by Hal Clement
By the time the combination of approaching dawn and thinning storm clouds provided enough light for his surroundings to be visible his late host was well above the reach of the heaviest waves. The shark's eyes would not focus on their own retinas out of water, but the Hunter found that the new focal surface was inside the eyeball and built a retina of his own in the appropriate place. The lenses also turned out to be a little less than perfect, but he modified their curvature with some of his own body substance and eventually found himself able to see his surroundings without exposing himself to the view of others.
There were rifts in the storm clouds now through which a few of the brightest stars were still visible against the gray background of approaching dawn. Slowly these breaks grew larger, and by the time the sun rose 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 with feathery tufts of leaves. He could not see beyond these, his point of observation being too low, though they were not themselves set thickly enough to obstruct the view. In the opposite direction was more debris-strewn beach, with the roar of the still-heavy surf sounding beyond it. The Hunter could not actually see the ocean, but its direction was obvious. To the right was a body of water which, he realized, must be a small pool, filled by the storm and now emptying back into the sea through an opening too small or too steep for the surf to enter. This was probably the only reason the shark had stranded at all-it had been washed into this pool and left there by the receding tide.
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 an intelligent creature is ordinarily best able to protect itself. It would also be more likely to travel widely, thus facilitating the now-necessary search for the pilot of the other ship. It was very likely, however, as the Hunter fully realized, that there would be serious difficulty in obtaining access to the body of an intelligent creature 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 this planet they might never come to this spot; and even if they did, he might not recognize them for what they were in time to get any good out of the situation. It would be best to wait, several days if need be, to observe just what forms of life frequented this locality; after that he could make plans to invade the one best suited to his needs. Time was probably not vital; it was as certain as anything could be that Ms quarry was no more able to leave the planet than was the Hunter himself, and while he remained on it the search would be decidedly tedious. Time spent in careful preparation would undoubtedly pay dividends.
He waited, therefore, while the sun rose higher and the wind gradually died down to a mild breeze. It became quite warm; and he was aware before long of chemical changes going on in the flesh of the shark. They were changes which made it certain that, if a sense of smell were common to many of the creatures of this world, he was bound to have visitors before too long. The Hunter could have halted the process of decay by the simple expedient of consuming the bacteria that caused it, but he was not particularly hungry and certainly had no objection to visitors. On the contrary!
Chapter II. SHELTER
THE FIRST visitors were gulls. One by one they descended, attracted by sight and smell, and began tearing at the carcass of the shark. The Hunter withdrew to the lower parts of the body and made no attempt to drive them off, even when they pounced upon 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; if they didn't, it was just as well to have the gulls there.
The greedy birds remained undisturbed until mid-afternoon. 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 in a body, 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 coming. They were bipeds, and the Hunter estimated with the ease of long practice that the largest weighed fully a hundred and twenty pounds, which, in an air-breather, meant that the addition of his own mass and oxygen consumption was unlikely to prove a serious burden. Much closer to him was a smaller four-legged creature 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 filed the information mentally for future use.
The four bipeds were also running, but not nearly so rapidly as the smaller animal. As they approached, the hidden watcher examined them carefully, and the more he saw the more pleased he was. They could travel with fair speed; their skulls were of a size that gave promise of considerable intelligence, if one could safety assume that this race kept its brain there; their skins seemed almost entirely unprotected, giving promise of easy access through the pores. As they slowed up and stopped beside the hammerhead's body, they gave another indication of intelligence by exchanging articulate sounds which unquestionably represented speech. The Hunter, to put it mildly, was delighted. He had not dared hope for such an ideal host to appear so quickly.
