Classic Fiction

by Hal Clement

  The doctor was eventually consulted on the matter. He reported the boy’s health sheet clean—no illnesses whatever during the current term, only two minor injuries—he examined the still healing arm again, on the chance that an unsuspected infection was responsible, but of course found nothing—and left the masters mystified. At their request he had a private interview with Robert.

  The doctor learned nothing concrete from the conversation; but inevitably—the hypothetical watcher would have laughed again—he gained the perfectly correct impression—that Bob had a problem on his mind which he did not care to share with anyone. Being a doctor, he formed a perfectly justified but quite erroneous theory on the nature of the problem, and recommended that the boy.be returned to the care of his parents for a few months. It was as simple as that.

  The headmaster wrote a letter to Mr. Kinnaird, explaining the situation as the doctor saw it, and stating that, if there were no objections, he planned to send the boy home until the opening of the fall term.

  Bob’s father rather doubted the doctor’s theories, knowing his son remarkably well considering the time they had spent apart, but concurred with Mr. Raylance’s suggestion after all, if Bob was not doing well, it was a Waste of time to have him at the school no matter what the reason might be. There was a perfectly good doctor and—though Mrs. Kinnaird did not think so—a perfectly good school on the island, and it would be quite easy to fill the gap in his education while a more careful study of the situation was being made. Also, quite apart from these reasons, Mr. Kinnaird was glad of the chance to see more of his son. He wrote to the school authorizing the return of the boy, and prepared for his arrival.

  To Robert and the Hunter, still buried in thought as they searched vainly for a plan, the news came as a stunning shock. The boy stared wordlessly at Mr. Raylance, who had called him to his office to inform him of the imminent journey; while the Hunter, staring through the same eyes, strove unsuccessfully to read a few papers which were exposed on the headmaster’s desk. Eventually Bob recovered the use of his voice.

  “But what is the reason, sir? Has anything happened at home?”

  “No, everything is all right there. We felt that you might be better off there for a few months, that’s all. You haven’t been hitting your usual mark lately, have you?”

  To the Hunter, this remark explained the situation with crystal clarity, and he metaphorically kicked himself for not foreseeing it; to Bob, understanding came more slowly.

  “You mean … I’m being kicked out of school? I didn’t think it was that bad.”

  “No, no, nothing of the sort. We noticed that you seemed to be having trouble, and the doctor thought you needed a little time off. We’ll be glad to have you back next fall. If you like, we can send along a study outline with you, and the teacher there on the island can help you keep up with it. You can spread that work through the whole summer, and will probably be able to stay with your class when you come back. Is that all right? Or,” the headmaster smiled, “is it just that you don’t want to go home?”

  Bob returned the smile rather lamely.

  “Oh, I’ll be glad enough to go, all right … I mean—” he paused, rather embarrassed as he realized a possible construction of his words. Mr. Raylance laughed aloud.

  “All right, Bob,” he said, “don’t worry—I understand what you mean. You’d better get packed, and say good-by to your friends; I’ll try to get you a reservation on the usual air route, for tomorrow. I’m sorry you’re going; the hockey team will certainly miss you. However, the season is nearly over, and you’ll be back in time for football. Good luck.”

  They shook hands, and Bob rather dazedly went to his room and began to pack. He said nothing to the Hunter; it was not necessary. He had long since given up taking the statements of his elders at face value simply because they were his elders, but try as he might, he could find no ulterior motive lurking behind the words and actions of the headmaster. He decided for the time being to take his luck without question, and leave the next step to the Hunter.

  That individual had ceased to worry from the time he had realized the import of the headmaster’s words. The removal of a source of anxiety affected him almost as it does a human being—he tended to feel, far a time, though troubles were a thing of the past. It might be too much to say that he felt his job was as good as done; but there would have been some excuse for his feeling that way. He was a good detective. He had, of course, some failures against his record; but not one of them had occurred while he had the advantage of an intelligent and co-operative host to supply the physical powers his own body lacked. Bob was not Jenver, but he had come to feel strongly attached to the youngster.

  This atmosphere of nearly mindless bliss continued during Bob’s packing, and even for part of the trip. Mr. Raylance was successful in obtaining the reservation, and the next day Bob took the bus to Boston and caught the noon plane to Seattle, where they were to change to the TPA plane. During the ride and the flight the boy talked with his guest whenever possible, but the conversation was purely about the events and scenes of the trip; and they did not turn to the subject in hand until they were over the Pacific. Even then, the Hunter was prone to take the matter for granted, amazing as it may seem; it was Bob who finally asked, “Just how are you going to find this friend of yours, arid what will you do to him then? Have you some means of getting at him without hurting his host?”

  For once, the Hunter was glad that his power of speech was less easily used than Bob’s. Had it been otherwise, he would probably have uttered several words of assurance on just how simple the job was before his mind caught up with his tongue, and that would have been embarrassing. He had just been going over his blessings mentally—his possession of a perfect host from whose body he could operate in perfect concealment was the foremost of them; and in the next five seconds he wondered how he could have been so stupid; how the fact that his quarry must long since have found a hiding place at least as good as his own could possibly have escaped his attention so long. It was, of course, a normal situation, in a way—members of his race were hardly ever visible to the unaided senses, and had to be located by chemical and biochemical tests; but he should long since have faced the fact that he had no means of making such tests. He was hopelessly isolated from the police laboratories of his own world.

