Needle

Chapter IX. THE PLAYERS

BOB TIMED his arrival well; the school was dismissed only a minute or two after he reached it, and he was immediately surrounded by a riotous crowd of acquaintances. The 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 were accepted for positions there. Consequently there was a great deal of chatter, handshaking, and mutual inquiry before the group finally broke up and left Bob surrounded by a few of his closest friends.

Only one of these could the Hunter recognize as a member of the group who had been swimming together the day he met Bob. He had not, at the time, been very familiar with the distinguished criteria of human features, 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-presumably the ones to whom Bob had already referred in describing the layout of the island. The other one he had mentioned, Kenneth Malmstrom, was the only other member of the present group; he was a blond fifteen-year-old approximately six feet tall who had come by his nickname in the usual manner-he was distinguished by the inevitable sobriquet of "Shorty." These four, together with Bob, had been companions ever since they were old enough to go out of sight of their neighboring houses. It was more than coincidence that the alien had found most of them swimming at the point where he first came ashore; any islander, knowing the point where he had landed, would have been perfectly willing to bet that the Hunter would make one of the five his first host. They were born beachcombers. None of them, therefore, thought it strange when Bob quickly brought the conversation around to such matters.

"Has anyone been poking around the reef lately?"

"We haven't," replied Rice. "Hugh stepped through the bottom of the boat about six weeks ago, and we haven't been able to find a plank that would fix it so far."

"That bottom had been promising to go for months!" Colby, ordinarily an extremely quiet and retiring youngster-he was the youngest of the five-came stoutly to his own defense. Nobody saw fit to dispute his statement.

"Anyway, we've got to go the long way around to the south shore now if we take a boat," added Rice. "There was a lollapalooza of a storm in December, and it shifted a brain coral bigger than the boat into the gate. Dad has been promising to dynamite it ever since for us, but he hasn't got around to it yet."

"Can't you persuade him to let us do it even yet?" asked Bob. "One stick would be enough, and we all know how to handle caps."

"Try to convince him of that. His only answer has been, 'When you're older' ever since I was old enough to pronounce the word."

"Well, how about the beach, then?" asked Bob. There were many beaches on the island, but the word had only one meaning to this group. "We could walk part of the south shore and grab a swim as we went around. I haven't been in salt water since I left last fall." The others agreed, and dispersed to collect the bicycles which were leaning against the school building.

The Hunter made good use of Bob's ears and eyes during the ride. He learned little from the conversation, but he did clarify considerably his mental picture of the island. Bob had not mentioned the small creek which wound down to the lagoon a couple of hundred yards from the school, and he had not noticed it himself on the trip to the boy's house; but this time the well-made wooden bridge which carried them over it caught his attention. Almost immediately after they passed the spot where Bob had stopped the jeep, then, three quarters of a mile from the school, the other boys stopped and waited while Bob pedaled up the drive to get his bathing suit. A quarter of a mile farther Rice did the same; then there was another small creek, this time carried under the road through a concrete culvert. The Hunter gathered.from several remarks made at this point that the boat to which Rice had referred was kept at the mouth of this watercourse.

Malmstrom and Colby in turn deposited their books and collected swimming trunks; and finally the group reached the Hay residence, at the end of the paved road and somewhat more than two miles from the school Here the bicycles were left, and the group headed westward on foot around the end of the ridgelike hill which formed the backbone of the island and on which all their houses were built.

Half a mile of traveling, partly along a trail through the jungle-thick growth of the ridge and partly through a relatively open grove of coconut palms, brought them to the beach; and the Hunter at last found a spot on earth that he recognized. The pool in which his shark had stranded was gone-storm and tide had done their usual work on the sandbanks-but the palm grove and the beach were the same. He had reached the spot where he had met Bob-the spot from which his search for the fugitive should have started had it not been for some incredibly bad luck; and the spot from which, without further argument, it would start.

Detectives and crime were far from the minds of the group of boys, however. They had wasted no time in getting into swimming costume, and Bob was already dashing toward the surf, ahead of the rest, his winter-bleached skin gleaming in odd contrast to the well-tanned hides of his young friends.

