“The first excrescence did not pop. It was already some two foot six in diameter and still swelling fast.
“It must pop soon,” she muttered.
But still it did not. It kept on expanding until it must have been all of five feet in diameter. Then it stopped growing. It looked like a huge, repulsive bladder. A tremor and a shake passed through it. It shuddered jellywise, became detached, and wobbled into the air with the uncertainty of an overblown bubble.
In a lurching, amoebic way it ascended for ten feet or so. There it vacillated, steadying into a more stable sphere. Then, suddenly, something happened to it. It did not explode. Nor was there any sound. Rather, it seemed to slit open, as if it had been burst into instantaneous bloom by a vast number of white cilia which rayed out in all directions.”

John Wyndham ‘The Kraken Wakes’ 1953