Needle

Chapter I. CASTAWAY

EVEN ON THE earth shadows are frequently good places to hide. They may show up, of course, against lighted surroundings, but if there is not too much light from the side, one can step into a shadow and become remarkably hard to see.

Beyond the earth, where there is no air to scatter light, they should be even better. The earth's own shadow, for example, is a million-mile-long cone of darkness pointing away from the sun, invisible itself in the surrounding dark and bearing the seeds of still more perfect invisibility- for the only illumination that enters that cone is starlight and the feeble rays bent into its blackness by the earth's thin envelope of air.

The Hunter knew he was in a planet's shadow though he had never heard of the earth; he had known it ever since he had dropped below the speed of light and seen the scarlet-rimmed disk of black squarely ahead of him; and so he took it for granted that the fugitive vessel would be detectable only by instruments. When he suddenly realized that the other ship was visible to the naked eye, the faint alarm that had been nibbling at the outskirts of his mind promptly rocketed into the foreground.

He had been unable to understand why the fugitive should go below the speed of light at all, unless in the vague hope that the pursuer would overrun him sufficiently to be out of detection range; and when that failed, the Hunter had expected a renewed burst of speed. Instead, the deceleration continued. The fleeing ship had kept between his own and the looming world ahead, making it dangerous to overhaul too rapidly; and the Hunter was coming to the conclusion that a break back on the direction they had come was to be expected when a spark of red light visible to the naked eye showed that the other had actually entered an atmosphere. The planet was smaller and closer than the Hunter had believed.

The sight of that spark was enough for the pursuer. He flung every erg his generators could handle into a drive straight away from the planet, at the same time pouring the rest of his body into the control room to serve as a gelatinous cushion to protect the perit from the savage deceleration; and he saw instantly that it would not be sufficient. He had just tune to wonder that the creature ahead of him should be willing to risk ship and host in what would certainly be a nasty crash before the outer fringes of the world's air envelope added their resistance to his plunging flight and set the metal plates of his hull glowing a brilliant orange from heat.

Since the ships had dived straight down the shadow cone, they were going to strike on the night side, of course; and once the hulls cooled, the fugitive would again be invisible. With an effort, therefore, the Hunter kept his eyes glued to the instruments that would betray the other's whereabouts as long as he was in range; and it was well that he did so, for the glowing cylinder vanished abruptly from sight into a vast cloud of water vapor that veiled the planet's dark surface. A split second later the Hunter's ship plunged into the same mass, and as it did so there was a twisting lurch, and the right-line deceleration changed to a sickening spinning motion. The pilot knew that one of the drive plates had gone, probably cracked off by undistributed heat but there was simply no time to do a thing about it. The other vessel, he noted, had stopped as though it had run into a brick wall; now it was settling again, but far more slowly, and he realized that he himself could only be split seconds from the same obstacle, assuming it to be horizontal.

It was. The Hunter's ship, still spinning wildly although he had shut off the remaining drive plates at the last moment, struck almost flat on water and at the impact split open from end to end along both sides as though it had been an eggshell stepped on by a giant. Almost all its kinetic energy was absorbed by that blow, but it did not stop altogether. It continued to settle, comparatively gently now, with a motion like a falling leaf, and the Hunter felt its shattered hull come to a rest on what he realized must be the bottom of a lake or sea a few seconds later.

At least, he told himself as his wits began slowly to clear, his quarry must be in the same predicament. The abrupt stoppage and subsequent slow descent of the other machine was now explained-even if it had struck head-on instead of horizontally, there would have been no perceptible difference in the result of a collision with a water surface at their speed. It was almost certainly unusable, though perhaps not quite so badly damaged as thehunter's ship.

That idea brought the train of thought back to his own predicament. He felt cautiously around him and found he was no longer entirely in the control room-in fact, there was no longer room for all of him inside it. What had been a cylindrical chamber some twenty inches in diameter and two feet long was now simply the space between two badly dented sheets of inch-thick metal which had been the hull. The seams had parted on either side, or, rather, seams had been created and forced apart, for the hull was originally a single piece of metal drawn into tubular shape. The top and bottom sections thus separated had been flattened out and were now only an inch or two apart on the average. The bulkheads at either end of the room had crumpled and cracked-even that tough alloy had its limitations. The perit was very dead. Not only had it been crushed by the collapsing wall, but the Hunter's semi-liquid body had transmitted the shock of impact to its individual cells much as it is transmitted to the sides of a water-filled tin can by the impact of a rifle bullet, and most of its interior organs had ruptured. The Hunter, slowly realizing this, withdrew from around and within the little creature. He did not attempt to eject its mangled remains from the ship; it might be necessary to use them as food later on, though the idea was unpleasant. The Hunter's attitude toward the animal resembled that of a man toward a favorite dog, though the perit, with its delicate hands which it had learned to use at his direction much as an elephant uses its trunk at the behest of man, was more useful than any dog.

