Alan Dean Foster

by Alan Dean Foster

  The tie line was maybe ten feet long. When it had ran out, the dinghy lurched ahead, slapping along in the wake of the runaway fishing boat.

  Ignoring everything else, Harcourt fought to regain his balance as he clawed his way relentlessly toward his quarry.

  Water came splashing in over the transom. Never meant to be used in so rough a fashion, the ancient wooden dinghy was already leaking. Harcourt grabbed the detective's leg and began pulling Sykes toward him, his grip unbreakable. Sykes found himself dragged across the bottom of the dinghy as he fought desperately for a handhold. His fingers locked around one of the stem cleats. Harcourt grinned contemptuously, his expression especially horrifying because despite the fangs and distorted face and transformed skull he was still Harcourt, still the same suave, predatory, amoral Newcomer behind the hellish transformation.

  He yanked the detective free with ease, breaking his frantic hold on the brass cleat.

  As he was pulled toward the bow, Sykes kicked madly in the direction of the ratchet release. Harcourt was very close 212

  now, fangs gleaming brightly. In a moment it would all be over.

  The detective's shoe connected hard with the ratchet lever. It flipped up and the tie line instantly snaked through the pulley in the bow, freeing the dinghy from the fishing boat. Caught in the grasp of the waves, the tiny craft rocked madly in the wake of the receding boat. Harcourt stumbled, fought for balance.

  A wave splashed over the gunwale. Some of the seawater struck Harcourt, who let out an unearthly howl and released his grasp on Sykes. Hearing the copter close by, the detective tried to scramble over the side, only to have the Newcomer grab him a second time. Sykes flailed at the water. His weight on the side of the dinghy tilted it dangerously. More water sloshed in. They were starting to sink.

  The drops continued to batter the moaning Newcomer. Thick blood began to bead up on his armored skin, showing where the sea had struck. Sykes was swept up in a desperate bear hug, felt the breath squeezed out of him as Harcourt's massive arms contracted. The pressure was agonizing.

  He shoved backward with his feet, knocking the alien off balance. Harcourt lost his grip and staggered, fear showing on his face for the first time.

  He tried to recover, but it was impossible to stand up and stay stable in the wildly rocking dinghy. In the small boat, all his great size and strength worked against him.

  He took a step toward the cringing Sykes, overcompensated to the left as the boat rocked right, tried to correct, and fell. The dinghy overturned, dumping its occupants into the sea.

  Gasping for air and kicking madly, Sykes broke the surface. Using his one good arm, he fought for a grip on the smooth back of the capsized dinghy.

  Around him all was silent except for the lap of the waves, the receding moan of the fishing boat, and the whup-whup of the copter circling somewhere overhead.

  Until Harcourt burst from the water behind him, body and face partly melted, and dragged him below.

  Leaning out the open door of the copter, Francisco watched 20

  helplessly from above, knowing there was nothing he, could do to help.

  Harcourt's slowly dissolving but still massive body clinging to him, Sykes broke the surface a moment later. He was utterly, completely exhausted. His shoulder had frozen up and he could no longer feel the ankle he'd sprained on his leap into the stem of the fishing boat. With no strength left and only one arm and one leg functioning properly, he could no longer stay afloat in the choppy sea. A wave swept over his head and saltwater went down his throat. He coughed weakly, went under, bobbed back to the surface.

  With his free hand he tried to beckon for help. He was drowning.

  A Newcomer would not last long enough to drown, but Francisco knew what it meant for a human. He turned desperately to the pilot. "What about Air-Sea Rescue? We called in. Where are they?"

  The pilot looked over at him and shrugged helplessly. "It takes time to get out here from the base! They might be another couple of minutes."

  The Newcomer gazed back down at the roiling sea. "Haven't got a couple of minutes." He took the longest, deepest breath of his adult. "Take it down.

  Take it down!"

  Nodding, the pilot slowly let the chopper fall toward the turbulent water below. The sungun turned the sea to boiling silver. Locking the fingers of his left hand around the nearest solid grip, Francisco forced himself to lean out and over. The thick, briny odor of the saltwater was ripe in his nostrils, making him dizzy and faint. The surface of the sea was an unstable, sparkling blue beneath him.

  Sykes's head appeared in the middle of it, sank back below the surface. The pilot was doing some miracle flying, keeping the chopper's landing skids a scant yard above the water. Still too far away.

  Francisco looked back and bellowed loud enough to make himself heard above the whirling blades. "ALL THE WAY!"

  "I CAN'T!" the pilot screamed back at him. "IT'LL DITCH! "

  Sykes appeared again. His head rolled back and he must have seen the copter, because one hand stretched feebly

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  upward. Too far away. No telling how much longer the pilot could hold their present position.

  Francisco could see that if his partner went down one more time, he wouldn't come back up. Trying not to think, not to feel, fighting to stifle every instinct in his body, the Newcomer detective proceeded to do the bravest thing he'd ever had to do in his life.

  Hanging on tightly, he abandoned the chopper's cabin and stepped out onto the narrow landing skid. Locking one leg around the metal strut, he let himself dangle freely as he reached for Sykes's groping fingers.

