"It resembled nothing so much as a star-shaped blob of transparent jelly that shimmered and changed color like an opal. It appeared to be some lower form of animal, one-celled, not large, only about a foot in circumference when it stretched those feelers out to full length. It oozed along over the sand like a snail, groping its way with those star-points—and it hummed!"
"It was nauseating to watch, and yet beautiful, too, with all those iridescent colors gleaming against that setting of dead-black stone."
"Instead, I took off my flying-helmet and tossed the goggles directly in the path of the creature. It did not pause or turn aside, but merely reached out one of those sickening feelers and brushed the goggles very lightly. “And they turned to stone!"
"It took me about three days to trap the thing, although it gave me no more actual resistance, of course, than a larger snail."
"He had prodded this jelly-like Thing with his automatic, and it had turned (him—and everything in contact with him —into shiny dark stone."
"I saw horror—a jelly-like, opalescent thing like a five-pointed star. It pulsed and quivered for an instant, and the room fairly rocked to the unmuffled sound of that vibrant humming."
Mary Elizabeth Counselman, The Black Stone Statue
Read Scott's essay about The Black Stone Statue here