by Hal Clement
“When did you start thinking, squirt?” An exploratory hand brushed over his hair. “I guess you didn’t at that; it’s almost as dry as mine. We’d both better stay outside a while longer. Here, drop my books on the porch and find out what time it is.”
Jackie nodded, took the books as they turned in at the gate, and ran around to the small rear porch, where he dropped them. Looking in through the kitchen window, he ascertained that it was a few minutes after four; then he jumped down the steps and tore after his brother. Together, they managed to fill the hour and a half before supper with some of the work which they were supposed to have done earlier in the day; and by the time their mother rang the cow bell from the kitchen door, hair and undershirts were dry. The boys washed at the pump, and clattered indoors to eat. No embarrassing questions were asked at the meal, and the Wade offspring decided they were safe this time.
Undressing in their small room that night, Jackie said as much. “How often do you think we can get away with it, Jim? It’s so close to the road, I’m always thinking someone will hear us as they go by. Why don’t they like us to swim there, anyway? We can swim as well as anyone.”
“I suppose they figure if we did get drowned they’d have an awful time getting us out; they say it’s over a hundred feet deep,” responded the older boy, somewhat absently.
Jackie looked up sharply at his tone. Jim was carefully removing a sock and exposing a rather ugly scrape which obviously had been fresh when the sock was donned. Jackie came over to examine it. “How did you do that?” he asked.
“Hit my foot against the rock the first time I dived. It’s a little bit sore,” replied Jim.
“Hadn’t we better have Mother put iodine on it?”
“Then how do I explain where I got it, sap? Go get the iodine yourself and I’ll put it on; but don’t let them see you get it.”
Jackie nodded, and ran barefooted downstairs to the kitchen. He found the brown bottle without difficulty, brought it upstairs, watched Jim’s rather sketchy application of the antiseptic, and returned the bottle to its place. When he returned from the second trip Jim was in bed; so he blew out the lamp without speaking and crawled under his own blankets.
* * *
The next morning was bright and almost clear; but a few thin cirrus clouds implied the possibility of another change in the weather. The boys, strolling down the road toward school, recognized the signs; they prompted a remark from Jackie as they passed the second quarry.
“I bet the middle of a rainstorm would be a good time to go swimming there. No one would be around, and you’d have a good excuse for being wet.”
“You’d probably break your neck on the rocks,” replied his brother. “They’re bad enough when it’s dry.” Jim’s foot was bothering him a little, and his attitude toward the quarry was a rather negative one. He had managed to conceal his trouble from their mother, but now he was limping slightly. They had already fallen behind the other boys, who had met them at the Wade gate, and there began to be a serious prospect of their being late for school. Jim realized this as they entered the town, and with an effort increased his pace; they managed to get to their rooms with two or three minutes to spare, to Jim’s relief. He had been foreseeing the need for a written excuse, which might have been difficult to provide.
When they met at lunchtime, Jim refused to discuss his foot, and even Jackie began to worry about the situation. He knew his elder brother would not lie about his means of acquiring the injury, and it seemed very likely that the question was going to arise. After school, there was no doubt of it. Jimmy insisted that his brother not wait for him, but go home and stay out of the way until he had faced the authorities; Jackie was willing to avoid the house, but wanted to keep with Jim until they got there. The older boy’s personality triumphed, and Jackie went on with the main crowd, while James limped on behind.
They did not swim, that day. The older boys had determined to play higher up the mountainside, and the younger ones trailed along. They spent a riotous afternoon, with little thought to passage of time; and Jackie heard the supper bell ring when he was a hundred yards from the house. He took to his heels, paused briefly at the pump, burst into the kitchen, recovered his poise, and proceeded more sedately to the dining room. His mother looked up as he entered, and asked quietly, “Where’s Jimmy?”
