by Hal Clement
He avoided nerves and blood vessels as much as possible, and poured himself into such muscular and visceral interstices as he could locate. The shark calmed down at once, after the thing in its mouth and on its body ceased causing tactile messages to reach its minute brain; its memory was to all intents and purposes nonexistent. For the Hunter, however, successful interstition was only the beginning of a period of intense activity.
First and most important, oxygen. There was enough of the precious element absorbed on the surfaces of his body cells for only a few minutes of life at most. But it could always be obtained; in the body of a creature that also consumed oxygen; and the Hunter rapidly sent submicroscopic appendages between the cells that formed the walls of blood vessels, and began robbing the oxygen-bearing cells of their precious load. He needed but little, and on his home world he had lived for years within the body of an intelligent oxygen-breather, as did most of his kind, with the other’s full knowledge and consent. He had more than paid for his keep.
The second need was vision. His host presumably possessed eyes; and with his oxygen supply assured the Hunter began to search for them. He could, of course, have sent enough of his own material through the shark’s skin to construct an organ of vision, but he might not be able to avoid disturbing the creature by such an act. Ready-made lenses were to be preferred; so he began seeking them.
He was interrupted very quickly. The crash had taken place, as he had deduced, rather close to land; the encounter with the shark had occurred in relatively shallow water, and had taken only a short time. Sharks are not fond of disturbance; it is hard to understand why this one had been so close to the surf. During the monster’s struggle with the Hunter, it had drifted or been carried still closer to the beach; and with its attention no longer taken up by the intruder, it turned all its energies toward getting into deep water. This the Hunter did not know, having no sensory contact with the outer world. But once the shark began to exert itself, after the Hunter’s establishment of an oxygen-theft system, things, began to happen. The breathing system of a fish operates under a disadvantage, since the oxygen in the water is never at a very high concentration; and a water-breathing creature never has much oxygen to spare. Little as the Hunter was taking, it was enough to cut down the shark’s physical powers markedly; at the same time, its blood-oxygen content decreased, and the Hunter almost unconsciously increased his drain on the system. It was a vicious circle that could have but one ending.
The Hunter realized what was happening before the shark actually died, but he could not cut down his own use of the precious gas any further. He could have left the shark, of course, but that would have left him almost completely helpless and adrift in the sea. Also, he had long since realized perfectly the shark’s position on the evolutionary scale, and felt no particular compunction in sacrificing a savage carnivore to his own needs. The fact that the creature’s efforts were probably being made against the waves, and that these were almost certainly carrying him where he wanted most to go, influenced his decision.
The shark took a long time actually to die, though it became helpless very quickly. Once it had ceased to struggle, the Hunter continued the search for its eyes, and eventually found them. He deposited a film of himself around and between their retinal cells, in anticipation of the time when there would be enough light for him to see by, and then let nature take its course.
The breakers were sounding much more loudly by this time, and he realized that the assumption that he was drifting shoreward had been justified. The shark was drifting toward the surface as well, and a sickening up-and-down motion became perceptible as it entered the sphere of influence of the waves. Once or twice it actually broke the surface, and the Hunter, who had oxygen-seeking appendages already extended from the great fish’s gill openings, profited thereby.
The rolling, tossing, and pounding suffered by the shark when its body finally entered the breakers was of such a nature that the Hunter was a little surprised at the small amount of resultant damage. Even he did not fully appreciate the enormous toughness of that semi-vertebrate structure. At last, after many minutes of forward-and-back motion in the shallows, they grounded; and though the backwash of the waves strove to drag the great body back to the sea, it was never quite successful. After a long time, the number of waves breaking over them began gradually to decrease, and the Hunter suspected that the storm was diminishing in intensity. In actuality, the tide had turned; but the result was the same.
By the time the combination of approaching dawn and thinning storm clouds provided enough light for the Hunter to see a little of his surroundings, his late host was thoroughly stranded, several yards above the reach of the heaviest waves, and well entangled in a mass of seaweed. The shark’s eyes refused to focus on their own retinas out of the water, but the Hunter found a focal surface within the eyeball and built a retina of his own on it. He was also forced to modify certain imperfections in the lenses with more of his own body substance; but at last he was able to see about him with satisfactory clarity, yet without exposing himself.
There were rifts in the storm clouds now, through which a few of the brighter stars were visible against the gray background of approaching. dawn. Slowly these breaks grew larger, and by the time the sun appeared above the horizon the sky was almost clear, though the wind still blew fiercely.
His vantage point was not ideal, but he was able to make out a good deal of his surroundings. In one direction the beach extended a short distance to a line of tall, slender trees, crowned by feathery tufts of leaves. He could not see beyond these, his vantage point being too low, though they were not themselves thickly enough set to obstruct the view. In the opposite direction was more debris-strewn beach, with the roar of the surf sounding beyond it. The Hunter could not actually see the ocean, but its direction was obvious. To the right as one looked at the trees was a body of water; and for a moment the Hunter was a trifle surprised, for it showed no sign of the huge waves that were still pounding behind him. Then he realized it must be a small pool, filled by the storm, but now emptying back into the sea so that the large waves could not enter. This, he realized, was probably the reason he had stranded so easily; his shark had been washed into this pool, and left behind by its diminishing waters.
