by Hal Clement
He could, of course, with a few minutes direct investigation of a body, detect the other’s presence easily. Physical contact with the tissue of his own kind was something on which the Hunter was not likely to be deceived; but how to obtain such contact? And, more important, how to obtain it with significant portion of the human population of Earth? This, was where the trouble lay. Some means ‘had to be found for narrowing down the number of possible suspects to a point where individual testing would be practical. The only means to this end that had occurred so far either to Bob or the Hunter was an analysis of the effects of the alien’s presence, in the hope that some of those effects would be obvious to outside observers.
Looked at in this fashion, a possible technique which had not been considered so far became glaringly obvious: the actual tracing of the fugitive’s possible moves. The Hunter knew that the other ship had, like his own, fallen into water and it had still been sinking at the time of the Hunter’s own crash. There was the chance—it had already been considered in conversations with Bob—that its occupant was still in the sea, leading the half-vegetation existence that lack of warmth, oxygen, and free mobility would necessitate. It must have crashed quite close to this island, and the chance of its having found its way ashore on any other was small. If, then, it had escaped from the sea, it must have done so more or less as the Hunter had; and people who frequented the seashore in times of leisure were automatically on the suspect list. Bob’s friends would have to be “questioned.”
It was the Hunter thought, unlikely that people who actually worked around the water would have been taken; he remembered how the boys had reacted to his own presence while he had been disguised as a jellyfish. A member of the human race would almost have to be asleep in order to be accessible ‘to the sluggish object that was a member of his own race without a host.
It was to be hoped that the fugitive had succeeded in emerging from the sea; if not, it would remain a threat for an almost indefinite period, and literally nothing could be done but wait for it.
Assuming, for purposes of planning action, that the creature had reached the island and found refuge in a human host, then the program of testing Bob’s friends and any others who could be proved to have slept or rested within a reasonable distance of the water would have to be undertaken. The only practicable method of testing was a physical search of the bodies involved. That process would take several minutes at least; and the unpleasant fact that he was going to have to leave Bob’s body on occasion stared tire Hunter in the face. He did not like the idea. It entailed awkwardness in timing, for he was a good enough psychologist to know that he must never let the boy see him leaving or entering; it meant extreme difficulty in planning, for both his radius and time of action on his own would be sharply limited. He must work at night, since he could stand very little sunlight—his exposure at the time he had met Bob constituted nearly his maximum tolerance—and he could not travel rapidly by himself.
The transportation problem was going to be the most difficult. If he only left Bob while the boy was asleep, he would have to travel from the Kinnaird residence to a number of widely scattered points from the island by himself, unless it were possible to arrange for Bob to sleep at the homes of some of his friends occasionally. For any suspects who were not intimate acquaintances of Bob’s, there seemed no alternative to travel.
The Hunter was that far in his cogitation when the sandwiches arrived, and Mr. Kinnaird and his son set out for the scene of the new tank. This proved to be on the north slope of the hill which centered itself near the northeast tip of the island—the end of the shorter arm of the “L.” The dock was visible from this site, but the swell of the low elevation cut off the view of the storage sheds and houses at the shoreward end of the causeway; the home-and-garden area was located in the saddle at the base of the arm, and even more completely concealed. A number of other tanks were located in the same neighborhood; these dry-land structures contained cultures whose optimum working temperature was far enough above that of the lagoon water so that the advantage of full sunlight more than made up for the more complete nightly let-down.
Much had already been accomplished on the new tank. It was partly cut into the hillside, and the fifty-yard-square floor of special concrete had already been poured and carefully smoothed. The retaining boards for the south wall were being set in place, while mixing and pouring machinery had already been set up on the hillside above the tank. Mr. Kinnaird began examining the work that had been done during his absence, while Bob went to the more immediate scene of activity and began to help carry planks.
