by Hal Clement
"Can we use that serum trick of the doc's?"
"I doubt it. I am familiar with the technique, and know that since I have been with you so long your own blood serum might serve if it were not for one fact; but we would still have to decide where to use it If we could do that, I could make the exploration faster by personal contact."
"I suppose that's true. Still, you wouldn't have to leave me-I might be able to make the check myself."
"You have a point there. We will bear the possibility in mind. Have you any idea about getting at young Teroa? When will he be leaving?"
"The tanker comes every eight days, which means it's due back a week from today. I suppose he'll be going then; certainly not any sooner. I don't think the Beam is around."
"The Beam?"
"She's a yacht owned by one of the company bigwigs, who sometimes comes to look things over. I left on her last fall-that's why we were so far from the island when you first looked around. Come to think of it, I know she's not near; she went into drydock in Seattle last fall, to get some sort of diving gear built into her bottom, and is there yet. I suppose you were going to ask who could have left on her while we were gone."
"Correct. Thanks for settling the question so quickly." The Hunter would have smiled had he been able.
Bob had no watch but was pretty sure it was nearly time for school to be dismissed, so he headed in that direction. He was early, and had to wait outside; but presently his friends came pouring out, giving vent to expressions of envy as they saw him.
"Never mind about how lucky I am not to be in school," Bob said. "Let's get to work on that boat. I've got to go back to school myself on Monday, and I'd like to have some fun first."
"You've brought us luck, anyhow," said Hay. "We'd been looking for a plank for weeks and didn't find one until you got here. What say, fellows? Hadn't we better get that thing into the boat while the luck holds?" There was a chorus of agreement and a general movement to collect bicycles. Bob rode on Malmstrom's handle bars-he had walked to the doctor's-as far as his own house, where he picked up his own machine and some tools. They waited at the culvert while Malmstrom and Colby went onto their respective dwellings for equipment; when they returned, the bicycles were left, shoes removed, and trousers rolled up. There was a path from the road down to the place the boat was kept, but it ran through the shallower parts of the creek in spots to avoid the undergrowth, and the boys had never bothered to construct bridges.
Splashing and crashing through water and bushes, they finally dumped their collection of tools at the point where the little watercourse emptied into the lagoon. The boat was there drawn up on the sand, with the plank beside it. The boys were relieved to see the latter; there had been no risk of anyone's borrowing the boat, of course, even had it not been in its present condition, but the wood was another matter. The statement that Colby had stepped through the floor of the boat had been no exaggeration- a strip of planking four inches wide and more than two feet long was missing from the flat bottom.
The boys were not professional carpenters, but they had the boat turned over and the defective plank removed from its full length in record time. They found, however, that replacing the plank from the enormous board they had found was not such an easy matter. The first attempt came out too narrow in several places, because of their inability to saw straight near the line of the grain. The second try was started too wide, and after a good deal of labor with the plane was eventually reduced to a good fit. They had carefully salvaged the screws from the former piece and succeeded in attaching the replacement securely enough to satisfy them.
They immediately dragged the boat down to the water, brought the oars from the bushes, and the entire party piled in. The idea of letting the new plank soak for a while in order to swell, or at least to permit a guess at the seaworthiness of the new joints, occurred to them, but they were all excellent swimmers and much too impatient to hold up for any such consideration. There was some leakage at the seams, but it did not amount to more than the coconut-shell bailers could handle. The two youngest boys wielded these while Bob and Shorty rowed and Rice handled the tiller.
Bob suddenly realized that the figure which usually occupied the bow on these occasions was missing. Thinking back, he realized that this had been the case ever since his return. He spoke to Rice, who was facing him. "What's become of Tip? I haven't seen him since I got back."
"No one knows." The redhead's face clouded over. "He just disappeared quite a long time ago-well before Christmas. We've looked all over the place for him. I'm afraid he must have tried to swim over to the islet where Norm has his tank-we sometimes went there without him- and got picked off by a shark, though it doesn't seem very likely. The swim would be only a few yards, and I've never seen a live shark that close to shore. He just vanished."
"That's queer. Have you looked in the woods?"
"Some. You can't search there very well. Still, if he'd been there alive, he'd have heard us; and I can't think of anything that would hurt him there."
Bob nodded, and spoke half to himself. "That's right, come to think of it; there aren't even any snakes here." More loudly he asked, "What's this about Norm's tank? Is he going into competition with Pacific Fuels?"
"Course not," returned Hay, looking up from his job of bailing. "I cleaned out one of the pools on the reef a little way from the beach and fenced it off, and have been putting things in it to make an aquarium. I did it just for fun at first, but there are some magazines that want pictures of sea life, and I've sent for some color film. Trouble is, nothing seems to live very long in the pool; even the coral dies."
"I suppose you haven't seen it since the boat was out. Let's go over now and have a look."
"I've been swimming over every day or two with Hugh or Shorty. It's still not doing so well. I don't know whether we could get there and back now before supper; we must have been working a long tune on the boat, and the sun's getting down a bit." The other boys looked up, noticing this fact for the first tune; their parents had long since given up trying to keep them from exploring any part of the island inside the reef, but they had some sort of regulation about meeting mealtimes. Without further remark Rice headed the boat back toward the creek, and the rowers began to take longer strokes.
