Which left the bathroom. The door was closed but not locked. I twisted the lever, yanked it open, and found him.
For a moment, I was disoriented. Before me was the real Graham Stone, and a false shell separating from him. It looked like I had double vision, with the two images overlapping slightly. Then he snarled and smashed the simulacrum away as it separated from him. On his hands, ugly brown bubbles of flesh rose up, burst free, and spun at me like biological missiles.
I stepped backward, swung the pipe, and broke open one of the spinning… seeds, spores, whatever the hell they were. Instantly, the end of the pipe was sheathed in writhing white fibers. The fungus spread inexorably down toward my hand, and I had to drop the pipe. The second bubble had struck the doorjamb; a colony of cobweb fungus wriggled along the wood and aluminum, anchoring itself, spreading outward in all directions.
"Hold it right there!" I said, pretending that I was tough.
His hands came up again. I could see the spores forming. The skin turned brown, bulged, leaped away from him.
One of them burst on the wall next to me and sent climbing white tendrils toward the ceiling and the floor. Cracks appeared in the fiberboard as the stuff ate its way into the core of the ship.
The second spore struck my sports-coat sleeve, exploded with a bubbling froth of white growth. Never before or since have I stripped off a coat that fast, not even when a delectable blonde was waiting for me and cooing sweet things; I nearly strangled myself in the damn thing, but I got rid of it. By the time the coat hit the floor, the albino fronds were trembling like the hairs on the back of my neck.
Stone stepped out of the bathroom into the companionway, raising those hands at me again, and I turned and ran like hell.
Once before, I said that a private detective is finished when his nerve cracks, that the first time he backs down is the point at which his career begins to terminate. Well, I stand by that. I wasn't turning chicken. I was just using my head for once. Those who fight and run away — live to fight another day. So I ran. There are times when you know it isn't sensible to take on a tank with a target pistol, because you'll be standing there holding your target pistol and looking at the twelve-inch hole they just put in your gut.
Besides, this creepy Stone character wasn't playing the same game I was. He didn't know the rules. Even the crummiest two-bit punk will give you half a chance. He'll use a rod or a knife or even a jar full of sulfuric acid. But nothing this tricky. Stone didn't have any respect for tradition.
Topside, I ran — to the bow of the craft and checked the onrushing bank of the river. It seemed no more than two hundred feet away now. It was the most welcome sight of my life. On the rail next to me, a pod of fibrous death split and wrapped spidery tentacles around the iron, bored into the metal, and began to greedily devour it. I was struck with the notion that these pods were more virulent than those that had killed the gang-bangers in the alleyway.
I dove to the right, behind an exhaust housing. Cautiously, I peered over the top and saw Stone standing by the wheelhouse steps, his bright eyes flashing, his palms flattened in my direction.
The boat rushed closer to the shore.
But not fast enough to suit me.
Two pods spun over my head, landed on the deck behind, and ate down through the planking. Before long, the yacht was going to be honeycombed with the white tentacles, each as thin as a thread but as strong, surely, as a steel wire.
A whining sound arose, the sound of tortured metal. The deck of the boat shuddered, and we seemed almost to come to a stop. Then there was a jolt, and we sped forward again. The bottom had dragged over a shoreline rock formation, but we had not been grounded.
And then we were.
The boat hit the second reef, tore out its bottom, and settled into four feet of water, most of its bulk still high and dry.
I rolled back across the deck, grabbed the rail, heaved myself over the side. I struck shallow water and went under, striking my jaw on a hunk of smooth driftwood. My mouth sagged open, and I swallowed water. So this is what it's like to drown, I thought. Then I closed my stupid kisser and struggled to the surface again. I broke water, flailed my arms, pushed up, and staggered toward that blessed beach, sputtering and coughing and trying not to pass out.
I may not have a number of qualities that modern society considers admirable — like refined tastes and finesse. But there's one thing I do have, damn it. Grit.
I was five short steps from dry ground when the pods of fungus erupted before me. Two. Then two more. A wild tangle of white snakes rose up to block my escape. I turned and looked back. Graham Stone, alien Anglophile, looking like an evil Cary Grant, had left the ship too. He was splashing toward me.
I turned to my right. Two spores fell there. The pale snakes twisted out of the water, seeking, wriggling toward me.
On my left, two more.
No respect for tradition at all.
The water was only halfway up my calves, not deep enough for me to go beneath the surface and swim away. Besides, if the fungus was going to take me, I'd rather it happened up here, where I could see what those filaments were doing.
Graham Stone came relentlessly onward, holding his fire now. He knew he had me.
We were on a dark stretch of shore. No one to whom I could call for help.
Then from the left arose the furious whine of a small powerboat driven to the limits of its performance. A whooping siren wailed to life, one of those ooga horns from ancient automobiles. Out of the gloom and the falling snow, Bruno appeared. He was standing in a two-seat twelve-footer, holding on to the wheel for all he was worth. The craft was hitting better than fifty miles an hour. It skimmed the water, the bow in the air. Since the boat sat higher in the water than the yacht, it passed over the rock formations and kept coming.
"Bruno!" I shouted.
He was a textbook example of a man — or a bear — in the grip of an anxiety attack. His big eyes rolled wildly, and he braced for the worst.
The little boat hit the beach, the screws churning frantically. It slammed forward through the sand at twenty miles an hour for ten feet or so, struck a rock, stopped dead, and pitched the bruin over the windshield, across the bow, and onto the beach, flat on his enormous back.
And he got up. He looked dizzy, and he was covered with sand, but he had survived.
I started jumping up and down in the water yelling, "Get him, Bruno! Get him now!"
Those white tentacles were threading their way closer to me, even though Graham Stone had stopped approaching.
The bear raised his head, looked at me, felt for his floppy hat, then shrugged when he couldn't find it.
"Get him, Bruno, get him!" I bellowed.
He took out that silly-looking pistol of his, and while Stone tried to hit him with a spore of fungus, my friend the bear burned the sonofabitch on the spot with the Disney.780 Death Hose. The only thing left was some ashes, which floated away.
I knew I was going to have to get one of those. Maybe Mickey Mouse sold them out of a secret shop in Tomorrow Land.
"You killed him!" I shouted as Bruno burned down the white forest of fungus on all other sides of me.
Then I must have had an attack of low blood sugar or something, because I passed out. I'm sure I didn't faint.
WE HAD TO DISPOSE OF THE YACHT. IN ABOUT FIFTEEN SECONDS, WHEN Bruno was done with it, it was only a dusting of ashes slowly washing away on the water. No fire, really. Just whoosh—and it was nothing but dust. He destroyed the powerboat too, every trace of what had taken place here this evening.