* * *
That morning, as on the previous day, Thrykar had made careful count of the number of human beings passing the quarry. Although only one automobile had passed the second day, the number of pedestrians had tallied three times—fifteen people had walked to town both mornings; two had walked back in the afternoon, and thirteen had paused to swim. He concluded that those fifteen could be counted on as regular customers, when he laid his plans for the second afternoon.
This time, he took up his station very near the road, concealed as best he could behind bushes. Tes was at his station of the day before, ready to give him warning of people approaching. He was not counting on a lone swimmer remaining behind at the quarry; he hoped to snatch one of the passersby from the road itself.
In consequence, he was more than pleased to see that the human beings did not stop to swim; the first group to pass consisted of twelve, whom he rightly assumed to be most of the previous day’s swimmers, and the second was the pair of girls, which Thrykar, of course, was unable to recognize as such. There was one to go; and, though it seemed too good to be true, there was every chance that that one would pass alone.
He did. Tes signaled his approach, and Thrykar, not waiting for anything more, started blowing a bubble! The wind was against him today; he had to make a much larger one, of heavier material, and “anchor” it to the middle of the road. It was more visible, in consequence, than the other had been; but he placed it in the shadow of a tree. Jimmy might not have seen it even had he been less preoccupied. As it was, he almost missed it; Thrykar had time to lay but one trap, which he placed at the center of the road; and Jimmy, from long-established habit, walked on the left. In consequence, he was downwind from the thing; and when it ruptured at his grazing touch, the alien had no reason to be dissatisfied with the result.
The boy hit the ground before Thrykar could catch him, but there were no visible marks to suggest injury to his head when the trapper examined him. Thrykar picked up the unconscious form with an effort, collected the books which had fallen from its hand, and staggered back to the place where he had concealed the rest of his equipment.
This was not the place from which he had been watching; there was more equipment this time, the operation would take longer, and it would have been foolhardy to work so close to the road. He had found another space between large, discarded granite blocks about midway between road and quarry; and this he made his operating room.
Before going to work, he applied an extra dose of the anesthetic directly to the boy’s nostrils; and he laid the cylinder containing the substance close at hand. He uncased a much larger needle, connected by transparent, flexible tubing to a small jar graduated for volumetric measure; and, not trusting his memory, he laid the book beside it, open to the page which gave the quantity of blood that might safely be removed from a human being—a quantity determined long before by experiment.
As he had done the day before, he swabbed the unprotected throat with alcohol, and inserted the needle; a tiny rubberlike bulb, equipped with a one-way valve, attached to the jar, provided the gentle suction needed, and the container slowly filled to the indicated graduation. Thrykar promptly stopped pumping, extracted the needle, and sealed the puncture as before. Then, before the blood had time to cool appreciably, he removed a small stopper from the jar, inserted his slender tongue, and spent the next two minutes absorbing the liquid into his own circulatory system.
That accomplished, he quickly replaced the apparatus in its case. Then he exerted himself to pick up Jimmy’s body and carry it back to the road, at the point where the boy had fallen. There he laid him, face down, as nearly as he could recall in
the attitude in which he had collapsed; the books were replaced near his left hand, and after a few minutes’ search the alien found a fair-sized fragment of granite, which he placed near the boy’s foot to serve as a reason for falling. He considered placing another under the head to account for the loss of consciousness, but couldn’t bring himself to provide the necessary additional bruise.
Looking around carefully to make sure none of the human being’s property was unreasonably far from the body, Thrykar returned to his watching place and set himself to await the boy’s return to consciousness. He had no fears himself for the subject’s health, but he remembered Tes’ reaction the day before, and wanted to be able to reassure her.
He lay motionless, watching. He was beginning to feel restless, and could tell that he was running a mild fever—the normal result of the refresher reaction. He would be a trifle below par for the rest of the day. That was not worrying him seriously; he could rest until blackness fell, and as soon as that desirable event had occurred, they could be out and away.