The boards extended upward nearly thirty feet, and the Hunter had to swallow his wrath as Bob clung precariously at the top of the retaining wall time after time to help steady new planks as they were being fastened in place. The alien could say nothing, since he dared not interfere with his host’s eyesight at such times. He hoped that Mr. Kinnaird would interfere, but that individual had evidently meant exactly what he said about expecting his son to take care of himself. Several times the two met, usually without exchanging more than a nod; more than once the Hunter saw the elder Kinnaird in situations where the alien would have hated to see his host. A semiportable power saw was being used to cut the boards to the proper length, and several times Mr. Kinnaird checked the work of its operators with a disregard of the whirling teeth that would have chilled the Hunter’s blood if he had had any. At least it seemed the man’s apparent indifference to the minor dangers courted by Bob was part of his character—the Hunter had begun to wonder whether the altruistic side of human nature were not a trifle under developed, until he realized it was probably just Mr. Kinnaird’s innate contempt of danger rather than carelessness about his son.
It was frightening to watch, nonetheless, for a being with such a highly developed sense of public responsibility as the Hunter; and at last the alien turned his attention wholly to his own host. That was bad enough. Several times in the course of the evening he had to work, scavenging the areas where splinters had penetrated the boy’s skin deeply; more than once the Hunter was braced in expectation of bone and joint damaging falls, though none of these materialized.
About midnight, Bob started yawning frequently enough to catch his father’s attention, and was ordered to retire. He obeyed, at least to a certain extent, withdrawing to the neighborhood of the concrete mixers and stretching out on a spot from which he could look down at the work. It was going forward rapidly, and there seemed every likelihood of the pouring’s taken place on schedule if Mr. Kinnaird’s energy did not flag. Bob, knowing his father, was pretty sure it would not. He did not observe long enough to be sure, however, for his natural fatigue combined with the softness of the grass and the warmth of the air to put him to sleep in rather short order.
The Hunter did not sleep, of course, but he could not watch effectively with Bob’s eyes closed. He thought, therefore, though very little crossed him mind that he had not already considered, and listened to the sounds of work which he had learned during the evening to interpret with fair accuracy.
Bob slept for several hours. He was awakened well before dawn, however, by the sound of one of the concrete mixers starting up almost beside him—the Hunter had heard the noises connected with its preparation for some minutes, and had debated the advisability of awakening his host, but had not reached a decision. When Bob sat up and opened his eyes, they found that the floor of the tank was almost deserted; most of the night crew had disappeared. Mr. Kinnaird was still present, standing almost beside his son, silently watching as the great machines ground to a start. Men were still shoveling ingredients into the hoppers, and a haze of cement dust was obscuring the scene. Some of this was carried by the breeze into Bob’s eyes, to the annoyance of both beings using the organs.
The Hunter’s efforts to clear out the foreign matter spared his host some pain, but did not improve seeing for a few moments. The alien decided to let the tear glands do the lion’s share of that job.
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bsp; Bob was refreshed by the few hours of sleep, and began eagerly to investigate the pouring from some rather hazardous points of vantage. Several times he had to be ordered out of the way as the pouring spouts shifted their position along the edge of the cut—few of the laborers appeared to share Mr. Kinnaird’s opinion that Bob was perfectly able to take care of himself. They watched the boy closely; and, in turn, the Hunter watched them. He was not sure what he expected to find, but at least he could become acquainted with the features of as many people as possible—even then, he would have trouble enough keeping track of them when the process of elimination started.
By the time pouring was really under way, and Mr. Kinnaird felt free to take his son home to breakfast—the sandwiches had been consumed long before—the sun was well up, and the Hunter felt reasonably sure that he could recognize most of the workers again by face, and some by name. That was progress of a sort, he tried to tell himself.
It was the only progress he made for several days. Bob, without consulting his invisible guest, remained at the tank site almost constantly for the rest of the week end; on Monday, he went to school. The Hunter accepted the delays as philosophically as possible. After ally if his quarry was on the island at all, he had no immediate prospect of leaving it. This thought so consoled him that for some days he made little effort to direct Bob’s activities, and remained content to observe the island’s inhabitants. He was shocked out of this attitude approximately a week after their arrival.
