Fear that man

them, arms of simulated flesh lashing out for purchase on the cold floor.
        “The armory!” Sam shouted, turning into the hall and flinging the door to the other room wide. Perhaps it had been the hypnotic training with the weapons that had made him think of guns so quickly. He knew how to kill; he could stop the amoeba, the super-cell. He stepped back into the hall with a rifle in his hands, brought it up, sighted. “Move away!”
        Gnossos and Hurkos stepped behind him, moving toward the control cabin. Aiming for the center of the mass, Sam pulled the trigger. Blue lightning flashed outward, sparkling, and illuminated the passageway like a small sun going nova. Despite the light, there was no heat. In fact, the flame seemed to radiate coolness. It struck the jelly, sank into it. There was something like a scream from the writhing slop, though the sounds were most certainly not a voice. It was as if the very molecules of the mass had closed gaps and were rubbing one another. The jelly stopped.
        Sam, trembling, released the trigger, started to let air out of his lungs.
        And the jelly leaped!
        He fired, caught it in mid-jump, sent it crashing backward, blue fire coursing through it like contained lightning flashing in a crystal paperweight. He aimed again, depressed the firing stud.
        Nothing.
         Nothing!
        No blue, shimmering flame. No cool but deadly flame. Not even a lousy click! He raised the weapon to look at it, to see if some latch or bolt had not been thrown properly by the automatic mechanism. Then he saw the amber goo beginning to pulse out of the tip of the barrel. Suddenly his hand was burning furiously and there was amoeba slopping out of the powerpack casing inside the handle. He threw the gun down, wiped his hand on the wall, scraping his skin loose in the mad attempt to rid himself of every drop of the jelly.
        “Explosives!” Gnossos shouted.
        Sam turned, dashed into the armory once more. When he came out, he had three grenades. He ran to Gnossos and Hurkos, panting heavily, his eyes wide, his heart furious as a drum.
        The jelly-mass was recovering and had slopped into the hall where it joined up with the smaller clump of stuff that had been the insides of the gun. The two touched each other, glowed purple where their surfaces met, then easily flowed together and became one.
        “I think I see why the radio didn’t work,” Gnossos said. “It didn’t want to work!”
        “The entire ship is alive,” Sam agreed.
        Hurkos rapped a hand on the wall, listened to the solid sound of it. “It’s steel. I’ll be damned if it is anything but steel!”
        “Inside,” Sam said, keeping an eye on the pulsating jelly-mass at the end of the passageway. “Deep inside the plating, there’s more goo.”
        “But the hyperdrive-”
        “There mustn’t really be a hyperdrive mechanism,” Sam said. “The jelly can build up a hyperspace field somehow. There are no machines aboard, I’d wager. Only jelly-cored shells.”
        “Your fear of machines-” Hurkos began.
        “Was gained from whoever-or whatever-built this… this ship-thing.”
        The lump had begun to move again, pseudopods slapping wetly against the deck. It was six feet high, a good three hundred pounds.
        “You two get into the suits,” Gnossos said, taking the grenades. He still had his own suit on, and his helmet lay within easy reach. “We’ll have to go across to my ship. This one won’t let us live long now that we know part of its secret.”
        Sam and Hurkos struggled into their suits, fitted their helmets to the shoulder threads, attached their air tanks. Every little act, though performed at top speed, seemed to take hours. When they were dressed, Gnossos pulled the hatch shut, sealing the main cabin from the hallway where the thing was advancing warily. “Let’s see it get through that!” the poet said, putting on his helmet. “Now let’s get out of here.”
        “I’m afraid there isn’t much hope of that,” Sam said from his position next to the control console. “I’ve pressed all buttons to depressurize the cabin and open the exit chamber, but I can’t seem to get any response from the ship.”
        Hurkos, eyes wide, jumped to the console, flipped the comline to the computer open. “Let us out!”
        But the computer was not a computer. There was a deafening roar from the wire and plastic voice