I just remembered being bugged by this for years when I was a kid. I found an old hardback collection of SF stories and there was this one story which had the last few pages missing. I have a massive collection of books and I frequent second-hand bookshops, but I have never come across the story again. Also I cannot remember the title of the story, let alone the author, so searching the 'net is out, hence my post here. Help!!
Synopsis : somehow these scientists discover this sentient liquid glop that they keep in a beaker and communicate with via a couple of electrodes hooked up to a speaker. It turns out to be highly intelligent. It lives on salt, in fact at one point it gets drunk on it and raves on about wanting to grow and divide, and take over the world (naturally). It learns to maintain a viscous state in which it can glop itself around. Then it bribes one of the scientists with a method of turning base metal into gold, and persuades him to get it out of the lab and take it to a lake. When the other scientists get there they find this chap with his head eaten off and a huge number of sentient glops glopping out of the lake and heading off in all directions. The last page before the missing ones was something like one of the scientists coming up with a way to stop the glops, "which was actually quite simple". AND THERE IT ENDED!!!
Can any dopers tell me how they stopped the glops? Please??? Feel free to guess if you don’t know the story.
Many thanks.
