Half Life by Hal Clement

careful watch on the gauges, Gene fired up the plasma arcs and fed liquid to the pipes. Carefully checking the relative whereabouts of woman and factory, but not letting himself worry about a few labs, he raised thrust on the right jet enough to drag Theia in a curving trail—the keels wouldn’t let it simply pivot—until it was heading almost toward Ginger. He then equalized thrust on both sides and sent the machine dragging forward until it was only fifty meters from the still-anchored suit. Rather than attempt another tight turn, he went on past, leaving the woman on his left and turning only slightly to the right, until the exhaust was streaming past her only a few meters away.
    “Better let me take it,” she said at this point. “I can tell if it’s too close, and the response will be quicker.”
    Gene made no argument. He relinquished control, but only briefly.
    Using the waldo control while standing up in even a weak gravity field was not merely more awkward than Ginger had expected but essentially impossible. Uncontrollable pressures on control areas in the feet shifted the jet to rocket mode and very briefly applied heavy thrust. She would probably have been incinerated had Belvew been even a little slower resuming control.
    The blast for a split second swept over part of the patch, behaving just as it had during Gene’s landing hours before. The tar, if it was that, was sinking into or possibly vaporizing out of a shallow groove along the track of the warm gas. This time no smoke appeared. Then the thrust was cut.
    Ginger’s jump was equally reflexive. It was also, to everyone’s surprise, effective; she was free of the sticky surface. Her suit went up for more than two meters and away from Theia , kicked by the hot gas stream. She landed closer to the center of the patch. She leaped again, this time with deliberate control of her direction, and reached safe ground.
    The unspoken question which had briefly crossed everyone’s mind, whether enough surface could be removed or persuaded to let go without cooking her in the suit, was answered the risky way. “I still can’t tell whether it vaporized, melted and sunk, or just crawled out of the way,” she reported, her voice lacking its usual snappishness. “I’ll watch more closely this time.” She stepped calmly back onto the patch. Two or three voices started to say something, but all stopped before finishing a word. There seemed no other way to get the information.
    “Is it crawling over your boots?” asked Goodall. Xalco squatted once more.
    “No,” she replied after a moment. “I’m more like melting in. The stuff isn’t closing in around me. You know, this might work. This is interesting; I wish I could send you pictures.”
    “Damn!” said Arthur with feeling. Not even Ginger criticized. All watched tensely from Theia but learned more from the verbal report.
    “It still looks tarry, but acts more like fairly soft wet clay. It squeezes up around my boots even in this gravity, but isn’t closing around them as a real liquid would.”
    “Or something that was trying to swallow you,” interjected Goodall. Neither Ginger nor even Belvew could think of an appropriate answer to this, and she continued reporting.
    “I can pick up one boot without much resistance. I get pulled that way, I suppose by air pressure on the boot—not suction, Arthur—and the other foot goes down a little—”
    “How about sidewise motion?” asked Belvew. The watchers could tell that she was trying this.
    “No problem. Still like soft clay. I could ski on it, I think.”
    “Can you still get off it, or will I have to risk cooking you again?” Again the ship cameras provided the answer before Ginger’s voice. There was a little backward slipping of one boot as the other moved forward, but forward won out.
    “I’m off the patch. Don’t waste any juice.”
    “There are three labs near you. Save me some time. Put one on the patch about where you were