Part 12 (2/2)

”Skip the heroics, Robert Kinnaird” she snapped. ”The person who should go is the person who can do it best, and don't make it sound like a Roger Young mission, I'll be down and up again, with the bottle exactly where it should be, in ninety seconds-and that's allowing for mistakes in spotting the canoe. If anyone sees a shark, I'll wait; I'm not being heroic. I was down there before, after the Hunter was knocked out, remember, and nothing happened to me. And how many rocks do you plan to take out there in my canoe? You'll miss the site the first time and have to come up, and you'll need another rock to go down again, and another and probably another.”

”Don't rub it in.”

The battle of wills was fun to watch. Told about it later, the Hunter regretted having missed it, though, as he admitted, the end was never in doubt. Fond as he was of Bob, he knew by now that he was not always a completely reasonable being. He had not known Maeta nearly as long-casual acquaintance as one of Charles Teroa's sisters seven years before hardly counted-but he already knew that she was more intelligent than his host and quicker-witted. She also possessed a more forceful personality.

Besides all this, in the present situation she was right and both of them knew it. Bob's mother and the doctor kept out of it after the first few words, and between them managed to keep Jenny quiet too. The redhead, for reasons of her own, was on Maeta's side, but the older girl needed no help.

No rocks were carried.

Seever suddenly decided that he owed himself a pleasant ride on the water, and went along. Bob objected to this, saying that the Hunter should be kept under a medical eye, but the doctor insisted that there was nothing more he could do for the alien. In fact, he was much more worried about Bob, who now was deprived of his alien partner, lacked infection resistance of his own, and was otherwise not at his best. He refrained from mentioning this reason to either Mrs. Kinnaird or her son, and decided not to remind them of the situation by taking his bag along. He regretted this omission later.

It was mid-afternoon when they reached the out rigger on North Beach and embarked. The swell had increased since morning, and everyone was wet by the time they were afloat. The mile to the site was covered quickly, with all but Bob at the paddles, and the final search for the buoy took a little longer than Maeta had predicted.

She worked the craft into what she recalled was the right position with respect to the marker, told Seever and Mrs. Kinnaird to hold it there, and without further ceremony slid overboard with the bottle.

For a moment she trod water between the canoe's hull and the outrigger as she took in air; then she upended and drove downward.

Seever and Mrs. Kinnaird watched her as well as they could without interfering with their paddling. Bob did not. He was barely aware that she had gone at all he was becoming less and less conscious of any thing except pain. His limbs were sorer than ever, and his head felt hot. He knew the Hunter had been away from him for longer periods than this, but he felt far worse than the last time; and he was beginning to wonder whether the juggling act with his hormones was closing. He didn't know. He was beginning not to care. The sun hurt his eyes, even in the shadow of his hat brim, and he dosed them.

Maeta surfaced, well within the ninety seconds she had allowed, and slid into the canoe as smoothly as she had left it. ”No trouble,” she said, after getting her breath. ”You can see the outline of the s.h.i.+p under the mud, if you know what to look for. I felt into the stuff. It's very soft, and there are only a few inches of it over the top part of the s.h.i.+p. I felt the hard stuff, but couldn't tell by touch if it was metal or something else.”

”You left the message.” Bob's mother did not put it as a question.

”Sure. Neck of the bottle down against the hull, the bottom part with the paper sticking above the mud. If they look at all, or feel at all carefully, they can't miss it.”

”You shouldn't have taken the chance of touching the s.h.i.+p,” the older woman said. ”Bob was right about that. You might have gotten an electric shock, or something of that sort, as the Hunter seems to have done. Could that be what happened to him, Ben?”

The doctor shrugged. ”No way to tell, until he comes to and tells us. I don't know what electricity would do to him; I couldn't guess even if his tissues were like ours. There's no simple way to tell; a man can stand a shock that will kill a horse. Did he ever tell you anything about that, Bob?”

An incoherent mumble was his only answer. Mrs., Kinnaird gave a gasp of terror, but managed to retain her grip on her paddle.

Seconds later Bob was stretched out on the bottom of the dugout while Seever checked him over as well as the cramped situation allowed. He could find only the deep flush on the face and a racing pulse, which might have meant several things. The women were already paddling back toward North Beach as hard as they could. After doing what little he could for Bob, the doctor picked up the remaining paddle and used it.

At the beach, he issued orders quickly.

”We can't hand-carry him all the way to the hospital. Annette, get to your house and see if Arthur is there. If he is, have him get a car-he can usually find one. Maeta, bike down to the village and try to find either him or a car, too. Check around the desalting stations first, then go out to the refinery. Never mind explanations, just say I need a car, capital NOW. As you pa.s.s my place, tell Ev to get my kit here as fast as she can. I should have known better than to come without it.”

With the women gone, Seever turned back to his patient. They had carried him into the shade, and it was now obvious even without a thermometer that he had a high fever. His face was flushed, and he was perspiring heavily. Seever was somewhat relieved by the latter fact, but be removed his own s.h.i.+rt and Bob's, soaked them in the sea, and spread one over the younger man's chest He improvised a turban with the other. It was almost sunset when a jeep appeared at high speed.

Arthur Kinnaird was at the wheel, his daughter beside him, and Maeta in the back seat. They stopped a few yards short of where Bob was lying; Kinnaird was not the sort to take chances on being stuck in the sand at such a time.

”Your wife wasn't home. I've told him everything,” Maeta said before Seever could ask a question.

”All right. Arthur, get us to my place as quickly as you can. I'll use the back seat, with Bob. Daph, crowd in front with Mae until we get to your house; you can get off there.”