He extended his exploration a little, reaching out with a slender pseudopod of jellylike flesh through one of the rents in the hull. He already knew that the wreck was lying in salt water, but he had no idea of the depth other than the fact that it was not excessive. On his home world he could have judged it quite accurately from the pressure; but pressure depends on the weight of a given quantity of water as well as its depth, and he had not obtained a reading of this planet's gravity before the crash.

It was dark outside the hull. When he molded an eye from his own tissue-those of the pent had been ruptured -it told him absolutely nothing of his surroundings. Suddenly, however, he realized that the pressure around him was not constant; it was increasing and decreasing by a rather noticeable amount with something like regularity; and the water was transmitting to his sensitive flesh the higher-frequency pressure waves which he interpreted as sound. Listening intently, he finally decided that he must be fairly close to the surface of a body of water large enough to develop waves a good many feet in height, and that a storm of considerable violence was in progress. He had not noticed any disturbance in the air during his catastrophic descent, but that meant nothing-he had spent too little time in the atmosphere to be affected by any reasonable wind.

Poking into the mud around the wreck with other pseudopods, he found to his relief that the planet was not lifeless-he had already been pretty sure of that fact. There was enough oxygen dissolved in the water to meet his needs, provided he did not exert himself greatly, and there must, consequently, be free oxygen in the atmosphere above. It was just as well, though, to have actual proof that life was present rather than merely possible, and he was well satisfied to locate in the mud a number of small bivalve mollusks which, upon trial, proved quite edible. Realizing that it was night on this part of the planet, he decided to postpone further outside investigation until there was more light and turned his attention back to the remains of his ship. He had not expected the examination to turn up anything encouraging, but he got a certain glum feeling of accomplishment as he realized the completeness of the destruction. Solid metal parts in the engine room had changed shape under the stresses to which they had been subjected. The nearly solid conversion chamber of the main drive unit was flattened and twisted. There was no trace whatever of certain quartz-shelled gas tubes; they had evidently been pulverized by the shock and washed away by the water. No living creature handicapped by a definite shape and solid parts could have hoped to come through such a crash alive, no matter how well protected. The thought was some comfort; he had done his best for the petit even though that had not been sufficient.

Once satisfied that nothing usable remained in his ship, the Hunter decided no more could be done at the moment. He could not undertake really active work until he had a better supply of oxygen, which meant until he reached open air; and the lack of light was also a severe handicap. He relaxed, therefore, in the questionable shelter of the ruined hull and waited for the storm to end and the day to come. With light and calm water he felt that he could reach shore without assistance; the wave noise suggested breakers, which implied a beach at no great distance.

He lay there for several hours, and it occurred to him once that he might be on a planet which always kept the same hemisphere toward its sun; but he realized that in such a case the dark side would almost certainly be too cold for water to exist as a liquid. It seemed more probable that storm clouds were shutting out the daylight.

Ever since the ship had finally settled into the mud it had remained motionless. The disturbances overhead were reflected in currents and backwashes along the bottom which the Hunter could feel but which were quite unable to shift the half-buried mass of metal. Certain as he was that the hull was now solidly fixed in place, the castaway was suddenly startled when his shelter quivered as though to a heavy blow and changed position slightly.

Instantly he sent out an inquiring tentacle. He molded an eye at its tip, but the darkness was still intense, and he returned to strictly tactile exploration. Vibrations suggestive of a very rough skin scraping along the metal were coming to him, and abruptly something living ran into the extended limb. It demonstrated its sentient quality by promptly seizing the appendage in a mouth that seemed amazingly well furnished with saw-edged teeth.

The Hunter reacted normally, for him-that is, he allowed the portion of himself in direct contact with those unpleasant edges to relax into a semi-liquid condition, and at the same moment he sent more of his body flowing into the arm toward the strange creature. He was a being of quick decisions, and the evident size of the intruder had impelled him to a somewhat foolhardy act. He left the wrecked space ship entirely and sent his whole four pounds of jellylike flesh toward what he hoped would prove a more useful conveyance.