Several times he heard raucous screeching sounds and saw birds overhead. This pleased him greatly; evidently there were higher forms of life than fishes on the planet, and there was some hope of obtaining a more suitable host. An intelligent one would be best, since it would ordinarily be best able to protect itself and him and was also likely to travel more widely, thus facilitating the now necessary search for the pilot of the other ship; but he realized that there might be some difficulty in obtaining access to the body of an intelligent being who was not accustomed to the idea of symbiosis.
All that, however, would have to wait on chance. Even if there were intelligent beings on the planet, they might never come to this spot. It would be best to wait, several days if need be, to find out just what forms of life frequented the locality; and then make plans to invade the one that seemed best suited to his purposes. Time was probably not vital; it was as certain as anything could be that his quarry was no more able to leave the planet than was the Hunter himself, and while he remained on it the search would be long and arduous. Time spent in careful preparation would undoubtedly pay dividends.
He waited, therefore, while the sun rose higher in the sky and the wind gradually died down to a mild breeze. It became quite warm; and a growing awareness of chemical change going on around him caused him to realize that, if a sense of smell were common equipment among the life forms of this world, he was certain to have visitors before long. He could have halted the process of decay by the simple expedient of consuming the bacteria causing it: but he had no objection to company.
His first visitors were gulls. One by one they descended, attracted by sight or smell or both, and began tearing at the sheltering carcass. The Hunter withdrew himself
to the lower portions of the body, and made no attempt to drive them away—even when they pounced on the eyes of the great fish and speedily deprived him of visual contact with the outside world. If other life forms came, he would know it anyway; and if they didn’t, it was just as well to have the gulls there.
The greedy birds remained undisturbed until midafternoon. They did not make too much progress in disposing of the shark; the tough skin defied their beaks in most places. They were persistent, however, and when they suddenly took wing and departed altogether it was evident to the Hunter that there must be something of interest in the neighborhood. He hastily extruded enough tissue from one of the gill slits to make an eye, and looked cautiously about him.
He saw why the gulls had left. From the direction of the trees a number of much larger creatures were approaching. They were bipeds, and the Hunter estimated, with easy skill, that the largest must weigh fully a hundred and twenty pounds—which meant that the addition of his own mass was unlikely to prove a serious burden. Much closer to him was a quadruped, running rapidly toward the dead shark and uttering an apparently endless string of sharp yelping sounds. The Hunter placed it at about fifty pounds, and reserved the information for future use, if it became necessary.
The four bipeds were running as well, but not nearly so rapidly. As they approached, the hidden watcher examined them carefully, and was greatly pleased at what he saw. They could travel with respectable speed; their skulls gave promise of considerable intelligence, if one could safely assume that they were the receptacles of brains; their skins were almost entirely unprotected, giving promise of relatively easy access through the pores. As they slowed up and stopped beside the hammerhead’s body, another indication of intelligence appeared—they gave utterance to articulate sounds that could only represent speech. The Hunter was delighted; he had not dared hope for such an ideal host so quickly.
Of course, there were still problems to be solved. They were probably not used to symbiosis, for the Hunter was quite sure he had never encountered a member of this race before, and he was familiar with all those with whom his people normally associated. Therefore, it was almost certain that the idea would be repulsive to them, unless full explanations could be made before any other contact were attempted. They would almost certainly take it for granted that a mass of unfamiliar jelly trying to cling to one of them was an inimical creature. Subtlety would have to be employed.
The four bipeds remained looking down at the shark and conversing for only a few minutes; then they walked off up the beach a little distance. Somehow, the Hunter got a vague impression from their attitudes that they considered the neighborhood unpleasant. The quadruped remained a little longer, examining the carcass closely; but it apparently failed to notice the rather oddly placed eye that was following its movements with so much interest.
A call from the direction in which the others had gone finally attracted its attention, and as he watched it bound off, the Hunter saw with some surprise that the others had entered the water and were swimming around with considerable facility. He marked down the fact as another point in their favor—he had seen no trace of gills, and as air breathers they must have had a considerable margin of oxygen-intake capacity above their minimal needs, to remain under water as long as he saw one of them do. Then he realized that there was another good point; he could probably approach them much more easily in the water. It was evident from their behavior that they could not see too clearly below the surface—they invariably raised their heads out of the water to orient themselves, and did this with considerable frequency. The quadruped was evidently no cause for worry; it kept its head and eyes above the surface at all times.
