Through the Eye of a Needle

9. Joke Two

Rather to the Hunter's surprise, neither Jenny nor Maeta showed any revulsion at the sight of his greenish jelly soaking into the hand Bob dipped into theopen top of the pipe. They watched only briefly, not because of their own feelings but because the alien could not stand the sun for long.

Maeta offered to stay with them for the day and continue the regular search, but the Hunter wanted to stay with Bob long enough to make a complete check for all the things which might have gone wrong in his absence. This meant thata diver would have to spend most of her time keeping the instrument out of the coral, and this seemed impractical until the Cousteau equipment arrived; and no one yet knew when that would be. Seever, the third paddler, also had a point to make.

"You've been more in the water than out of it for the last hour and more, Mae. I know you don't feel either cold or tired, but take care of yourself. Get some rest before you go in again." The girl laughed. "I could stay in all day. I have, sometimes," she pointed out, looking back at the doctor without interrupting the rhythm of her paddle. "I not only don't feel tired; I'm really not."

"Ordinarily I'd agree with you, young lady," Seever answered, "but this time you've spent a lot of time under water. I know you've trained for that, too, and are probably in better condition than anyone else on Ell for such things-yes, I know all about your reputation; who doesn't? Still, there are things no human body can put up with indefinitely. You take care of that one."

Maeta laughed. "Aren't you going to tell me to put something on to keep the sun off, over this bathing suit?"

"No. I'm a professional trying to do his job, not an old fogey asking to look ridiculous. If my daughter or Bob were dressed as you are, I'd have jumped on them already. I know as well as you do that you don't1 need it. Are you trying to get compliments out of a middle-aged man? There must be better directions to shoot."

Maeta said nothing, nor did Jenny, but the latter looked at her father as teen-agers have been looking at their parents for generations. Bob paid no attention; he was listening to the Hunter's generally favorable report on his own condition, and promising himself that a very careful check of ropes, wires, and other equipment would precede any future operations.

The rope which had failed had been examined closely by everyone. Jenny had suggested openly that Malmstrom had done something to it. Bob had countered with the suggestion that it was the "pest" Andre desChenes. The rope itself failed to support either contention; it had not been cut, quite certainly. There was no obvious, reason why it had failed, and the rather futile argument was still going on when they reached North Beach.

"When the Hunter finishes his checkup, I'd like very much to go back out," Maeta said when the outrigger had bees pulled up. "I like being on the water, and this is as good an excuse as anyone could have- not that anyone needs an excuse. I wouldn't have to do enough diving to bother you, Doctor, judging by the number of times they've found large pieces of metal. There's room for me in your kayak if you'd rather use that; I admit it's a lot lighter."

Jenny's feelings were mixed. The search itself was getting boring, except when she remembered what it meant to Bob. Even then it was beginning to be duty rather than pleasure. Also, she was beginning, to change her mind, for reasons she couldn't have given even to herself, about the wisdom of having Maeta in the group.

Bob thought the idea was excellent, however, and the Hunter also voted in favor of it; so the group headed for the kayak, with Seever and Maeta carrying the concrete-and-pipe assembly. The remains of the other coil of rope, which had failed the day before, still lay on one of the duckboards in the kayak's bottom, and Jenny picked this up and tossed it out on the sand. Then she gave an exclamation. "Hey! Look at this!"

The others, gathering beside her, had no trouble seeing what she meant. At the side of the duckboard, where it came closest to the canvas but had been hidden by the rope, both the wood and the canvas were deeply stained. Jenny touched the canvas, and cried out again as the brown-tinted portion, nearly three inches across, crumbled away.

Her father bent over and sniffed.

"Nothing I can tell now," he said, "but it looks like acid-battery acid, for a guess."

"That punk Shorty!" snapped Jenny.

"Or Andre?" queried Bob.

"Why him?" asked the redhead. "He's asked me if he could come out with us, and I said yes, in a few days."