The shark-it was an eight-foot hammerhead-may have been surprised and was probably irritated, but in common with all its land it lacked the brains to be afraid. Its ugly jaws snapped hungrily at what at first seemed like satisfying solid flesh, only to have it give way before them like so much water. The Hunter made no attempt to avoid the teeth, since mechanical damage of that nature held no terrors for him, but he strenuously resisted the efforts of the fish to swallow that portion of his body already in its mouth. He had no intention of exposing himself to gastric juices, since he had no skin to resist their action even temporarily.

As the shark's activities grew more and more frantically vicious, he sent exploring pseudopods over the ugly rough-skinned form, and within a few moments discovered the five gill slits on each side of the creature's neck. That was enough. He no longer investigated; he acted, with a skill and precision born of long experience.

The Hunter was a metazoon-a many-celled creature, like a bird or a man-in spite of his apparent lack of structure. The individual cells of his body, however, were far smaller than those of most earthly creatures, comparing in size with the largest protein molecules. It was possible for him to construct from his tissues a limb, complete with muscles and sensory nerves, the whole structure fine enough to probe through the capillaries of a more orthodox creature without interfering seriously with its blood circulation. He had, therefore, no difficulty in insinuating himself into the shark's relatively huge body.

He avoided nerves and blood vessels for the moment 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 sending tactile messages to its minute brain; its memory, to all intents and purposes, was nonexistent. For the Hunter, however, successful insterstition was only the beginning of a period of complicated activity.

First and most important, oxygen. There was enough of the precious element absorbed on the surfaces of his body cells for a few minutes of life at the most, but it could always be obtained in the body of a creature that also consumed oxygen; and the Hunter rapidly sent sub-microscopic appendages between the cells that formed the walls of blood vessels and began robbing the blood cells of their precious load. He needed but little, and on his home world he had lived in this manner for years within the body of an intelligent oxygen-breather, 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 body out through the shark's skin to construct an organ of vision, but he might not have been able to avoid disturbing the creature by such an act. Besides, ready-made lenses were usually better than those he could make himself.

His search was interrupted before it had gone very far. The crash had, as he had deduced, occurred rather close to land; the encounter with the shark had taken place in quite shallow water. Sharks are not particularly 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 partly drifted and partly swum closer to the beach; and with its attention no longer taken up by the intruder, it tried to get back into deep water. The shark's continued frenzied activity, after the oxygen-theft system had been established, started a chain of events which caught the alien's attention.

The breathing system of a fish operates under a considerable disadvantage. The oxygen dissolved in water is never at a very high concentration, and a water-breathing creature, though it may be powerful and active, never has a really large reserve of the gas. The Hunter was not taking very much to keep alive, but he was trying to build up a reserve of his own as well; and with the shark working at its maximum energy output, the result was that its oxygen consumption was exceeding its intake. That, of course, had two effects: the monster's physical strength began to decline and the oxygen content of its blood to decrease. With the latter occurrence the Hunter almost unconsciously increased his drain on the system, thereby starting a vicious circle that could have only one ending.

The Hunter realized what was happening long before the shark actually died but did nothing about it, though he could have reduced his oxygen consumption without actually killing himself. He could also have left the shark, but he had no intention of drifting around in comparative helplessness in the open sea, at the mercy of the first creature large and quick enough to swallow him whole. He remained, and kept on absorbing the life-bearing gas, for he had realized that so much effort would be needed only if the fish were fighting the waves-striving to bear him away from the shore he wanted to reach. He had judged perfectly by this time the shark's place in the evolutionary scale and had no more compunction about killing it than would a human being.

The monster took a long time to die, though it became helpless quite rapidly. Once it ceased to struggle, the Hunter continued the search for its eyes, and eventually found them. He deposited a film of himself between and around their retinal cells, in anticipation of the time when there would be enough light for him to see. Also, since the now-quiescent shark was showing a distressing tendency to sink, the alien began extending other appendages to trap any air bubbles which might be brought near by the storm. These, together with the carbon dioxide he produced himself, he gradually accumulated in the fish's abdominal cavity to give buoyancy. He needed very little gas for this purpose, but it took him a long time to collect it, since he was too small to produce large volumes of carbon dioxide very rapidly.

The breakers were sounding much more loudly by the time he was able to take his attention from these jobs, and he realized that his assumption of a shoreward drift was justified. The waves were imparting a sickening up-and-down motion to his unusual raft, which neither bothered nor pleased him; it was horizontal motion he wanted, and that was comparatively slow until the water became quite shallow.

He waited for a long time after his conveyance stopped moving, expecting each moment to be floated and dragged back into deep water again, but nothing happened, and gradually the sound of waves began to decrease slightly and the amount of spray falling on him to diminish. The Hunter suspected that the storm was dying.out. Actually, the tide had turned; but the result was the same as far as he was concerned.

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!