Of course there were problems still to be solved. It was a fairly safe bet that the creatures were not accustomed to the idea of symbiosis, at least as the Hunter's race practiced it. The alien was sure he had never seen members of this race before, and was equally sure he knew all those with whom his people normally associated. Therefore, if these beings actually saw him approaching, they would almost certainly go to considerable lengths to avoid contact; and even if this proved futile, forcible entry on the Hunter's part would create an attitude highly unlikely to lead to future co-operation. It seemed, therefore, that 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 a short distance up the beach. Somehow the Hunter got a vague impression from their attitudes that they found the neighborhood unpleasant. The quadruped remained a little longer, examining the carcass closely; but it apparently failed to notice the rather oddly placed eye which was following its movements. A call from one of the other creatures finally attracted its attention, and as the Hunter watched it bounded off in the direction they had taken. He saw with some surprise that they 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 in his rather careful examination of their bodies, and as air-breathers they must have had a considerable margin between their ability to absorb oxygen and their actual need for it 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 very well, if at all, under water-they invariably raised their heads above the surface to orient themselves, and did this with considerable frequency. The quadruped was even less likely to see him approaching, as it kept its head above water at all times.
The thought led to instant action. A threadlike pseudo-pod began groping rapidly toward the pool an inch or two under the sand. The eye was kept in operation until most of the jelly-like 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 mode of travel.
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 quickly molded itself into an elongated, fishlike shape with an eye in front, and the Hunter swam toward the boys as rapidly as he could. In one way, he reflected, it was really easier to see under water. He could use a concave lens of air, held in shape by a film of his own flesh, which was far more transparent than an optical system composed entirely of the latter substance.
He had intended to swim right up to one of the boys, hoping his approach would not be noticed and his efforts at contact marked by swirling water or his subject's friends -they were indulging in acts of considerable violence as they swam and plunged. However, it speedily became evident that only luck would bring him in contact with one of the creatures, since they swam much more rapidly than the Hunter could; and, realizing this, he found what seemed to be an excellent means of making an under* cover approach. He suddenly noticed beside him a large jellyfish, bobbing rather aimlessly along after the manner of its kind; and with his attention thus diverted, he saw that there were quite a number of the things in the vicinity. Evidently the bipeds did not consider them dangerous or they would not be swimming here.
Accordingly, the Hunter altered his form and method of locomotion to agree with those of the medusae and approached more slowly the area in which the boys were playing. His color was slightly different from that of any of the other jellyfish but these, in turn, differed among themselves, and he felt that shape must be a more important criterion than shade. He may have been right, for he got almost up to one of the bipeds without apparently causing any alarm. They were fairly close together at the moment, 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 investigation slid to one side and moved several feet away. He gave no sign of alarm, however, and the Hunter tried again. The approach ended in precisely the same fashion, except that this time he did not get 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 law of chance, he drifted a short distance away and watched, trying to learn the reason for it. Within five minutes he realized that, while these creatures seemed to have no actual fear of jelly-fish, they sedulously avoided physical 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 he had enough first-hand experience with their stinging tentacles 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 even though he had dodged hastily on noticing the lump of jelly in the water beside him he had not really thought about the matter-if he did, it was merely a brief reflection that he was lucky not to have been stung. He forgot the incident promptly, 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 on the sand playing some obscure game. Were the mad creatures never still? How in the Galaxy could he ever come in contact with such infernally active beings? He could only watch, and ponder.
Ashore, once the salt had dried on their sun-browned hides, the boys did finally begin to quiet down and cast expectant glances toward the grove of coconut palms between them and the center of the island. 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 sun before replying. " 'Bout four or half-past, Mother said. Don't you ever think of anything but eating?"
The redheaded questioner mumbled an inarticulate reply and subsided flat on his back, gazing up into the now cloudless blue sky. Another of the boys took up the conversational 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 food for the farewell picnic. Bob was closest to the water, lying stretched in full sunlight; the others had sought the rather inadequate shade of the palms. He was already well tanned but wanted to get the last possible benefit out of 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 at all to keep him awake…
The Hunter was still watching, eagerly now. Were the peripatetic things really settling down at last? It looked as though they were. The four bipeds were sprawled on the sand in various positions which they presumably found comfortable; the other animal settled down beside one of them, letting its head rest on its forelegs. The conversation, which had been almost incessant up to this point, died down, and the amorphous watcher decided to take a chance. He moved rapidly to the edge of the pool.