  He remembered wryly how he had thought of this point months before, and abandoned it for more immediate problems. Now it was the immediate problem, with a vengeance. The confident air he had manifested in discussing it with Bob only a few days before had, coincidentally with the youngster’s innocent question, evaporated completely. The summary they had made of the situation at that time was too glaringly accurate—they were looking for a needle in a very large haystack—containing, in fact, some two billion straws—and the needle—the deadly, poisoned needle!—had thoughtfully crawled inside one of them.

  Bob got no answer to his question.

  TO BE CONCLUDED

  NEEDLE

  Second of two parts. The Hunter had a job—finding a poisoned Needle—a killer—lost in a haystack of . . .

  Synopsis

  “The Hunter”—a nickname given a professional detective because of his trade, as his race lacks vocal apparatus—pursues a criminal of his own people across space to the Solar System. The fugitive, apparently in despair of escape, slows at the last minute after diving down the shadow cone of Earth, and both ships crash into the Pacific.

  Although the vessels are destroyed, neither pilot is injured; for the Hunter belongs to a race almost immune to mechanical damage. Their bodies are small and semifluid in nature; while they are metazoans, their cells are of viruslike minuteness. They normally live in symbiotic relationship with others, more solidly built creatures—a relationship which has existed so long that a definite code of conduct had grown up governing their relationships with their “hosts.” The Hunter’s quarry had violated that code, bringing about serious injury to his host for his own selfish
purposes.

  Reaching shore, the Hunter makes contact with and enters the body of Robert Kinnaird, a fifteen-year-old boy whose parents live and work on an island near the scene of the crash. Before the relationship is perfected to the point where the Hunter can see his surroundings, Robert had returned to school in the United States, thousands of miles from the island.

  Over a period of several months, the Hunter manages to convince the boy of the symbiote’s existence and friendly intentions, learn his language—and incidentally the probable whereabouts of his quarry—and, more or less fortuitously, so arrange matters that Bob returns to the island considerably ahead of his normal vacation time. By this time the boy is as enthusiastic as the detective to find and destroy a being who could be so dangerous to human life—a member of the Hunter’s race could, of course, kill a human being easily by. blocking an important blood vessel or nerve, even though they have no telepathic or other supernormal powers; and since as a last resort human flesh could serve them as food, there was strong argument for eliminating any member of that race lacking a well-developed conscience.

  However, when Bob asks the Hunter how he plans to set about locating and destroying the criminal, the detective suddenly realizes his problem. The quarry is by this time almost certainly safely ensconced in a human body, quite undetectable to sight, hearing, or touch; and the Hunter is cut off from all the normal scientific resources of his profession. The Earth spawns more than two billion human beings; and any one of them may be the fugitive’s unsuspecting host!

  Part 2

  From Seattle to Honolulu, Honolulu to Ponape; in a smaller machine from Ponape to Papeete; and finally, from the deck of the ‘small tanker that made the rounds of the “power islands.” Bob and the Hunter watched the cone that marked Tahiti’s position disappear beneath the curve of the sea, and they were embarked on the last lap of the trip. The boy had let considerations of the chase drop momentarily in anticipation of the meeting with his parents and friends; and the Hunter, for reasons of his own, made no attempt to control his host’s attention. He was in no mood to answer questions—particularly questions he was industriously asking himself.

  The island that finally revealed itself to Bob’s eager gaze was not large. The Hunter estimated, and the boy confirmed, its greatest length to be about three and a half miles. It was shaped roughly like a capital L, with the harbor formed by the interior angle facing north. The reef that surrounded it was more nearly circular, so that the inclosed lagoon was very broad on the north side. Through the reef on this side were two natural passages; the more easterly was still too shallow for large vessels, but the other had been deepened by blasting away the coral until the tanker was able to make its way through safely at any time. Bob remarked, as they nosed their way into the carefully marked passage, that it was still sometimes necessary to employ dynamite as brain-corals and similar growths established themselves in the channel.

  The lagoon itself was nearly free of the islets which are usually to be found in such places, but scattered over its surface were a number of low, nearly featureless concrete structures, each about two hundred yards square. These, according to Bob, were the principle reason his family dwelt on the island; they were the culture tanks, built in the shallow, sun-warmed water of the lagoon to permit easy replacement of the heat used up in the endothermic reactions by which special strains of bacteria produced usable hydrocarbons from water and carbonaceous waste materials.

  A similar but somewhat smaller structure topped by a large rectangular superstructure and connected to the shore by a metal causeway some six hundred yards in length, proved to be the tanker’s regular dock. The upper portion was a storage building, connected directly to the culture tanks by pipe lines which sprawled invisibly along the hard bottom of the lagoon; such portions of the building as were not occupied by tanks were devoted to pumping apparatus and other equipment used in the transferring and elementary processing of the island’s products.