Bob rowed without thinking much. Everywhere he turned there was lots to see, but none of it seemed to bear on his problem; the Hunter seemed to feel that Teroa should be tested, of course, but even he had no definite suspicion-it was simply that the boy was going out of reach. The thought reminded him of the talk he had had with Charlie that morning; he wondered whether the Polynesian boy had found Rice during the lunch hour.
"Anyone seen Charlie Teroa today?" he asked.
'"No." It was Malmstrom who answered. "He comes a couple of days a week for navigation, but this isn't one of them. Think he'll ever use it?"
"Not for anyone who knows him." Rice's voice was scornful. I'd rather hire someone likely to stay awake on the job."
Bob concealed a smile. "He seems to get some work done in that garden of his," he remarked.
"Sure, with his mother watching and his sisters helping. Why, he went to sleep with a boatload of dynamite last fall, when they were clearing the east passage."
"You're crazy!"
"That's what you think. They sent him in alone for a case, and told him to stand by when he got back, and twenty minutes later my father found him moored to a bush on the reef, sound asleep, using the case for a foot-rest. He was lucky there weren't caps aboard and that he wasn't where a wave could have knocked the boat into the reef."
"Maybe that wasn't luck," Bob pointed out. "He knew he didn't have caps, and figured it was safe enough where he was."
"Maybe; but I haven't let him live it down yet." Rice grinned mischievously.
Bob looked at the redhead, who was rather short for his age. "Someday he'll throw you in the drink, if you don't stop riding him. Besides, wasn't that stowaway business your idea?"
Rice could have asked with some justice, what that had to do with matters, but he just chuckled and said nothing. A moment later the boat's flat bottom grated on the beach.
Chapter XI. SLIP!
BOB REMEMBERED after he got home that he had forgotten to ask Hay about the doctor's book, but reflected that there was plenty of time tomorrow. There probably would not be much of actual help in it anyway. He spent the evening in the house for a change, reading and talking to his parents; and the Hunter perforce did nothing but listen and think. The next forenoon was little better, from the detective's point of view; Bob worked around the house in the morning while his friends were in school, and neither of them thought of any means of getting Teroa long enough for a test. Bob, it is true, suggested leaving the Hunter near the other's home in the evening and coming back the next day, but the alien refused under any and all circumstances to place himself in a situation where Bob could see him either going or coming. He was sure what the emotional effect would be. Bob couldn't see it, but was convinced when the Hunter pointed out that there was no way for him to be sure that the mass of jelly which would return to him after the test was actually the detective. The boy had no desire whatever to let their quarry get at his own body.
The afternoon was distinctly better. Bob met the others as usual, and they repaired immediately to the boat. There was no time problem on this occasion, and they set out northwest, paralleling the shore at a distance of a few rods, with Hay and Colby rowing. The new plank had swelled, and there was very little leakage this time.
They had well over a mile to go, and they had rowed most of it before the Hunter fully understood the geography which he had been picking up in snatches from the conversation. The islet on which Hay had made his aquarium was, as he had intimated, close to the beach; it was the first section of the reef which curved away to the north and east from the end of the sand strip where the boys usually swam. It was separated from the beach itself by a stretch of water not twenty yards wide, a narrow channel which was protected from the breakers by other ridges of coral a little farther out which barely appeared above water. This channel, the Hunter judged, must be the one in which the dog was supposed to have been taken by a shark; and remembering the monster he had ridden ashore and seeing the seething currents among the ridges on its seaward side he shared Rice's doubts about that theory.
The islet itself was composed of coral, which had accumulated enough soil to support some bushes. It was not more than thirty or forty yards long and ten yards wide. The pool was at its widest part, almost circular, and about twenty feet across. It appeared to have no connection with the sea that raged a few yards away; Norman said he had blocked up two or three submarine passages with cement and that waves broke high enough and often enough at high tide to keep it full. As he had said, it was not doing well: a dead butterfly fish was floating near one side, and the coral that composed its walls showed no sign of living polyps.
"I thought it must be some sort of disease," he said, "but I never heard of one that attacks everything alike. Have you?"
Bob shook his head. "No. Was that why you borrowed that book of the doc's?"
Norman looked up sharply. "Why, yes. Who told you about that?"
"The doc. I wanted to find out something about viruses, and he said you had the best of his books on the subject Are you still using it?"
"I guess not. What got you interested in viruses? I read what it had to say about 'em and couldn't get much out of it."
"Oh, I don't know. It was something about nobody being able to decide whether they were really alive or not I guess. That sounded pretty queer. If they eat and grow, they must be alive."
"I remember something about that-" At this point the conversation was interrupted, sparing Bob the need for further invention.
"For gosh sakes, Norm, give him the book when you get home, but let's not get lost in the upper atmosphere now! Exercise your brains on this pool of yours if you like, or else let's go along the reef and see what we can find." It was Malmstrom who had cut in, and Rice supported him vocally. Colby, as usual, remained silent in the background.