He did feel a little impatient with his subject, who was taking a long time to regain consciousness. Of course, the creature had received a far heavier dose of anesthetic than had the other, and had lost more blood; it might be a little longer in recuperating, on that score; but he had occupied fully ten minutes with the operation and stage-setting, which was about twice as long as the total period of unconsciousness of yesterday’s subject.
His patience wore thinner in the additional ten minutes that elapsed before Jimmy Wade began to stir. His first motion attracted the alien’s wandering attention, and Thrykar gathered himself together preparatory to leaving. Jimmy moaned a little, stirred again, and suddenly rolled over on his back. After a moment his eyes opened, to stare blankly at the overshadowing tree; then he rolled over again, this time obviously under conscious control, and started to get to his feet. Thrykar, behind his concealing bush, did likewise. He was the only one to complete the movement. The boy got as far as his hands and knees, and was starting to get one foot under him, when Thrykar saw the small body go limp as though it had received a second shot of gas, and slump back into a huddled heap on the road.
Thrykar stood frozen for a moment, as though he expected to be similarly stricken; and even when he relaxed, he kept both eyes fixed on the inert form for fully half a minute. Then, heedless of the risk of being seen should the creature regain its senses, he rushed out on the road and bent over the body, simultaneously tapping out an urgent call to Tes. Once more he picked Jimmy up, feeling as though his tentacles were about to come out at the roots, and bore him carefully back to the scene of the operation.
His emotions were almost indescribable. To say that he felt criminally guilty in causing serious injury to a sensitive being would not be strictly true; although he had an intellectual realization that human beings were social creatures on a plane comparable to that of his own race, he could not sympathize with them in the etymologically correct sense of the word. At the same time, he was profoundly shocked at what he had done; and he experienced an even deeper feeling of pity than had Tes the day before.
With careful tentacles he opened the loose shirt, and felt for the heart he had located the day before. It was still beating, but fully twice as rapidly as it should have been; and so weakly that for a moment Thrykar could not find it. The chest was rising and falling slightly, in slow, shallow breaths. A man would have detected at once the pallor underlying the tan on the boy’s face, but it was unnoticeable to the alien.
Tes arrived and bent over the pair, as her husband performed the examination. Thrykar told her what had happened in a few words, without looking up. She gave a single word of understanding, and let a tentacle slide gently across Jimmy’s forehead.
“What can you do?” she asked at last.
“Nothing, here. We’ll have to get it down to the ship somehow. I’m afraid to take it under water—none of them went more than a few feet below the surface yesterday, and none stayed down for more than a few seconds. I hate to do it, but we’ll have to bring the ship up in broad daylight. I’ll stay there; you go down, cast off, and bring the ship over to this side of the pit. Raise it just far enough to bring the upper hatch out of the water. I’ll keep this communicator, and when you are ready to come up call me to make sure it’s safe.”
Tes whirled and made for the quarry without question or argument; a few seconds later Thrykar heard the faint splash as she hurled herself into the water. She must have worked rapidly; a bare five minutes later Thrykar’s communicator began to click, and when he responded, the curved upper hull of the spaceship appeared immediately at the near edge of the quarry. Thrykar picked up the boy once more, carried him to the water’s edge, eased him in and followed, holding the head well above the surface. He swam the few feet necessary, found the climbing niches in the hull with his own appendages, crawled up the shallow curve of metal, and handed the limp form in to Tes, who was standing below the hatch. She almost fell as the weight came upon her, but Thrykar had not entirely released his hold, and no damage resulted. A few moments later Jimmy was stretched on a metal table in a room adjacent to the control chamber, and the ship was lying at the bottom of the quarry.
Tes had to go out once more for the equipment Thrykar had left above, which included the all-important book. She took only a few minutes, and reported that there was no sign of any other human being.