  Their fingertips met, slid apart. Feeling the strain in his leg, Francisco made himself stretch another inch, another two. Then he had his partner's hand in his, the grip firm. With success some of his strength returned.

  There was saltwater on his friend's palm and he winced from the pain as it penetrated his fingers. Ignoring it, he began lifting. Slowly, now wanting, not daring to lose contact.

  Harcourt's head exploded from the water a foot in front of Sykes's face.

  The eye sockets were empty, the soft flesh there having dissolved away almost instantly. Most of the skin was gone, along with much of the underlying muscle. The nearly skeletal body threw itself back onto Sykes, the weight breaking his partner's grip. Sykes and the nearcorpse sank beneath the waves.

  There was nothing else Francisco could do, nothing more except ...

  Leaning out as far as possible, his face a foot above the surface, he took a deep breath to steel himself and screamed to block the pain he knew would be forthcoming as he shoved his lightly clad arm into the water.

  The pain came immediately, racing up his arm toward his shoulder and setting his brain afire. His fingers felt nothingand then a lump, bobbing just beneath the surface. Feeling around, he got ahold of the object and pulled. His hand emerged from the water, clutching his partner's wrist. The rest of Sykes followed, coughing and sputtering.

  His arm feeling Re a log in a fireplace, Francisco turned to shout. "Take it up! -

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  The pilot waved and the copter rose slowly. His wrist locked in Francisco's grip, Sykes began to rise clear of the waves-as Harcourt's arm rocketed upward to clutch the detective's dripping ankle. Sykes looked down in horror at the thing clinging to him as the chopper continued to ascend.

  The rest of Harcourt's body broke the surface, the nearly skeletal arm ripped from off the dissolving torso, and the weight fell harmlessly away into the ocean. Trembling uncontrollably, Sykes managed to dislodge the still dangling severed arm from his leg. It spun back into the churning water below.

  Francisco continued to pull, careful and steady, until he could slip both arms beneath his partner's. Then Sykes was safely inside the chopper. The pilot headed back toward land. The detective was soaked, battered, barely conscious as he sat on the floor clutching his injured arm. Wincing from the lingering pain, Francisco removed his jacket and wrapped t
he dry part around his own damaged hand.

  As they turned, the pilot stared down at the circle of water where the rescue had taken place. "I was too busy trying to keep us from ditching to see much, but what the hell was that down there? It was weird."

  Francisco hesitated, then turned meaningfully to his partner, waiting to hear what Sykes would say. The two men stared at each other for a long moment. Then Sykes shrugged painfully.

  "Looked like every other damn Slag to me. Just plain ugly. "

  The pilot's look of uncertainty lingered a few seconds longer, then he grinned at his instruments, reassured. "Yeah, right. That was it. "

  Despite the pain that was roaring through his right hand, Francisco smiled.

  Not too much smog this morning, Sykes thought as he did battle with his clothing in the church anteroom. He was having a hell of a time trying to fasten the tuxedo tie with one arm in a sling.

  A pair of alien hands appeared to help.. One of them was also bandaged and in a sling. Beneath the bandages was one of the most peculiar resin casts Sykes had ever seen. It ran all the way up Francisco's shoulder.

  If anything, he was less mobile than his partner.

  He looked out of place in his oversized tux, Re a Chicago Bears linebacker suddenly plopped down in the midst of some royal coronation.

  Come to think of it, Sykes decided, that was a fitting description of the day's activities to come.

  After finally beating the tie into submission, the detective turned sideways and struck a bodybuilder's pose in the miffor. The sling ruined the effect.

  "How do I look?"

  Francisco took a long look, nodded approvingly. His wife had dressed him.

  "You look very good."

  A knock at the door made both of them turn. Sykes opened it, to reveal his daughter. She looked radiant in her wedding gown. Behind Kristin the interior of the church was swarming with assembled guests. Towering above all the

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  women and many of the men was Mrs. Francisco. Her son darted through the crowd, playing with several human boys.

  Sykes gazed at his daughter, remembering the little girl with the perpetually dirty pigtails who was always getting herself stuck in the tree house outside their Valley home. What had happened to her? Who was this blinding light, this cover girl, this movie star standing before him?

  She reminded him with very few words.

  "Ready, Daddy... ?"

  Something inside him melted. He was going to take his time escorting her up the aisle, was going to savor every second of it. This time he wouldn't need a tape to help him remember.

  One more thing to do before that. The music was beginning outside and the guests were hurrying to take their seats.

  "George, uh-I want to apologize now, in advance, for all the rotten things I'm going to say to you over the years." He let his daughter slip her arm through his.

  The Newcomer smiled down at them. "That is all right, Matthew. After all, you're only human."

  Caught off guard, Sykes paused, then started chuckling as Kristin led him out of the dressing room into the brightly lit church. Half of Los Angeles seemed to be sitting in the pews, and all of them were looking at him and his daughter, and smiling.

  "What a wild man," he murmured fondly. "Never know what he's gonna say next."

  His daughter was pulling slightly, but a moment later he was matching her stride for stride.