purses and witches and crickets and elves.' I've got this wrong somehow, Dee, but tell me what it is and I'll try to keep on."

Borden said, "I'd rather not tell you. It would overhear. I think, though, that it's moving away. The white stuff is drawing back!"

And it was true. The whiteness which had been beyond the desert was withdrawing. The pseudopod—a misnomer, because in this case the word should have been something else—the extension which had come to destroy the humans had long since withdrawn. The formless ground-covering was gathering itself into a mass, and that mass was moving away.

There was a dark space visible. It was ground—humus, oasis soil—which had been covered by the unspeakable organism which centuries since had conquered this planet.

"I'd chase it," Borden said somberly, "only I'm not sure it couldn't get itself together and make a sun-mirror. We'll wait till nightfall."

"But what are we doing to it?" demanded Ellen.

Jerry was at the microphone now, going through the Sonnets From the Portuguese, while the living jelly at the edge of the world quivered and fled in shaking revulsion.

"The thing's alive," said Borden. "And it can't help receiving all sorts of impressions. Like any other organism, it learns to disregard any impression it receives that it can anticipate or classify. We don't hear a clock ticking. If we live near a noisy street, we don't hear traffic. But we wake if a door squeaks. That—white spot can disregard the electric waves of lightning. It can disregard sunshine. But it can't disregard things it can't fit into a pattern. It has to pay 

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