The beach, though largely composed of fine sand, contained many fragments of sharp coral, and in his haste the boy stepped hard on several of these before he could bring himself to a stop. The Hunter was doing his duty, so Bob saw no evidence of actual damage when he inspected the soles of his feet; he decided that he was simply oversensitive from several months in shoes, and resumed his dash for the water. Naturally he could not show that he had gone soft before his friends. The Hunter was pardonably annoyed-wasn't one lecture enough?-and administered the muscular twinges he had been accustomed to give his former host as a signal that he was going too far; but Bob was too tensed up to feel the signal and would not have known its meaning in any case. He churned into an incoming breaker, the others at his heels. The Hunter gave up his attempts at signaling, held the cuts closed, and seethed quietly. Granting that his host was young, he still should have better self-control, and should not throw the entire burden of maintaining his health on the Hunter. Something would have to be done.

The swim was short; as Bob had said, this was the only part of the island unprotected by the reef, and the surf was heavy. The boys decided in a few minutes that they had had enough. They emerged from the water, bundled their clothes into their shirts, and set off southward down the beach carrying the garments. Before they had gone very far the Hunter took advantage of Bob's gazing momentarily out to sea to advise him in strong terms to don his shoes. The boy allowed his common sense to override minor considerations of vanity and did so.

After the first few hundred yards the reef appeared again at the shore line and gradually drew farther away, so the amount of jetsam on the beach naturally decreased; but in spite of this they had one piece of good fortune-a twelve-foot plank, fourteen inches wide and perfectly sound, had somehow found its way through the barrier and been cast up on the sand (the boys carefully refrained from considering the possibility that it might have been washed around from the construction work on the other end of the island). With the damaged boat foremost in their minds they delightedly dragged the treasure above high-water mark, and Malmstrom wrote his name in the sand beside it. They left it there, to pick up on their return.

Aside from this the "south shore"-the nearly straight stretch of beach that extended for some three miles along the southwest side of the island's longer branch-yielded little of interest or value to any of the youthful beachcombers. Near the farthest point of their walk they encountered a stranded skate, and Bob, remembering how the Hunter had come ashore, examined it closely. He was joined by Hay; but neither got much for his trouble. The creature had evidently been there for some time, and the process of examination was not too pleasant.

"A good way to waste time, as far as we are concerned," the Hunter remarked as Bob straightened up. For once he had correctly guessed the boy's thoughts. Bob almost agreed aloud before he remembered that they were not alone.

Bob returned to his home late for supper. The plank had been borne, by their united efforts, to the mouth of the creek where the boat was kept, so the only concrete souvenir of the afternoon's activities that he brought home with him was the beginning glow of a very complete sunburn. Even the Hunter had failed to appreciate the danger or detect the symptoms early enough to get the boy back into his clothes before the damage had been done.

The alien, unlike Bob, was able to see one good point in the incident. It might be more effective than lectures in curing the boy's unfortunate increasing tendency to leave the care of his body to the Hunter. He said nothing this time, and let the sufferer do his own thinking as he lay awake that night trying to keep as much of himself as possible out of contact with the sheets. Bob was, as a matter of fact, decidedly annoyed with himself; he had not been so careless for years, and the only excuse he could find for himself was the fact that he had come home at such an odd time. Even he could see that this was not a very good one, which made it more annoying.

The several square feet of bright red skin that descended to breakfast the next morning enclosed an exceedingly disgruntled youth. He was angry with himself, somewhat annoyed at the Hunter, and not too pleased with the rest of the world. His father, looking at him, was not sure whether it would be safe to smile, and decided not to. He spoke with some sympathy instead.

"Bob, I was going to suggest that you go down to school today to get straightened out on enrollment, but maybe you'd better cool off first. I don't imagine it will hurt to leave it till Monday."

Bob nodded, though not exactly in relief-he had completely forgotten school. "I guess you're right," he answered. "I wouldn't get much from school this week anyhow; it's Thursday already. Anyway, I want to look over the place for a while."