"Maybe the few days got too many. I can't see Shorty doing anything as serious as this; he's more the chalk-in-the-blackboard-eraser type."

"I suppose the acid was poured on the rope, and the bit that got on the canvas was accidental," Seever said slowly. "I can't see why it was done at all, though I'm afraid I agree with Bob that it's something Andre might do."

"It's certainly a serious question," Maeta agreed, "but there's another. Are you going to let this hold up the real project? Isn’t it still important to find those ships if we can? Or do you want to wait until the diving equipment gets here, if it ever does?"

"Things will go so much faster with it that I'd al most just as soon wait," Bob admitted. "We're spending an awful lot of time and effort to cover an awful tiny patch of map. Maybe I'll last until the breathing stuff gets here-"

"And maybe you won't," snapped Jenny. "Mae's right. We've got to keep this going."

"We can use my rigger until your kayak is fixed," Maeta added. "After that, too, if you want. The rest-of my family won't mind-and I don't have to tell them what we're doing, Bob." The Hunter was impressed; he hadn't known that the small girl had been so aware of Bob's feelings. Had she been reading his host's expression that well, or had Jenny told her? Maeta was continuing with her ideas. "Look, I don't work at the library every day. Jen, you and I can do some of the job while Bob is working at the refinery-"

Bob cut in with the Hunter's objection to being so far separated from his host. Maeta waved it away.

"He won't have to be," she said. "We won't need the Hunter. I can go down to check how far off the bottom the box is every few minutes, and we can make position work easier by using a lot of those marker buoys. We can make more of them easily. We'll fill that map three or four times as fast as you're doing it now. Come on, we'll start right now. I suppose you don't want to come, Doctor; Bob's all right now, and you don't like to spend too much time away from your office. But come along if you like, of course; there's plenty of room in the rigger."

The Hunter, who had seen comparatively little of human females during Bob's college career, was beginning to wonder whether the tendency to take control of things was universal among them, or merely half-universal among human beings. Many of Bob's male friends at college had been pretty bossy, too, the alien reflected.

"Thanks, I’ll go back to the office," Seever answered, "but you take care of yourself out there, Mae. You're probably safe from sunburn and coronary, but there are other things under the water, and you'll be alone." Maeta's face lost its expression of rather pixyish humor, and she looked Seever soberly in the eye.

"I know, Doctor.

Ill be careful-really."

She turned to the others. "Let's go."

The next day or two went well, except for Bob's condition; joint and muscle pains were growing much worse, and neither Seever nor the Hunter was able to do anything about them. The neostigmine Seever had sent for seemed to palliate the weakness, which had not been experienced for some time, and the nausea attacks also seemed to have vanished. Both the human and nonhuman experimenters would have liked to take credit for the latter, but neither dared to; neither was sure it wouldn't come back.

The weather permitted the girls to work outside the reef, and a very encouraging amount of area was added to the Hunter's map from their reports.

The Hunter himself was shocked to find that he had mixed feelings about this. He would have been happier to be on the spot himself. Now he found that he was spending much of his host's sleeping time wondering what they would do when the entire planned area had been covered without success. Should they expand the area, or go over the whole thing again? Which would give the better chance? There had been little more than guesswork available to establish the area in the first place, but it had seemed such reasonable guesswork!

He sometimes asked these questions of Bob, but had little profit from it. The young man was either in one of his philosophical moods, and merely answered that they could face those difficulties when and if they arose, or was irritated and would threaten to calm them both with alcohol if the Hunter didn't stop bothering him. The alien did not really believe the threat, but had learned to be uneasy about human beings who had talked themselves too loudly into a corner.

The real, major hitch in the general operation occurred five days after the Hunter was fished from the bottom. It was not only a Sunday but also a major holiday-the Fourth of July-which made some difference in the regular work pattern. The refinery operated, of course, but Bob did not have to report until midmorning. His father had left the house quite early, Daphne and her mother went a little later to join most of Ell's holidaying population on the beach and dock, and Bob had remained late in bed. He got his own breakfast with little time to spare, and headed down toward the road on his bicycle. His joints were a little less bothersome than usual, but still made motion uncomfortable.