The nearest of the boys was about ten yards from the water. It would not be possible to maintain a watch from the Hunter's present position and at the same tune send himself under the sand to a point below the now-motionless body of his intended host. He must, however, keep the other in sight. Once more camouflage seemed indicated, and once more the ever-present jellyfish seemed to fill the need. There were a number of them lying on the sand motionless; perhaps if he moved slowly and emulated their shape the Hunter could escape notice until he was close enough for an underground attack.
He may have been excessively cautious, since none of the creatures was facing his way and all were nearly if not entirely asleep, but caution is never really wasted, and the Hunter did not regret the twenty minutes he took getting from the water's edge to a point some three yards from Robert Kinnaird. It was uncomfortable, of course, since his skinless body had even less protection from the hot sun than the jellyfish it was imitating; but he stood it, and eventually reached a point which his earlier experience suggested was close enough.
Had anyone been watching the large medusa lying apparently helpless a few feet from the boy at that moment he might have noticed a peculiar diminution in its size. The shrinking itself was not remarkable-it is the inevitable fate of a jellyfish on a hot beach-but the more orthodox members of the tribe merely grow thinner until only a cobwebby skeleton remains. This specimen dwindled not only in thickness but in diameter, and there were no remains whatsoever. Until it was almost completely gone, of course, there was an odd little lump in the center which preserved its size and shape while the body vanished around it; but this at last went, too, and no trace remained except a shallow depression in the sand-a depression which that careful observer might have noticed extended all the way from the water's edge.
The Hunter kept the eye in use during most of the underground search. His questing appendage at last reached sand that was more closely compacted than usual and, advancing very cautiously now, finally encountered what could only be living flesh. Robert's toes were buried in the sand, since he was lying on his stomach, and the Hunter found that he could operate without emerging at all to the surface. With that fact established, he dissolved the eye and drew the last of his mass out of sight below the sand-with considerable relief as the sunlight was cut off.
He did not attempt to penetrate until his whole body had been drawn through the sand and was wrapped about the half-buried foot. He surrounded the limb with extreme care, bringing himself into contact with the skin over several square inches. Then and only then d
id he commence interstition, letting the ultra-microscopic cells of his flesh slide through pores, between skin cells, under toenails-into the thousands of openings that lay unguarded in this, to his way of thinking, singularly coarse organism.
The boy was sound asleep, and remained so; but the Hunter worked as fast as possible nevertheless, for it would have been extremely awkward to have the foot move while he was only partly inside. Therefore, as swiftly as was compatible with extreme caution, the alien organism flowed smoothly along the bones and tendons in foot and ankle; up within the muscle sheaths of calf and thigh; along the outer wall of the femoral artery and through the tubelets within the structure of the thigh bone; around joints, and through still other blood vessels. It filtered through the peritoneum without causing sensation or damage; and finally the whole four pounds of unearthly life was gathered together in the abdominal cavity, not only without harming the boy in the least but without even disturbing his slumber. And there, for a tune, the Hunter rested.
He had a bigger oxygen reserve this time, having entered from air rather than water. It would be some time before he needed to draw on his host for more. He was hoping, if it were possible, to remain exactly where he was for an entire day, so that he could observe and memorize the cycle of physiological processes which this host undoubtedly performed differently from any he had known before. At the moment, of course, the creature was asleep, but that would probably not be for long. These beings seemed pretty active.
Bob was aroused, like the other boys, by the sound of his mother's voice. She had come silently, spread a blanket in the shade, and arranged the food on it before speaking; and her first words were the ancient "Come and get it!" She would not stay to help them eat it, though cordially and sincerely pressed to do so by the boys, but went back through the palm grove to the road that led to their home.