His father glanced at him sideways, "I'd think twice before going outdoors with that hide of yours," he remarked.

"He won't, though," cut in Mrs. Kinnaird. "Even if he is your son." The head of the family made no reply, but turned back to Bob.

"Be sure you keep yourself covered, anyway, and if you must explore, it might be a good idea to concentrate on the woods. At least it's shady there."

"It's just a case of having him carved or cooked, if you ask me," Mrs. Kinnaird said. "If he's cooked, at least his clothes are all right; usually after a session in the woods both his hide and his clothes are a lot the worse for thorns." The smile on her face belied the heartless implication in her words, and Bob grinned across the table at her.

"O.K., Mother, I'll try to hit a happy medium."

He went back up to his room after breakfast and donned an old long-sleeved khaki shirt of his father's instead of the T-shirt he had originally worn, came back and helped his mother with the dishes-his father had already driven off-spent a while fighting the ropy jungle growth which persistently threatened to overwhelm the house, and finally put away clippers and hormone spray and vanished into the tangle south of the dwelling.

His course carried him gradually farther from the road and distinctly uphill. He traveled as though with a definite purpose in mind, and the Hunter forbore to question him-the background of jungle was not very suitable for his method of communication anyway. Shortly after leaving the house they crossed a brook, which the detective correctly judged to be the same watercourse that was bridged by the road a little lower down. A fallen tree, whose upper surface bore signs of frequent use, crossed it here.

Mrs. Kinnaird had not exaggerated the nature of the jungle. Few of the trees were extremely tall, but the ground between them was literally choked with smaller growths, many of them, as she had said, viciously thorned. Bob threaded his way around these with a speed and skill that suggested long experience. A botanist might have been puzzled by many of the plants; the island bore a botanical and bacteriological laboratory in which work was constantly in progress to improve the oil-making bacteria and to breed better plants to feed the tanks. Since what was desired was very rapid growth with a minimum of demand on the mineral content of the soil, the test plants occasionally got out of hand.

The place Bob intended to go was barely eight hundred yards from the house, but the journey took more than half an hour. Eventually they reached the edge of the jungle and the top of the hill, and found themselves looking down toward the settled portion of the island. Where the jungle had been stopped by hormone sprays to make room for the gardens was a tree, taller than any they had seen in the jungle itself, though not so high as the coconut palms near the shore. Its lower branches were gone, but the trunk was ringed with creepers that made a very satisfactory ladder, and Bob went up without difficulty.

In the upper branches was a rough platform that indicated to the Hunter that the boys had used the place before; and from here, well above the general level of the jungle, practically the entire island was visible. Bob let his eye rove slowly around the full circle, to give the Hunter every chance to fill in details that had been lacking on the map.

As the Hunter had thought from his glimpse up the road the day before, there were some tanks on shore on the northeast end of the island as well. These, Bob said when questioned, housed bacteria which worked so much better at high temperature that it was worth while to have them up in the sunlight and accept the fact that their activity would stop at night.

"There seem to be more of them than there used to be," he added. "But, then, they're always doing work of one kind or another. It's hard to be sure-most of them are on the far slope of the northeast hill, which is about the only part of the place we cant see very well from here."

"Except objects in and near the edge of this jungle," remarked the Hunter.

"Of course. Well, we couldn't expect to find our friend from a distance, anyway; I came up here to give you a better idea of the layout. Well have to do a good deal of our searching in the next three days; I certainly can't put off school longer than Monday." He nodded at the long building down the hill. "We could go looking over the reef now if the boat were in shape."

"Are there no other boats on the island?"

"Sure. I suppose we could borrow one, though it's not too smart to poke around the reef alone. If anything happens to the boat, or a person bashes himself falling on the coral, it's apt to be too bad. We usually go in boatloads."

"We might at least look over some of the safer portions, if you can get a boat. If not, can any parts near your beach be reached on foot?"

"No, though it wouldn't take much of a swim to get to the nearest part. I'm not going to swim today, though, unless you can do a good deal more about sunburn than you have done."

