Read Ebook: The Day of the Dog by Horne Anderson Emshwiller Ed Illustrator

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Ebook has 88 lines and 7191 words, and 2 pages

Bill tuned down the music that ensued and returned to his bunk. "You heard that, Carol?" He knew she wasn't asleep.

"Yes. And it makes this whole thing that we've found seem more plausible. I've been lying here trying to make myself believe it's some sort of dream, but it isn't. If we could only ..." Carol's voice faded softly into the night.

There was absolutely nothing they could do. Nothing but lie there and smoke and pretend to sleep. They didn't talk much, and keenly felt the terrible frustration of their enforced silence on the ship-to-shore. They heard several more news reports and several analyses of the news, but nothing new was added throughout the night. The radio only reiterated that the ejection unit had been recovered, that hope had faded for Joy's survival and that the chamber was to be opened in the morning as soon as scientists had convened in Washington.

Dawn, long in coming, broke about 4:30. With the lifting of the dark, the sun spots which interfered with radio reception miraculously lifted also. Bill and Carol sat next to the ship-to-shore and turned it on. This time they heard the reassuring hum of the transmitter, not drowned out by the awful static of the night before. Bill switched to the Coast Guard channel.

"Last evening on entering the harbor here we saw an object fall to the ground. On inspection, it was a metal box which was broken apart on impact. In it are electronic equipment and the body of a small dog. Over." Bill tried to be calm and succinct.

"No, no! Did you read me about the Russian satellite?" asked Bill, impatience in his voice.

"Will you state your name and address. Will you state the master's full name, and the call letters and registration of your craft. Over," crackled the voice from the speaker.

"Oh my lord, we're not going to have red tape at a time like this, are we?" Carol asked exasperatedly.

"This is Bill Anderson of Ft. Lauderdale, owner and skipper. Our call letters are William George 3176, Coast Guard registration #235-46-5483. What are your instructions regarding dog satellite?"

"Please stand by."

Bill and Carol stared at each other while the voice on the radio was silent.

"We wish to remind you that it is illegal and punishable by fine and or imprisonment to issue false reports to the Coast Guard. We are investigating your report and wish you to stand by."

"Now what? It looks like they're going to take their time in believing us. At least until they find out who we are and if we're really here," said Carol.

Bill paced the deck in frustration. Suddenly he decided, "Carol, you stick with the radio. I'm going ashore again and take another look at our Muttnik. It seems so incredible that I'm not even sure of what I saw last night. Once they believe us they'll want to know as much about it as we can tell them." Bill hurriedly put on his swim suit and heard Carol shout as he dove overboard, "Hurry back, Bill. I don't like you leaving me here alone!"

Bill swam with sure even strokes to the shore where they had gone last night. The water felt cool. It soothed his nerves which jangled in the excitement of the discovery and in the anger at the disbelieving authorities. He reached shallow water and waded towards shore.

Suddenly he stopped dead, his ankles in five inches of water. His eyes stared ahead in disbelief. His brain was numbed. Only his eyes were alive, staring, wide in horror. Finally his brain pieced together the image that his vision sent to it. Pieced it together but made no comprehension of it.

His brain told him that there was a blanket of fur laying unevenly twenty feet back from the shore line. A blanket of yellow and black 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.

"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 stop growing ... it's horrible ..." Bill's words were disjointed and hysterical.

"Bill! It's ... oh no! The whole island looks as though it's covered with ... fur!" She screamed.

Bill grabbed the binoculars and ranged the island with them. A quarter of a mile down he could see small figures in the water, floundering around, climbing aboard the two fishing smacks. All around, the black and yellow mounds of fur carpeted the pretty green island with a soft rug of yellow and black.

"Get the Coast Guard, Carol!"

"They called back while you were gone. They're sending a plane over immediately."

"Call them, Carol!" Bill shouted at her. "Don't you realize what this could mean? Don't you realize that something, only God knows what, has happened to the cellular structure of this animal, has turned it into a voracious plant-like thing that seems to grow and grow once it hits our atmosphere? Don't you realize that today they're going to open that satellite, that other one, in Washington? Suppose this is what happens when living tissue is exposed to cosmic rays or whatever is up there. Don't you see what could happen?" Bill was hoarse from fright and shouting. "Smother everything, grow and grow and smother ..."

Carol was at the ship-to-shore. "What time is it, Carol?"

"I don't know. 5:30 I guess."

"They plan to open the ejection chamber at six. We've got to tell them what happened here before they open it! Hurry with the damned Coast Guard!"

Bill grabbed the phone. "Listen carefully," he said in a quiet determined voice. "This is God's own truth. I repeat: This is God's own truth. The remains of the dog we discovered last night have started to grow. It is growing as we look at it. It has covered the entire island as far as we can see, with fur. Stinking yellow and black fur. We've got to get word to Washington before they open up the satellite. The same thing could happen there. Do you understand? I must get in touch with Washington. Immediately!"

With his hand shaking, Bill turned on the standard broadcast band of the portable RDF. A voice cut in: "... latest reports from Walter Reed General Hospital where the first human-manned satellite ejection chamber has just been opened. All leading physiologists and physicists were assembled at the hospital by midnight last night and plans to open the ejection chamber at 6 a.m. this morning were moved up. The chamber was opened at 4 a.m. Eastern Standard Time today. Our first report confirmed that volunteer moon traveller, the man in the moon, Robert Joy, was no longer alive. Hope had been abandoned for him some 80 hours previous, when recording instruments on his body processes indicated no reactions. Of scientific curiosity is the fact that though dead for more than three days, his body is in a perfect state of preservation ...

"Flash! We interrupt this special newscast for a late bulletin: The body of Robert Joy has begun to shoot out unexplained appendages, like rapidly growing cancerous growths. His integument appears to be enlarging, growing away from his body ..."

END

Transcriber's Note:

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