SOURCE: "Ruum" by Arthur Porges (Fantasy & Science Fiction, October 1953)

DESCRIPTION: "Jim Irwin had once worked with mercury, and for a second it seemed to himthat a half-filled leather sack of the liquid-metal had rolled into the clearing. For the quasi-spherical object moved with just such a weighty, fluid motion. But it was not leather; and what appeared at first a disgusting wartiness, turend out on closer scrutiny to be more like the functional projections of some outlandish mechanism...When the ruum was six feet away, he saw gleaming finger-hooks flick from warty knobs, and a hollow, sting-like probe, dripping greenish liquid, poised snakily between them... " ("Ruum" by Arthur Porges)

NOTES: The Ruum Type H-9 is a harvcester probe that is lost during the age of the dinosaurs. Jim irwin happens along it once it has revived in our time. The bullet-proof ball collects specimens, injecting them with a liquid that preserves the flesh indefinitely. The Ruum may have sensors that keep it from harvesting intelligent species.

HISTORY: The idea of this story was essentially recycled the Predator films.

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