School had just been dismissed, and the boys had gathered as usual outside to discuss plans for the afternoon, when Shorty Malmstrom’s attention was diverted by a voice calling his name, and the group was joined by another boy. They all knew him, a tall, hard-boiled eighteen-year-old named Charles Teroa, though Malmstrom was the only one who had been at all intimate with him. He had officially finished school the year before, but had continued to take special work with one of the teachers; he had, consequently, little work in common with the younger boys, though he was not above giving assistance with a homework assignment.
“Shorty!” Teroa included the other boys in the conversation with a nod, but addressed his particular friend. “They radioed in this morning. I’ve got it.”
“When are you going? Next trip?” asked Malmstrom. “Why couldn’t they have told you sooner?”
“Next trip it is; and what differing home to pack. I know the ship won’t be in ’til day after tomorrow, but there’s no sense putting it off until the last minute. I’ll be seeing you—and writing.” The Polynesian youth was gone with an abrupt wave of the hand; and the other boys stood staring after him. The Hunter gathered from the envious remarks they let drop that Teroa had obtained a much-coveted position with the operators of the island ships; but this detail bothered him less than the obvious fact that someone was about to leave the island.
It was imperative that Charles Teroa be checked with absolute certainty, within the next forty-eight hours, for the presence of the fugitive alien; and the Hunter, for the first time since he had come to Earth, suddenly found himself tense with anxiety. Why must Bob stay with these other human beings so much of the time? Why couldn’t he, right now, get off by himself so that the Hunter could tell him of the urgency of the situation? Why, in short, had all this time been wasted?
For the first time since their communication had reached a stable footing, the Hunter made use of Bob’s sense of touch. The web of alien cells around the boy’s arm-muscles tensed, producing once again the twinges which had disturbed him so intensely that night at school when the Hunter had first tried to what was happening; but he was almost as upset as before, since he assumed that only a grave emergency could cause such a pronounced departure from the Hunter’s normal reticence.
The boy controlled himself well, however. With a muttered “In a minute,” to his invisible guest, he turned back to the school building as though he had forgotten something, opened his desk, and fixed his eyes on a sheet of blank paper inside. “Go ahead,” he said inaudibly, and waited expectantly.
“We must find means of examining your dark-skinned friend as soon as possible,” the words appeared to flow across the paper.
“Why I neither saw nor heard anything to direct suspicion against him. He has been after that job for a long time—there’s nothing odd about his leaving.
“Perhaps not; but the mere fact that he is leaving is enough. He must be checked before he is beyond reach. Also, if his probable departure has been common knowledge for some time, he has been an obvious goal for our quarry—for that very reason. He must be examined—physically, by me.”
“How long will that take? Could you do it while I was shaking hands with him, or something like that?”
“No. I will have to penetrate; and that means—” he stopped, momentarily at a loss for words, as he realized just what that did mean. “It means you will have to leave me for a time. I suppose it would be best for me to get as near Charlie’s house as possible sometime this evening and let you out. That would give you the night in which to work, and I could pick you up in the morning. O.K.?”
“There is one objection. I can see there is going to be trouble with the explanation, but—I don’t think you’d better see me, either leaving your body or reentering it.”
Bob started to ask the reason; then he paused, visualizing the situation with the aid of a very good imagination and his recollection of the Hunter’s own description of his physical nature, and decided he knew the answer to his question before it was asked. Even with full knowledge of the Hunter’s identity and friendly nature, there was something more than repulsive in the thought of the mass of slime that was the alien’s body lapping around his hands or feet soaking in through the pores of his skin—and there would always be the lurking question, whether the formless, featureless thing which returned to him after the expedition was actually the Hunter or the quarry.
