Fear that man

plate. There were screams, thunders, explosions. A thousand rats burning alive. A million sparrows madly attacking one another in a battle to the death.
        “Shut it off!” Gnossos shouted.
        Hurkos slammed the switch shut. The noises continued. At first, it swept out in irregular waves, shredded them and put them back together. Then there was not even a pattern of waves, merely a constant din of overwhelming magnitude. And there was jelly spewing out of the speaker grid…
        Jelly spewing out of the jack-holes…
        Abruptly, the speaker grid was gone, thrust away by the surging pressure of the thing behind it. Parts of the console began to sag as the supportive jelly that had filled it was drained away, spat out.
        Still the noise. “It’s the same sound,” Sam shouted into his suit phone, “that I heard when I was obeying the hypnotic orders-only it isn’t ordering anything.”
        “The grenades!” Hurkos called above the roar as the jelly began to collect on the floor, changing from amber to pink-tan, rising in a pulsating mass. The other glob pressed against the hatch from the hallway. There was the screeching sound of metal being strained to its limits. Soon the hatch would give, and they would be trapped between two shapeless monsters. The jelly would cover them and do… whatever it did to flesh and blood and bone.
        Gnossos flipped the cap that dissolved the anti-shock packing in the outer shell of the grenade. He tossed it. Nothing.
        “The grenades are jelly too!” Hurkos shouted.
        Sam snatched one of the remaining bulbs from the poet. “No. They aren’t machines, so there is no reason for the jelly to replace them with part of itself. It’s just a natural chemical that explodes without mechanical prompting. It just needs a jar. Gnossos didn’t throw it hard enough.” He wailed the second grenade against the viewplate.
        All the world was a sun. A lightbulb. Then the filament began to die and the light went out completely. The force of the explosion had gone, mostly, outward. What had pressed in their direction had been caught by the second mass of jelly that rose to snatch at the grenade-unsuccessfully. Miraculously, they were tumbling through the shattered front of the ship, moving into the darkness and emptiness of space toward The Ship of the Soul, the poet’s boat that lay silently a short mile away.
        Behind them, the jelly came, boiling away in the vacuum, tumbling and sputtering. Steaming, it lashed out with non-arms as it realized its chances for success were diminishing. The thunder of its non-voice was definitely not sound but thought. It bombarded their minds, unable to order them so quickly, unable to control them in their panic.
        Hurkos was out ahead, his shoulder jets pushing him swiftly toward the ship’s portal. Then came the poet. Finally, Sam. A hand of false-flesh streaked around the latter, curled in front of him, attempting to cut him off from the others. Cut him off. Cut him off and devour him. He choked, maneuvered under the whip before it could sweep around and capture him in an acidic embrace.
        And still it came. It grew smaller, boiled and bubbled itself away. But there seemed always to be a new central mass moving out from the hull, leaping the blackness and replenishing the withering pseudopods before they could snap, separate, and dissolve. Finally, however, there was nothing left except a speck of pinkish-tan. It turned amber-orange, then it too puffed out of existence. With it, went the noise.
        
        Inside The Ship of the Soul, they stripped, collapsed into soft chairs without animate padding. This was a ship of comfort, not one of destruction. This was a ship built for six people, not for one man, one tool of an insane, unnamable entity without a face or a time. For a while, then, they were silent, composing themselves for what must be said. The moment the composing ended and the discussion began was signaled by a quiet suggestion from Gnossos that they get some wine to help loosen their tongues.
        The wine was warm and green, a special bottle opened for a special occasion.
        “It was the same sound I heard under the hypnotic trance.”
        “That means,” Hurkos said, staring into his wine as he talked, “that it was the ship itself that was ordering you around. That jelly was the plotter behind the scheme.”
        Gnossos downed one glass of wine,