The thought led to instant action. A threadlike pseudopod groped rapidly toward the pool, an inch or two under the sand. The eye was kept in operation until most of the jellylike body had crossed the four-yard gap; then another was formed at the water’s edge, and the Hunter drew the rest of his body into a compact mass just below it. The operation had taken several minutes; winding among sand-grains had been an annoyingly devious method of approach.
The water was quite clear, so it was not necessary to keep an eye above the surface to direct the stalk. The mass of jelly was quickly molded into an elongated, fishlike shape with an eye in front, and the Hunter swam toward the boys with considerable speed. In one way, he reflected, it was really easier to see under water; he could use an air lens, held in place by a very thin film of flesh, and this was much more transparent. His own substance did not make a very satisfactory lens—it was too opaque.
He had planned to swim right up to one of the boys, hoping his approach would not be noticed and that the swirl of water, or possibly contact with one of the other boys, would mask his own efforts. Halfway there, however, he found what seemed a better way to approach unnoticed. It was a large jellyfish, bobbing along after the manner of its kind; and with his attention drawn to the creature, the Hunter suddenly realized that there were quite a number of them in the vicinity. Evidently the bipeds did not consider them dangerous, or they would not be swimming at this place.
Accordingly, he changed his form and method of locomotion to agree with those characteristics of the Medusae, and continued his approach. His color was slightly off, but he felt that this fact was less likely to attract notice than was a radically wrong shape. He may have been right, for he got almost up to one of the boys without exciting alarm. They were fairly close together at the moment, splashing and ducking each other, and he had high hopes of making contact—he did, in fact, with ‘a cautiously extended tentacle, discover that the varicolored integument covering a portion of their bodies was an artificial fabric; but before he could do any more, the subject of his investigations slid to one side and moved several feet away. He gave no sign of alarm, however, and the Hunter at once resumed his approach. It ended in precisely the same fashion, except that this time he did not get quite so close.
He tried each of the other boys in turn, with the same annoying near-success. Then, puzzled by a phenomenon which seemed to be exceeding the generous limits of the laws of chance, he drifted a Short distance away and watched, trying to learn the reason for it. Within five minutes he realized that, while the creatures apparently had no serious fear of jellyfish, they most sedulously avoided actual contact with them. He had chosen an unfortunate camouflage.
Robert Kinnaird avoided jellyfish almost without conscious thought. He had learned to swim at the age of five, and in that and each of the nine subsequent years of his life had had enough, painful experience with the things to assure his avoiding their company. He had been fully occupied in ducking one of his companions when the Hunter had first touched him, and had dodged hastily when he saw the blob of jelly in the water beside him; but the only real emotion he felt on the subject was relief at escaping contact with the stinging tentacles. He had forgotten the encounter immediately, but his attention had been sufficiently diffused by it to prevent the thing’s again approaching so closely.
About the time the Hunter realized what was wrong, the boys grew tired of swimming, and retired to the beach. He watched them go in mounting annoyance, and continued to watch as they ran back and forth along the sand playing some obscure game. Were the mad creatures never still? How in the Galaxy could he ever come into contact with such externally active beings? He watched, and pondered.
Ashore, once the salt had dried on their sun-browned hides, the boys began to quiet down, and cast expectant glances toward the grove of coconut palms that hid the center of the island from their direct view. One of them seated himself, facing the ocean, and suddenly spoke.
“Bob, when are your folks coming with the grub?” Robert Kinnaird flung himself face downward in the sunlight before replying.
“ ’Bout four or half past, Mother said. Don’t you ever think of anything but eating?” The other mumbled an inarticulate reply, and subsided flat on his back, gazing up into the cloudless blue sky. Another of the boys took up the conversationa
l ball.
“It’s tough, you having to go tomorrow,” he said. “I kind of wish I was going with you, though.
I haven’t been in the States since my folks came out here. I was only a kid then,” he added serenely.
“It’s not so bad,” returned Bob slowly. “There are a lot of good fellows at the school, and there’s skating and skiing in the winter that you don’t get here. Anyway, I’ll be back next summer.”
The talk died down, and the boys basked in the hot sunshine as they waited for Mrs. Kinnaird and the eatables for the farewell picnic. Bob was closest to the water, lying stretched in the full sunshine—the others had sought the rather thin shade of the nearest palms. He was already well tanned, but wanted to get the last possible bit of benefit from the tropical sun, which he would miss for the next ten months. It was hot, and he had just spent an active half hour, and there was nothing to keep him awake—
The Hunter was still watching, eagerly now. Were the peripatetic things really settling down at last? It looked like it. The four bipeds were sprawled on the sand in various positions, which they presumably found comfortable; the other animal came as he watched and settled down beside one of them, letting its head rest on its forelegs. The conversation, which had been almost incessant up to this point, ceased; and the amorphous watcher decided to take a chance. He moved rapidly to the edge of the pool.
The nearest of the boys was nearly ten yards from the water.