  Bob, not waiting for his small supply of luggage, went down the gangplank the moment it was lowered and raced at top speed around the corner of the storage building, which from the ship’s position cut off his view of the causeway leading from the shore. A jeep was speeding toward the dock, and Bob’s eyes quickly confirmed what his intuition had instantly informed him.

  The vehicle reached the dock, and made the turn along the narrow space available between storage building and rail at a speed which threatened to carry it into the former, and squealed to a halt immediately beside the boy and his invisible guest. The Hunter watched, with an interest in which genuine sympathy played a large part, the greeting between father and son which followed. He listened, with more selfish motives, to the flood of questions poured out by his young host, which threatened to involve the doings of every one of the island’s seven or eight score inhabitants; and he was genuinely disappointed when the elder Kinnaird’s answers confined themselves to conventional phrases. He had not really hoped, of course, for useful information so early in the game; but he was quite human emotionally.

  “I’ll have to be out here until loading is finished,” Mr. Kinnaird finally brought the conversation up to the moment. “We’ll get your baggage and you can take it home in the jeep—your mother could stand seeing you pretty soon, I suppose. Come back, or get the jeep back, for me by sundown, though, if you please—and no remarks about my needing exercise.”

  Bob grinned in reply. “Not until I’m dressed to go swimming,” he answered cheerfully, as they turned back toward the ship to reclaim the boy’s luggage. The father dropped a little behind, watched the eager youngster as he slipped up the gangplank to the dock where the suitcases were piled, and thought over the school doctor’s report.

  There was certainly no sign of melancholy or other abnormality so far, he decided; and if the boy could retain his present mood long enough to take the first edge off his mother’s worry, all would probably be well.

  Mrs. Kinnaird was given little reason or opportunity for worry. Bob stormed into the house, greeted his mother as boisterously and as briefly as usual, stayed around long enough to give her a brief resume of his trip, and was off again in the jeep, after loading his bicycle into the rear seat. His mother watched him vanish down the road with approval—she knew better than to expect him to stay around the house all afternoon simply because she liked his company—and any faint regrets at his failure to do so were smothered in the relief she felt at his apparently perfect health. She wondered just what had given the school doctor his idea, and spent some time reviewing the recent correspondence with the school. She could reach no conclusion, but her determination that Bob should be thoroughly checked over by the island doctor remained unchanged.

  Bob, meanwhile, had returned the jeep to the dock, unloaded his bicycle, and, after a brief delay caused by his forgetting to check the tires before leaving home, started out in search of some of his friends. He had not addressed the Hunter since landing; it is doubtful that he thought at any time of the mission to be accomplished on the island; and, as before, the Hunter chose not to remind him. For the time being, the alien was content to wait passively and observe.

  Bob, after glancing at his watch, headed for the school, which should just about be getting out for the day. He pedaled rapidly along the causeway and up the road that led from its shore end to the collection of rather widely spaced homes and gardens which was the island’s closest approach to a town; here he turned right on the hard-surfaced road that ran nearly the whole length of the island. He had been climbing a slight gradient up to this point; now the way leveled off, and even descended slightly toward the creek that emptied into the lagoon some distance beyond the school, so the bicycle made even better time. The school building was only about a third of a mile from the road junction, at the edge of the home and food garden area; so that a very few minutes after leaving the dock Bob was dismounting from his machine in the midst of a welcoming and somewhat riotous crowd of acquaintances.

  Th
e school-age population of the island was a rather large fraction of the total; when the station had been established, some eighteen years before, only young married couples had been granted positions there. Consequently, there was a great deal of handshaking and inquiry after the health of numerous people before the group disintegrated and left Bob surrounded by a few of his closest friends.

  One of these the Hunter recognized as a member of the group who had been swimming together the day he had met Bob—he had not been very familiar with the distinguishing criteria of human features at the time, but Kenny Rice’s mop of flame-colored hair was hard to forget. The alien quickly learned from the conversation which of the others had belonged to the swimming party; they were boys named Norman Hay and Hugh Colby, both a year or so younger than Bob. The only other member of the present group was a blond fifteen-year-old nearly six feet tall named Kenneth Malmstrom, distinguished from the red-haired Rice in ordinary conversation by the inevitable sobriquet of “Shorty.” These four, together with Bob, had been companions in peace and war since they were old enough to leave the vicinity of their own yards. All, as the Hunter quickly learned, lived near the northwest tip of the island—the top of the vertical line of the L—where a few families had built homes on the north slope of the island’s central ridge—the island was “high” in the terminology of that part of the Pacific, though no part of it was more than ninety feet above the hurricane high-water mark. It was more than coincidence that the alien had found them swimming at the point where he came ashore; anyone knowing the point where he had crashed would have been quite safe in betting that the Hunter would have made one of the five his first host, for they spent at least a part of every day the weather permitted such activity in and on the water. ‘This fact speedily became apparent for within a few moments after they were left alone, Bob brought the conversation around to this vein.