The Deathstones

Isis was a planet about the size of Earth, in a system on the fringe of the galaxy—a port of call for tramp spaceships, piloted by men who called themselves "space bums." Jack Landers became one of these wanderers after a Board of Inquiry returned a verdict of "not proven" negligence following a spaceshp disaster. His pilot, Boyd Norton, had been a juvenile delinquent—and his subsequent reform ment nothing; he was foever barred from a legal berth on a spaceship. But out here, no one greatly cared about one's past. Landers bought a ship, the Motley, and he and Norton made out with it. Now they sought a three-man—or three-being—crew, and passengers for a voyage. The local inhabitants of Isis looked like big masses of protoplasm, sort of bushel-basket size, Landers thought. They way they flowed along, though, changing shape, sending out pseudopods, flattening out to go under obstacles, and bunching up when they needed to, made it hard to judge their size, They were known as "Blobs," and Landers was inspired to see if, under thought communication, they could work on a spaceship. He found they could, and signed one up. A caterpillar-like Anubian and a lizard-like Serapian—from the neighboring worlds of Anubis and Serapis—made up the other two crewmen. Landers and Norton dubbed them S, Y, and Z....