Explore "Rastignac the Devil" by Philip José Farmer on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Landsmen rushed the techs and pushed them into the great chemical / vat in which the twenty-five hundred foot square Master Skin floated. / Then they uncrated the lead-leaf-lined bags filled with stolen geese / and emptied them into the nutrient fluid. According to Mapfarity's / calculations, the radio-activity from the silicon-carbon geese should / kill the big Skin within a few days. When a new one was grown, that, / too, would die. Unless the Amphib guessed what was wrong and located / the geese on the bottom of the ten-foot deep tank, they would not be / able to stop the process. That did not seem likely.
In either case, it was necessary that the Master Skin be put out of / temporary commission, at least, so the Amphibs over the Kingdom could / have a fighting chance. Mapfarity plunged a hollow harpoon into the / isle of floating protoplasm and through a tube connected to that / poured into the Skin three gallons of the dream-snake venom. That was / enough to knock it out for an hour or two. Meanwhile, if the Amphibs / had any sense at all, they'd have rid themselves of their extraderms.