by Hal Clement
The Hunter broke contact, Xeno informed Bob that the conversation was over-the alien had learned English in connection with his evaluation work in the library-and the detective had no contact with the specialist for several days.
He spent some of the time with Maeta, whose in juries were completely healed, and reported Xenon’s words to her.
"Then Bob is really going to be all right?" she asked. "He's looked so much happier, and doesn't have the fatigue or the joint pains any more, but I couldn't be sure that Xeno had really gotten to the cause of things."
"He knew that from the beginning," the Hunter ad mitted. "The problem was that I'd done so much dam age that there was no certainty for a long time that it could be repaired. I thought I'd admitted that to you."
"You did," conceded the girl, "but I was hoping you'd forgotten. You were feeling pretty awful about the whole thing, and it wasn't really your fault. You couldn't have done anything else."
"Not at first," the alien admitted, "but later on I should have swapped around to other hosts. There were Bob's parents, and the doctor, who knew about me."
"Would you need that many? Wouldn't just back and forth between two people be all right?"
"I'd think so, but I'm not sure. I could ask Xeno. But isn't it rather academic now, anyway?"
"Not entirely," Maeta said. "You find out-and make sure when that cold-blooded molecule manipulator is going to be through with Bob, while you're at it. I think I can hold hands with him long enough for you two to get that much of a message across. Now think over those lessons in biochem that Xeno ordered you to memorize; I have book work to do."
About the Author
Hal Clement (Harry Clement Stubbs) was born in Massachusetts in 1922. He has been a science lover from early childhood, at least partly as a result of a 1930 Buck Rogers panel in which villains were "headed for Mars, forty-seven million miles away." His father, an accountant, couldn't answer the resulting questions, and led little Hal to the local library. The result was irreversible brain influence.
He majored in astronomy at Harvard, and has since acquired master's degrees in education and in chemistry. He earns his basic living as a teacher of chemistry and astronomy at Milton Academy, in Massachusetts, and regards science-fiction writing and painting as hobbies. His first two stories, "Proof" and "Impediment," were sold when he was a junior in college; their impression on Harvard's $400 yearly tuition secured family tolerance for that crazy Buck Rogers stuff.
He has since produced half a dozen novels, of which the best known are Needle and Mission of Gravity. His reputation among science-fiction enthusiasts is that of a "bard" writer-one who tries to stick faithfully to the physical sciences as they are currently understood; like Arthur C. Clarke and the late Willy Ley, Clement would never dream of having a space ship fall into the sun merely because its engines broke down. He can do his own orbit com puting, and does.
He leads a double life, appearing frequently at science fiction conventions as Hal Clement and spending the rest of his time in Milton as Harry Stubbs, the rather square science teacher with a wife of twenty-five years and three grown children. He does occasional merit badge counseling for the Boy Scouts, has served on his town's finance committee, and is an eleven-gallon Red Cross blood donor.
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