”No! I'm staying with you. Bob's sick!”

Seever was too busy even to shrug, much less argue. Maeta had s.h.i.+fted to the front seat and taken the child on her lap, and seconds later they were speeding back down the road. Bob's father said nothing as they approached his house, and did not slow down; the child was still with them as they approached the hospital. She tried to help carry Bob into the building; then Maeta took her out. Arthur Kinnaird remained as Seever went to work.

The trouble was plain enough now. Bob's temperature was indeed high, and the broken left arm was showing the red streaks which indicated ma.s.sive in fection. Seever removed the cast to reveal a red and black mess underneath.

”Antibiotics?” asked Kinnaird.

”Maybe. They don't work on everything, in spite of people's calling them 'miracle drugs'-they were doing that with the sulfa compounds a few years ago, too. I'll do the best I can, but he may not be able to keep the arm.”

”This is a fine time for the Hunter to be out of action.”

”Probably not coincidence,” pointed out Seever. ”If he were there, this wouldn't have happened at all. Look, I'll give the boy a shot of what seems best- I'll make some tests first-and then, if I can, I'll wait six hours before doing anything else. Of course, if things get obviously worse I won't be able to give all that time.

Then well have to decide about the arm.

”And I'm going to do one more thing.”

Kinnaird nodded in understanding as the doctor put a smaller table beside the one on which Bob was lying, placed the basin containing the Hunter on it, and put Bob's right hand in the basin.

They watched as the hand sank slowly into the jelly. Then Seever got out his microscope, and took sc.r.a.pings from the tissue of the other arm.

12. Joker

That was the situation when the Hunter woke up. It took him a little while to catch up with reality, though he knew well enough what had happened at the s.h.i.+p. It had obviously been found by the search expedition, identified, as being the one stolen by the Hunter's quarry, and b.o.o.by-trapped against the possible return of that individual. The alien recalled Seever's question about standard police procedures, and would have blushed had he been equipped for it.

He was perfectly familiar with the immobilizing agent which had been used, and if he had been properly alert would never have been trapped by it.

He became aware of the basin which held him, and of his host's hand immersed in his substance. That was presumably what had allowed him to wake up. The agent itself would have held him for months; but he had absorbed an equilibrium amount of it while separate from his host's body; and his own four pounds of tissue would have been saturated by a very small total quant.i.ty of the substance. Since it was designed to be absorbed rapidly by tissues similar to those of the Hunter's usual host species, which were biochemically fairly similar to those of humanity, and since Bob ma.s.sed thirty-five or forty times as much as his symbiont, enough had now diffused into Bob's body to clear the Hunter's nearly completely. Returning to Bob seemed safe enough, since the concentration of the substance would be so much smaller.

Without bothering to check on his surroundings by forming an eye, the Hunter began to soak his way into the hand and spread through his host's body in normal fas.h.i.+on. He had completed about a quarter of the job when he heard Arthur Kinnaird's voice.

”Ben, Look! The level is going down in the Hunter's dish, and he's higher around Bob's wrist than before! He must be awake!”

The alien extended a finger-sized pseudopod from the basin and waved it to let the speaker know he had been heard. The doctor's voice promptly responded.

”Hunter, get in there and get to work! Bob has picked up a very bad infection that my drugs don't seem to be touching, and he needs you. We'll ask you what happened later; first things first.”

The Hunter waved again in acknowledgment. He was already aware of the trouble, and was working on it.

It was real work. Destroying the infecting organisms was a minor task, finished in minutes; but the toxins they had produced were far more difficult to neutral ize, and much of the tissue in the arm where they had entered was totally destroyed. The fracture had not been responsible; neither the Hunter nor Seever had made any professional errors there. A tiny wooden splinter had gotten into Bob's left hand just beyond the end of the cast. It had clearly entered after the Hunter's departure; Bob himself might not have noticed it, but the alien could not possibly have failed to. With his personal resistance to infection long since destroyed and his symbiont absent, Bob was a walking culture tube; a few hours had nearly destroyed his arm. The Hunter had not realized that his host's general self-reparability had become so poor, but the facts seemed beyond dispute. It was not the first time he wished he had studied biochemistry more thoroughly on his home world. He trusted contact with the check team could be made soon; they would certainly have specialists in tins field among their numbers.

But he had to get back to work. He could clean up the ruined arm and expect it to be replaced, however slowly, by normal healing. The real worry was Bob's brain. Some of the bacteria as well as their toxins must have been carried to that organ by his circulatory sys tem, and it could not be taken for granted that nothing had left the blood vessels to lodge in nerve tissue.

The Hunter had always been afraid to intrude into this material himself, though he had maintained a network of his own tissue in the capillaries. Brain cells were the objects where he was most afraid of making a mistake based on differences between human biochemistry and what he was more used to. Now it was necessary to take the chance, and he took it; but he worked very, very slowly and very, very carefully.

The situation was one he had never been able to explain at all clearly either to his host or to Seever who had been curious about it. The Hunter did possess the ability to sense directly structures down to the large-molecule level. At the same time he could be aware simultaneously of the trillions of cells in a living organism, and work on them all at once with the same attention to each that a jeweler could give to a single watch. When he tried to describe this to a human being, however, it seemed to involve a contrast for his listener; the human seemed to think of him as a whole race of beings instead of an individual. This tended to bother the Hunter, because be could only think of himself as an individual.

Sometimes, facing problems which seemed beyond his ability, he wished there were more of him.

<script>