He barely made out the shape of the big man through the bottle green coloring of the water. The edges of the break in the glass were sharp, uneven, jagged teeth waiting to rend his flesh. He couldn’t simply duck back through.
Pepper was still bellowing in pain, one arm looped around his waist trying in vain to hold his guts in. He was a dead man walking and he knew it.
Without warning, wet and slimy tendrils wrapped themselves around Ryan, then started to pull him more deeply into the container, sucking him into the ooze. He kept his mouth shut and slitted his eye. He felt as if he were being dragged through too-warm molasses. Already his lungs were aching for his next breath.
The glop poured out around him, slicking his clothing and making it easier for the tendrils to pull him inside the hydroponics chamber. He fought against the strong pull, grabbing fistfuls of the gelatinous tendrils. They felt like phlegm even in the water, breaking easily. But there were always more, sucking, wrapping and writhing around his chest.
As he twisted and tried to break free, he saw a sudden matting cover the hole that he’d been pulled through. In heartbeats the leak had been plugged. Other tendrils stopped up the scattered bullet holes. The watery nutrient level had dropped almost a foot, judging from the mark on the glass wall just out of his reach.
Ryan raked the panga through the tendrils. His efforts were slowed by the immersion in the liquid. But the tendrils parted at the touch of the blade, floating loose and limp once they’d been amputated. Righting himself with a sweep of his hand, he put his feet against the bottom of the vat and shoved himself up and forward, trying for the nearest wall.
He came up out of the nutrient bath in a rush and managed to loop one arm over the side of the tank. The LED counter showed 327.
“Ryan!” Krysty yelled. She stood, her gaze fixed hypnotically on the hydroponics chamber.
A slithering sound turned Ryan’s head. The plant-thing hovering on its stand of vines came closer, seeming almost to fly in the shadows.
Krysty fired the .38 pistol in measured beats, emptying the cylinder. None of the bullets missed the plant-thing. Also, none of them did it any harm.
Ryan stared into the viscous eyes, saw the alien intelligence radiating hatred at him.
Suddenly the plant-thing opened its mouth. A razor-edged thorn, like the ones on the tanglers, came shooting out, hissing straight at Ryan’s face.
He dropped under the nutrient level. An instant later the thorn splintered the glass where his head had been.
Ryan swung the panga, and the blade easily sliced through the vine. A two-foot length dangled down the side of the glass, floating on the liquid.
Breathing hard, having a difficult time sucking in air that wasn’t filled with droplets of the nutrient-laden water, Ryan grabbed the edge of the tank again, then heaved himself onto the metal platform running around the edge. His hands, feet, elbows and knees were slick, making it hard for him to get upright.
The plant-thing was already shifting again, regrouping itself. The time was down to 307. A wicked smile seemed to take form on the plant-thing’s lower face, splitting the vines and mucus material. Another thorn materialized, edging out in preparation to be propelled.
J.B. rushed into the room, followed immediately by Mildred, Doc and Jak. Krysty was dropping fresh rounds into her pistol.
“The glass wall,” the red-haired woman said to the companions. “Take it out. In order to stop the plague, we’ve got to kill the Other.”
The Armorer set to at once, blasting out rounds from the scattergun. Huge chunks of the glass wall disappeared at once. Mildred added her own firepower, then Doc upped the ante with the .63 scattergun. Jak guarded the tunnel, firing measured shots back down the way they’d come.
Huge sections of the glass wall disappeared, shattered into gleaming shards. The carnage was too complete to allow the plant-thing to dam up the holes. It shifted, turning its malignant attention onto the puny humans that had dared attack it.
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