“How can we work it?” Bob changed the nature of his question.
“I think I know; but there is nothing now that you can do to help, except find out as much as you can about Teroa’s movements between now and the arrival of the boat. I’m sorry I bothered you about the matter so abruptly; I acted without careful thought. I will warn you in plenty of time if there is anything else for you to do.”
Bob accepted this closing remark without considering the implication of omniscience it contained—after all, he was not fully familiar, and never would be, with the Hunter’s abilities and limitations, and it did not occur to him that the strange creature might not know or foresee enough to give the promised warning. The boy closed his desk and went outside, where the others were still waiting.
Teroa lived in the “village” only a short distance from the end of the great causeway; and with some idea of checking on his whereabouts as they passed his house, Bob suggested that they visit the construction site. The other boys were willing; the new tank had been a favorite haunt for most of the island youth ever since construction had started. There was naturally a large accumulation of excavating and construction wastes, which appealed irresistibly to the scavenging instinct possessed by most boys.
In a few moments, therefore, the formation of bicycles was gliding eastward along the island’s only surfaced road, between houses which were starting to become more numerous on each side. Roughly half a mile from the school, at the corner where the side road ran down to the causeway and dock, was the house occupied by the Teroa family. Bob examined it closely as they passed; Charles was not visible, but he might be inside packing as he had announced. Two of his sisters were working in the rather extensive gardens around the house, and the boys waved to them; but no words were exchanged, and the bicycles were past the corner before Bob could think of an excuse to ask about their brother—after all, the boys had been talking to him only a few minutes before. Bob was afraid, perhaps needlessly, of arousing suspicion by too great a show of interest in Charles’ whereabouts.
The surface road ceased about four hundred yards furthe
r on; but the path beaten when the machinery had been brought to the construction site was passable for the bicycles, and they were able to bring them all the way to the great piles of rubble that had been dug from the hillside. From this point the boys_, proceeded on foot toward the sound of hammering which proclaimed the starting of a new mold; the south wall had long been poured and set, as had those portions of the east and west walls which did not extend above the ground. It was now necessary to make retaining walls of wood for both sides of the walls before they were poured, and the work had slowed in consequence.
Also, since the concrete mixers could no longer pour their products directly into the molds, it had become necessary to set up a conveyor system for the fluid concrete; and work was still progressing on this when the boys arrived. They succeeded, naturally, in making nuisances of themselves a good deal of the timer but at their-age they had learned the value of making themselves more or less useful as well, and they managed to keep sufficiently in the good graces of the workers to be permitted to hang around. Most of their fathers were there, which may or may not have had something to do with it.
They stayed closest to the mold that was being constructed, for scrap lumber had the highest value in their eyes. The original hole in the bottom of their boat had been repaired with the plank found on the beach the week before; but each piece of repair work accomplished had revealed the need for another, until the job looked like one of rebuilding rather than fixing the craft. Consequently, at least one of the boys was usually out of sight, and a small stock pile of lumber was growing near the place the bicycles had been left. To do the boys justice, they always asked permission before taking any piece of wood; but they also exercised considerable care in choosing the individual who should be asked.
Malmstrom, who in addition to being the largest member of the group possessed a pair of work gloves, and Bob, who had become in consequence of the Hunter’s presence more or less indifferent to such minor risks as splinters in planks, carried most of the large boards. Colby, Hay, and Rice contented themselves with smaller wood and with nails salvaged from the ground; and in rather short order the group had accumulated a supply of material which they felt would suffice to render their boat once more seaworthy. With this end accomplished, Bob advocated carrying the stuff at once to the scene of their own work—he still bore the Hunter’s request in mind, and wanted another chance to check Teroa’s whereabouts; but the others dissented. Hay and Colby wanted to watch the carpenters, and after a few moments’ consideration Malmstrom and Rice agreed with them. Bob did not press his point, and with the others climbed the hill to a point where they could see the whole process without being in the way.