"I suppose you're right" Hay turned back to the pool. "I don't know, though, what I'm likely to think of right now that I couldn't in the last three or four months. I was hoping Bob might have a new idea."
"I don't know much biology-just the school course," Robert replied. "Have you gone down in it to see if you could find anything? Have you brought up anything like a piece of coral, to see what's happened to the polyps?"
"No, I've never been swimming in it. At first I didn't want to disturb the fish I had collected, and later I thought that whatever disease affected so many different things might get me too."
"That's a thought. Still, you must have touched the water a lot before things got really bad, and nothing happened to you. I'll go in if you like." Once again the Hunter came close to losing his temper. "What would you like me to bring up?"
Norman stared at him for a moment. "You really think it's safe? All right, I'll go in if you will."
That gave Bob a jolt; he had, almost without thought, been assuming himself safe from any disease germ that might be around, but Hay, as far as anyone could tell, had no symbiote to protect him.
That thought gave rise to another-did he? Would that explain his courage? Bob thought not, since it seemed most unlikely that their quarry's host would have any idea of the alien's presence but it was something to be considered when there was more tune. For the moment the question was whether he should make good his offer of entering the questionable water if Hay were going to follow him.
He decided that he would; after all, the argument he had used against the trouble's being a disease seemed sound; and anyway there was a doctor on the island.
"All right," he said, starting to strip.
"Wait a minute! Are you fellows crazy?" Malmstrom and Rice yelled almost together. "If that water's been killing the fish, you're foolish to go in."
"It's safe enough," said Bob. "We're not fish." He was aware of the weakness of this argument but could not think of a better one on the spur of the moment. The two Kenneths were still expostulating as he slipped feet first into the pool, with Norman beside him-both knew better than to dive into a coral pool, however clear it might be. Colby, who had not contributed to the argument, walked over to the boat, got an oar, came back, and stood watching.
The trouble with the pool manifested itself with remarkable speed. Bob swam out to the middle and did a surface dive, a maneuver which should have taken him without effort to the bottom eight feet down. It did nothing of the sort; his momentum barely got his feet under water. He took a couple of strokes, reached the bottom, broke a sea fan loose, and bobbed back to the surface with remarkable speed. As was his custom, he started blowing out air just before his head broke water, and managed to get some of the liquid into his mouth in the process. That was enough.
"Norm! Taste this water!" he yelled. "No wonder your fish died." Hay obeyed hesitantly, and grimaced.
"Where did all the salt come from?" he asked. Bob swam to the edge of the pool, clambered out, and started to dress before answering.
"We should have guessed," he said. Sea water comes in when the waves are high, enough, but the only way it leaves is by evaporation. The salt stays behind. You shouldn't have blocked off all the passages to the sea. We'll have to chip out one of your plugs and find some wire netting, if you still want to take those pictures."
"My gosh," exclaimed Hay, "and I wrote a school report on Great Salt Lake only last year." He started to dress, indifferent as Bob to the fact that he was still wet. "What'll we do? Go back for a crowbar or something, or poke around the reef for a while now that we're here?"
A brief discussion resulted in the adoption of the second plan, and the group returned to the boat On the way Norman pulled a large, battered bucket out of the bushes, laughing as he did so. "I used to fill up the pool with this sometimes, when I thought it was getting low," he said.
For an hour they rowed along inside the reef, occasionally disembarking on one of the larger islets, more often coasting alongside the ridges and lumps of coral while using poles to keep them off the more dangerous sections. They had worked some distance along the reef away from the island itself and had reached another fairly large islet-this one actually supported half-a-dozen coconut palms-where they disembarked and pulled the boat well up on the gritty soil. Their loot up to this time had not been very impressive, consisting mainly of a few cowries and a weirdly colored fragment of coral for which Malmstrom had gone overboard in twelve feet of water. The Hunter's profit from the expedition had been even less so far, which annoyed him, since the exploration of the reef for clues had been largely his idea.
He made the utmost use of Bob's eyes, however. They were nearing his arbitrary one-mile limit north of the beach, which meant that about half of the region in which he expected to find clues of his quarry's landing had been covered. There was still not very much to see, however. On one side of the irregular islet the breakers thundered; on the other was the relatively calm water of the lagoon, with the bulk of one of the great culture tanks a few hundred yards away. The scavenger barge was beside the tank at the moment, and the small figures of its crew were visible on the catwalks that crossed the paneled roof; beyond, and dwarfed by a distance of fully three miles, the houses of the island dwellers were barely visible.
These, however, could hardly be considered clues, it seemed to the Hunter, and he brought his attention back to the immediate surroundings. The present bit of land was similar to that on which Hay's pool was located, and like it, had very irregular edges-clefts, walled with living coral, in which the water gurgled down almost out of sight and then spurted upward into the watchers' faces as another breaker came thundering against the barrier. Some of the openings were narrow at the outer edge and broadened farther in, so that the water in them was quieter, though there was always the endless up-and-down wash started by the waves.