The Kinnaird house was slightly more than two hundred feet from the main road. This end of the island was heavily overgrown with the thorny byproducts of PFI's early efforts to breed fast-growing material for the culture tanks. The driveway was not perfectly straight, so it was impossible for Bob to see far ahead. It was also, fortunately, impossible for him to ride very fast.

The machine was almost to the final turn, ten or fifteen yards from the main road, when it stopped. Bob didn't. He "gave a startled yell as he went over the handlebars, but that was all his reflexes accomplished. The Hunter provided the usual tightening up around joints to help in sprain defense. Neither response proved really useful.

The driveway was not paved-it was really little more than a path, though a jeep could negotiate it. On the other hand, it was far from soft. It was met first by Bob's left hand, followed closely by shoulder and head on the same side. Both forearm bones snapped, the flesh on the left side of his cheek was badly torn, and his left ear was almost removed. The Hunter had plenty to do, but this did not include anesthesia; his host was thoroughly knocked out.

At first the alien was not aware of anyone else in the neighborhood, and could do his normal job with-out worrying about the need for camouflage. He promptly blocked the opened capillaries, and the larger vessels where bone had come through the skin; practically no blood escaped. He was working the displaced face and head tissue back to its approximately correct place when he heard something.

At first he could not decide its nature; then it began to resemble a fairly large body making its way through the underbrush. Presently this ceased and very faint footsteps sounded on the drive. The Hunter was relieved at first; getting Bob to the doctor's place was obviously necessary, and obviously more than the symbiont could manage unaided. Whoever was combing should be able either to give help or go for it Bob's eyes were closed, so his partner could see nothing even though they had come to rest lying flat on his back.

The alien tried to force one lid open to see who was standing over them, but had not succeeded when a thin sliver of metal went through his host's chest, nailing him neatly to the ground. The Hunter forgot all about seeing, and barely noticed the fleeing footsteps. He was suddenly very busy.

The metal had entered Bob's body at the base of the breastbone and slanted a trifle upward, going through the right ventricle of his heart and emerging just to the right of his spine. The heart continued to beat on its own, but the symbiont had to surround it with his own tissue to prevent blood from escaping through the two holes and filling the pericardium, which would seriously hamper heart action. The metal helped plug the holes, but was doing no good otherwise. For the moment, all the Hunter could do was maintain blood pressure and circulation until help showed up. There was no. immediate likelihood that it would.

Bob came back to consciousness in fifteen minutes or so. The Hunter recognized the fact before his host started to move, and told him slowly and carefully s what was wrong, to prevent his doing so incautiously. Bob listened, and finally understood.

"What can we do?" he asked. "I know you can keep me alive, but I'd hate to have the family find me this way."

"I agree, though probably not for the same reasons," the Hunter answered, "The average human being who saw you might react by pulling out this piece of metal, and that's something I want done only under my guidance or Dr. Seever's. Do you think you're strong enough yet? Don't worry about shock; I'll handle your blood pressure."

"I guess so.” Bob reached carefully toward his chest, and felt the projecting end of the weapon. "I'd say this was one of those picnic skewers we cooked with the other night."

"That was my impression," responded the alien, "though I've only felt the part inside you. Fortunately it's one of the straight ones, not the twisted kind. I'd have missed more of your blood otherwise, there'd have been a lot more damage to your heart, and you'd be having a much tougher job of pulling. Get hold of it-there-and work it very slowly upward. I'll take care of the inside. That's good-that's right-very slowly, especially when the point comes out of the ground-you don't want it to wiggle any more than we can help-that's the way-"

The Hunter kept talking. Some time Bob was going to become fully aware of what he was doing, but that moment should be postponed if at all possible until the skewer was out of him, or at least out of his heart. If nausea, a very likely result of full realization, were to occur before then, the Hunter would have a distinctly more complex job. He made it a point to hold his host's eyes closed; for even though he was not permitting any blood to emerge with the metal, the sight of the thing protruding from one's own chest was something to be avoided. The Hunter could regard the operation with professional interest; Bob was un-likely to possess quite that much detachment.