Thrykar seized the book, although he had already practically memorized the section dealing with Earth and its natives. He had already set the room thermostat at human blood temperature for safety’s sake, and had the air not been already saturated with moisture Jimmy’s clothes would have dried very quickly. As it was, he was at least free from chill. The chemist checked as quickly as possible the proper values for respiration rate and frequency of heartbeat, and sought for information on symptoms of excessive exsanguination; but he was unable to find the last. His original opinion about heartbeat and breathing was confirmed, however; the subject’s pulse was much too rapid and his breathing slow and shallow.
There was only one logical cause, book or no book, symptoms or no symptoms. The only source of organic disturbance of which Thrykar had any knowledge was his own removal of the creature’s blood. It was too late to do anything about that. The extra dose of gas might be a contributing factor, but the worried chemist doubted it, having seen the negligible effects of the stuff on the human organism the day before.
“Why does that blasted handbook have to be right often enough to make me believe it, and then, when I trust it on something delicate, turn so horribly wrong?” he asked aloud. “I would almost believe I was on the wrong planet, from what it says of the cultural level of this race; then it describes their physical makeup, and I know it’s right; then I trust it for the right amount of blood to take, and—this. What’s wrong?”
“What does it say about their physical structure?” asked Tes softly. “I know it is fantastically unlikely, but we might have the wrong reference.”
“If that’s the case, we’re hopelessly lost,” replied her husband. “I know of no other race sufficiently like this in physical structure to be mistaken for it for a single moment. Look—there are close-ups of some of the most positive features. Take the auditory organ—could that be duplicated by chance in another face? And here—a table giving all the stuff I’ve been using: standard blood temperature, coloration, shape, height, representative weights … Tes!”
“What is wrong?”
“Look at those sizes and weights! I couldn’t have moved a body that bulky a single inch, let alone carry one twenty yards! You had the right idea; it is the wrong race … or … or else—”
“Or else,” said Tes softly but positively. “It is the right planet, the right race, and the right reference. Those values refer to adult members of that race; we took as a donor an immature member—a child.”
Thrykar slowly gestured agreement, inwardly grateful for her use of the plural pronoun. “I’m afraid
you must be right. I took blood up to the limit of tolerance of an adult, with a reasonable safety margin; this specimen can’t be half grown. Yesterday’s must have been still younger. How could I possibly have been so unobservant? No wonder it collapsed in this fashion. I hope and pray the collapse may not be permanent—by the way, Tes, could you make some sort of blindfold that will cover its eyes without injuring them? They seem deeply enough set to make that a fairly simple job. If it does recover consciousness, there are still laws which should not be broken.”
“You could not be blamed for the mistake, anyway,” added Tes, comfortingly. “This creature is as large as any we have seen in the open; and who would have thought that children would have been permitted to run freely so far from adult supervision?” She turned away in search of some opaque fabric as she spoke.
“The question is not of blame, but of repairing my error,” replied Thrykar. “I can only do my best; but that I certainly will do.” He turned back to book, boy, and laboratory.
* * *
One thing was extremely clear: the lost blood must be made up in some fashion. Direct transfusion was impossible; the creature’s body must do the work. Given time and material, it was probably capable of doing so; but Thrykar was horribly afraid that time would be lacking, and he had no means of learning what materials were usable and acceptable to those digestive organs. One thing he was sure would do no chemical harm—water; and he had almost started to pour some down the creature’s throat when he recalled that he had heard these beings speak with their mouths, and that there must consequently be a cross-connection of some sort between the alimentary and pulmonary passages. If it was completely automatic, well and good; but it might not be, and there was in consequence a definite risk of strangling the child. He considered direct intravenous injection of sterile water, but this chemical knowledge saved him from that blunder.
Tes designed and applied a simple blindfold after that, at Thrykar’s direction; she made periodic tests of the subject’s blood temperature, pulse, and respiration. That left her husband free to think and read, in the forlorn hope of finding something that would enable him to take positive action of some sort. Simply sitting and watching the helpless little creature die before his eyes was as impossible for him as for any human being with a heart softer than flint.