k
fur ... covering the earth, covering mangrove roots, fitted neatly
around the bent palm tree trunks, lying over the rocks that had cut
his feet last night ... smothering, suffocating ... hugging the earth.

Bill shut his eyes, and still the vision kept shooting to his brain. All
yellow and black and fuzzy, with trees or a tall mangrove bush or a sea
grape vine sticking up here and there.

He opened his eyes and wanted to run, for the scene was still there. It
hadn't disappeared as a nightmare disappears when you wake up. Thick
yellow and black fur lay on the ground like dirty snow. Covering
everything low, hugging the base of taller things.

"Run!" his mind told him. Yet he stood rooted to the spot, staring at
the carpet of fur near him. It was only ten feet away. Ten feet? His
every muscle jumped. The lock that had held his muscles and brain in a
tight vice gave loose and a flood of realization hit him. "It's moving!"
he realized in horror. "It's growing!"

* * * * *

As he watched, slowly, slowly, as the petals of a morning glory unfold
before the eye, the yellow and black fur carpet stretched itself in
ever-increasing perimeter.

He saw it approach a rock near the beach. The mind, when confronted with
a huge shock, somehow concentrates itself on a small detail. Perhaps it
tries to absorb itself in a small thing because the whole thing is too
great to comprehend all at once. So with Bill's mind. He saw the yellow
and black fur grow toward the rock. It seemed to ooze around it and
then up and over the top of it. Bill saw, when it reached the top of the
rock, that it dropped a spiny tendril to the ground. Like a root, the
tendril buried itself into the earth below the jutting rock, and slowly
the rock was covered with the flowing fur.

Bill's thoughts sped ahead of his reason. The dog. The dog ... growing
like a plant. Its hide covering the ground, putting out roots,
suffocating everything, smothering everything, growing, growing.

With almost superhuman effort, he turned his back on the awful sight and
swam desperately out to the _Seven Seas_.

"Bill, what's happened?" cried Carol, when she saw his white and
terrified face.

"Carol ... the dog ... it must have had some cosmic reaction to its
cellular structure ... some cancerous reaction ... when the chamber
broke open and the cells were exposed to our atmosphere again it started
some action ... started to grow ... doesn't s