It took several minutes, but they managed it with-out doing any more damage. In spite of the fluid pressure and constant motion, the Hunter had no trouble holding the heart punctures closed; he judged they would heal in a few days, barring fallout from the other problems, and told his host so. "But in the mean-time, don't do anything which might raise your blood pressure too much," he finished.

"Does that include standing up and walking?" Bob asked. "It seems to me I should get to the doc without waiting for someone to come home. Now that you're letting me look at things, I get the impression that someone ought to set this arm. Thanks for taking care of the sensation, by the way."

"Well, for once it wasn't your own carelessness," his companion replied. "I'm not strong enough to set your bones. Let's see what caused this fall, and then we'll walk, very slowly, to the doctor's."

The Hunter by this time had checked all his host's injuries. The blow which had knocked him unconscious seemed to have produced no real brain damage. His skull was intact, and while the Hunter never dared intrude in actual brain tissue except within the blood vessels of that organ, none of these seemed damaged and there had been no leakage of blood into the cerebrospinal fluid.

Bob found movement no more painful than before, and made his way to the bicycle. What had happened was fairly clear.

The front tire was cut to the rim; nothing else was visibly wrong. Bob summarized.

"Someone stretched a wire across the road about hub high. After I went into it, he removed the wire and skewered me, not necessarily in that order. That's clear enough. But I don't see why; it seems a little extreme for one of Andre's practical jokes-not the trip-wire, but the stabbing, wouldn't you say?"

The Hunter had to agree, though he had thought of the same child himself.

They could find no trace of where the wire had been attached, though there was no lack of possible places. The Hunter wondered whether any eleven year-old could have hidden his tracks so well, but kept the thought to himself. He could reach no conclusions except that someone was not very concerned with Bob's health-there was no way of being sure that the offender even had anything particular against the young engineer; he might have been merely a target of opportunity. The alien had not practiced his profession for several years, and began to wonder whether he was losing the touch. He should, he felt, have been sure of something.

Bob insisted, over his partner's objections, on wheeling the bicycle back to its shed before heading toward the Seever home-cum-hospital.

"If the folks come back before I do and find it in that shape, they'll go crazy," he pointed out. "You can just keep my heart plugged up a couple of minutes longer."

"It's not the time, but the pressure," the Hunter pointed out. "Remember, I wasn't strong enough to pull the skewer out by myself."

"I'll go slow," Bob promised, and with that his companion had to be content.

Actually the principal difficulty with the walk was provided by Bob's joints, which were still painful. They met no one on the way. It seemed likely that everyone on the island-perhaps even the setter of the trip wire, by this time-was out on the beach celebrating. It would be the same ten days later on Bastille Day, since French blood was as strong as American, on the island, and those who felt more Polynesian than anything else were perfectly willing to accept any excuse for a good time.

Unfortunately, there was no one at the Seevers' either, when they got there. Bob used the telephone, first to -notify the refinery of his accident and his whereabouts, then to call a few likely places for the doctor. It seemed rather probable that he and his family might be out on the reef, where people often partied or picnicked, but the store and the library seemed worth trying. Practically none of the island's private homes had telephones.

Before he made contact with anyone who could offer a useful suggestion, the door opened and Jenny entered. Neither she nor Bob actually asked, "What are you doing here?" but the question was plain on both faces. Bob and the Hunter had expected her to be out at the search area, and of course she had expected Bob to be at work.

"Wind's too high, and onshore," she answered the unasked question. "After all, we've had better luck with the weather than we've had any right to expect, so far."