He paused a moment, and went on, "How about the other fellows? Did you see anything about them yesterday that might make it worth while to try firsthand testing?"

"No. What would you expect me to see?"

Bob had no answer to that, and after a moment's thought slowly descended the tree. He hesitated for a moment more at the bottom, as though undecided between two courses of action, then he headed downhill, threading his way between garden patches and slanting gradually toward the road. He explained his hesitancy with: "Guess it isn't worth the trouble to get the bike."

They reached the road about two hundred yards east of the school and kept going in that direction, Bob glancing at the houses they passed as though estimating his chances of borrowing such a thing as a boat from the occupants. Presently he reached the road which led down to the dock, with the Teroa house at the corner, and Bob quickened his steps.

He walked around to the shoreward side of the dwelling, rather expecting to find Charles working in the garden, but the only people there were the two girls of the Teroa family, who said that their brother was inside. As Bob turned toward the house the door was flung open and Charles burst out.

"Bob! You doubting Thomas! I've got it!" Bob looked slightly bewildered and glanced around at the girls, both of whom were grinning widely.

"Got what?"

"The job, fathead! What were we talking about yesterday? A radiogram came this morning. I didn't even know there was an application in it-I thought I'd have to try all over."

"I knew." Bob grinned. "Your father told me."

"And you didn't tell me?" Teroa reached out for him and Bob moved back hastily.

"He said not to-you weren't supposed to know. Anyway isn't this better than sweating it out?"

Teroa relaxed, laughing. "I suppose so. Anyway, that red-headed friend of yours will be mad-it's what he gets for backing out!"

"Redhead? Ken? What has he to do with it? I thought it was Norman went with you."

"It was, but it was Rice's idea, and he was supposed to come along. He got cold feet or something and never showed up. Can I razz him now!" He turned suddenly serious. "Don't you tell him about this job. I want to!" He started to walk toward the dock, then turned back. "I'm going out to Four to collect something Ray borrowed a while back. Want to come along?"

Bob looked at the sky, but the Hunter expressed no opinion, and he had to make up his own mind. "I don't think so," he said. "The barge is a little ripe for my taste." He watched as the brown-skinned eighteen-year-old disappeared among the storage sheds, then turned slowly back up the road.

"That was our only real chance for a boat," he said to the Hunter. "We'll have to wait until the fellows get out of school. As a group, we stand a better chance of borrowing one-or maybe it won't take long to fix our own. I didn't have time to look at it very closely when we took the plank down yesterday."

"Was that boy going to use his own boat?"

"Yes. You heard him say he was going out to Four- that's Tank Four-to get something. The person he mentioned works on the barge they use for carrying the tank wastes. Charlie wants to collect from him before he leaves the island."

The Hunter was instantly alert. "Leaves the island? You mean the bargeman?"

"No-Charlie. Didn't you hear what he was saying?"

"I heard him talk about a job, but that was all. Is it taking him away?"

"Of course! Charlie's the son of the mate of that ship-the one who stowed away, hoping to get a job on her! Don't you remember-his father told us the first night, on the ship!"

"I remember your talking to an officer on the tanker," the Hunter replied, "but I did not and do not know what you said. You were not talking English." Bob stopped short and whistled.

"I forgot all about that!" He paused a moment to marshal his thoughts, and told the story as briefly and clearly as he could. The Hunter thought for a time after he had finished.

"Then this Charles Teroa has left the island once since my arrival and is shortly to leave it again. Your friend Norman Hay has also left once. For Heaven's sake, if there are any others you've heard about, tell me!"

"There aren't, unless you want to count Charlie's father, and I don't suppose he's been ashore here much. What does it matter about the other trip? They never got ashore, you know, and I'm sure they didn't sleep in port, so if our friend was with them he couldn't have left except at sea."

"You may be right, but that will no longer be true for this one you just saw. He must be examined before he leaves! Start thinking, please."

For the first time that day Bob completely forgot his sunburn as he walked back up the road.