Bob explained his own presence by displaying his left arm. The Hunter thought this would be poor judgment, but the girl had seen such things before in her father's office and took it quite calmly. She eyed the projecting bone for a moment and then said quite steadily, "You'd better sit down or lie down. Dad will have to set that; I suppose the Hunter has done everything else."

"I think so. Where is your father? I was phoning around for him."

"Down on the beach with a bucket of burn ointment. Fireworks day. Didn't you either remember or hear?"

"I didn't remember that aspect of it, and even with the Hunter this arm takes up a lot of my attention. Can you bring him back here, or should I go to him?"

"You stay put. I'll have him right back." The girl vanished again, without wasting time asking how the injury had occurred. She was back in ten minutes with her parents and Maeta, who had been with them. It was much later, however, before the story was told.

The doctor and the Hunter had to decide whether to use a local anesthetic, which would force the alien to withdraw from the arm, or let the Hunter block the sensory, nerves from the area. The latter would be better except that he was not sure he could handle the general crepitating-the grating of the bones as they were set, which would travel through much of the skeleton and be almost impossible to prevent Bob from feeling. Seever pointed out that a local injection would do little for this phenomenon either, and that it would be better for the Hunter to be on hand to take care of bleeding and infection. Seever would do his best not to let the bones grate.

The Hunter agreed to this. Bob had to serve as communication relay as his guest helped guide Seever's manipulation. Eventually, however, he was able to tell the story while the doctor worked on a cast for his arm.

Seever was quite indignant at not having been, told about the heart damage before working on the arm, but had to admit that the information would not have made him act at all differently.

Both girls thought of Andre immediately, and said so, but both admitted there was doubt. The trip-wire they would have credited to him without hesitation, but the stabbing was, as Bob had felt, a different matter.

"You didn't even see the wire, much less the person, did you?" asked Maeta.

"No," Bob answered. "All I actually saw was the cut tire, and the skewer after it was out of my chest. The Hunter heard footsteps while I was still out, but didn't see anything. At any rate it was no accident. Someone wanted to kill me-or, as the Hunter points out, wanted to kill someone. He may not have cared who."

"Maybe not,'? Pointed out the older girl, "but it was your handlebars that were loosened back there at the library." Bob had never discussed this matter with the others. He answered as he had to the Hunter.

"They weren’t loosened. They were turned slightly

and tightened in a different position." He filled in the other details.

"That couldn't have been an accident either," Mrs. Seever said.

"Right. If my bar had been loose, then maybe; but itwouldn't tighten in a different position on its own." "Then someone was trying to hurt you even then." "I can't see that. It was a silly way to try. Fifty to one I'd have been facing forward as I started and never fallen at all. Someone might have been trying to annoy me."

"Was Andre" there?" asked Jenny. "No. A bunch of kids collected to laugh, but he wasn't one of them."

"But you were inside the library, and your bike outside, for hours," Jenny pointed out. "He could have been there any time."

"So could anyone on the island except Maeta, who was writing things on file cards while I described books to her. I'm not worrying about that trick; it's something I could believe of any kid. What happened today is a different ballpark. A minor practical joke and a neck-breaking effort combined with a stabbing just don't go together."

"I'm not so sure," the doctor said slowly. "These have one thing in common."

"What?" The Hunter's voice joined the others on their way in from Bob's eardrum.,

"In both cases, you faced the possibility of being injured or killed, but because of the Hunter you're essentially undamaged." Bob glanced at his arm and raised his eyebrows. "You know what I mean. The Hunter has been doing his job. Whoever pushed the skewer through you an hour or two ago is going to have a fascinating body of information to use when he sees you walking around later today. Couldn't both these tricks have been experiments? I can think of one person who might very well want to conduct some tests on you, Bob, now that you're back on Ell."

"Who?" asked the younger girl. The others were

silent. Seever’s meaning flashed on Bob and the Hunter at the same moment, and neither was surprised at the doctor's next question.

"Hunter, just how certain are you that the one you were chasing was actually destroyed in that fire?"