Through the Eye of a Needle

13. Reconstruction

Andre was unconscious, but had only minor visible cuts and scrapes. Though this would have been a good time to check for the presence of a symbiont, Bob paid little attention to him, because Maeta was in far worse condition. She had been underneath when they hit the coral. Deep cuts covered her back and hips, and much flesh had been torn from her right leg. Arterial blood was spurting over the sand, and being quickly diluted to invisibility by the spray.

Bob and his partner saw and evaluated the situation instantly, and reacted almost as promptly. The human member of the team grasped the injured leg just above the knee, pressed the heel of his hand against the most prominent source of bleeding, and snapped to his partner, "Get in there and earn your living! I'll hold on long enough to be sure you're there, but give me a twinge, in the palm of the hand ten seconds or so before you're completely out of me."

The Hunter, just for a moment, thought of objecting on the grounds that Bob was his primary responsibility and was also injured. He even started to mention this, though he had already started the transfer and knew what Bob's answer would be. He was right.

"Stop dithering," snarled the young man. "None of these nicks will let me bleed to death even if my clot ting isn't up to par, and she'll be dead in five minutes if you don't take care of her. I can't hold all this bleed ing; I haven’t enough hands. I assume you've already taken care of any infecting organisms that got into me, and even if you haven't you can come back, or partly back, to do it later. And don't waste time going just through my hand-I know what you look like, and it's years too late to shock me. Hurry up!"

The alien obeyed, and within half a minute had the worst of the girl's bleeding stopped. It took four or five more to complete the transfer, partly because he found it difficult to pull himself away from the regions of Bob's injuries. It took a surprising effort to force intelligence to overcome habit; he was somewhat addicted to Bob, in a sense, too.

He was relieved, though quite surprised, to find that Maeta had no fractures, though several fragments of coral had broken off at the impact and were deeply imbedded in the injured leg. Her unconsciousness was due entirely to loss of blood, and he had to take rapid steps to counteract shock.

What she really needed most was replacement ma terial-food. The easiest way to provide this would have been for the Hunter to catch and digest some thing, and release amino acids into her circulatory system. If there had been a dead fish or crab beside her it would have helped greatly. There wasn't, how ever, and with the wind and spray still lashing the islet on which they were stranded, there would be little chance for Bob to find anything even if he knew of the need.

Bob himself at the moment was more concerned with the small boy. He examined the limp form as carefully as possible, ascertained that at least none of the major limbs was fractured, and straightened him out into a more comfortable position. There was a little bleeding from relatively minor nicks and scrapes, but this was already stopping. Bob's was not, but he refused to worry about it yet. His broken arm seemed to be no worse than it bad been.

While he was considering what to do, the shadow of the tank gradually extended across the islet. Even Bob, used to New England temperatures, felt a new chill in his wet clothes, and realized that something would have to be done for the night if the injured ones were not to die of exposure. Tropical Pacific water and tropical Pacific air are not very cold, but they are below human body temperature and can carry heat from a human body faster than that body can replace it.

For warmth, all Bob could think of was a hole in the sand. He scooped out one big enough for the three of them and covered them all, fairly completely, with more sand. This was wet with the spray, of course, but water did not move through it very fast; once it was warm, it stayed so. The combined heat loss of the three bodies dropped to a level their combined metabolisms-the Hunter's didn't count significantly-could offset.

The detective took advantage of the situation to send a pseudopod into Bob's ear and tell him about Maeta's real need for food. It was a slightly risky action, but he could have spared the tissue if Bob had moved inopportunely. He could probably, for that matter, have recovered it.

With much less danger he explored the unconscious Andre and established that there was no symbiont in the child's body; the boy was genuinely plump. He also had a broken collar bone which Bob had missed, but there was nothing the Hunter could do about this. Setting it was far beyond his strength. The boy regained consciousness during the night. He was no longer self-possessed; he wept loudly and almost continuously, partly from pain and partly from terror. For the first time since the fire accident which Jenny had tried to use as a lesson, he was realizing that really serious things, not just minor pain that a "green thing" could take care of, could happen to him. Bob, wide awake because of his own discomfort, sympathized, yet he also hoped that the event would prove educational for Andre.

The night proved long even for the Hunter, who had plenty to keep him from boredom. It took several hours to work the fragments of coral out of Maeta's tissue without doing even more damage. He could do nothing to speed the formation of new blood cells or other tissue until food was available, but he held the torn flesh in, position so that healing need not involve extensive bridges of scar tissue. As long as the young woman remained unconscious, nothing needed to be done about pain, and she was unlikely to wake up for many hours with so much blood gone. The alien was ready for it when it should happen, how ever.

He had some cause to feel useful. Without him she would have been dead in minutes from blood loss; or, failing that, from shock within an hour or two. If he could stay with her for a few days, she would not even be scarred, a factor which the girl herself would certainly appreciate and which, the Hunter had reason to suspect, would also be appreciated by his own host.

That left him free to worry about Bob, who must certainly have picked up more infecting microorganisms from the sand in his unclotted wounds. The Hunter had indeed disposed of the original ones, but recent experience had made it clear that it would not take long to get his partner back into serious trouble. The Hunter hoped he would not have to decide between Bob and Maeta. There was no question where his responsibility lay, but if he saved Bob and let the girl die, the former would be extremely hard to live with for a time.

The wind was much weaker by sunrise, and an hour later they were no longer being soaked by spray from the reef. Bob removed the sand cover to let the sun warm them, looked over his own scratches with out saying anything to the Hunter, and bent to examine Andre. The boy had been quiet for some time, and the conscious members of the group had hoped that he was asleep, but he answered at once when Bob asked how he felt.

"Terrible," was the answer. "My shoulder hurts, and I'm cold and hungry."

"You'll probably be too warm when the sun gets a little higher. There's no shade here. We should be able to find some shellfish. I don't know what I can do about your shoulder; let me see."

The boy sat up, but shrank away the moment he was touched. "That hurts. Stop it."

"All right," Bob said. "I'm no doctor, anyway, and you didn't give me much chance to feel, but you'd better assume that something is broken in there, and keep it still." The Hunter had not reported to Bob on the boy's condition. "Does it hurt to move your arm?"

"Yes. A lot."

"Then let's get my shirt off and let me try to make it into a sling for you, so the arm won't move. You'll have to decide whether you want to put up with the pain while I do that, so there'll be less pain later, or not. I'm not going to waste time arguing."

"Leave it alone. Why can't your green thing help me?"

"He's busy with Maeta, who needs him a lot worse than you do." The boy looked at Maeta closely for the first time, turned visibly pale, and said nothing for several seconds. Then he looked at his own shoulder, which was by now covered with a single huge area of blue, black, and yellow bruise. He seemed about to say something, looked back at Maeta's torn back and leg, and walked away down the beach.

"Find some shellfish!" Bob called after him. There was no answer.

"I'll find something for you and Mae, Hunter," Bob said, giving up Andre as a minor problem for the moment "Stand by a couple of minutes. There'll surely be something around, since you're not choosy. I'll have to work fast; these cuts of mine are starting to hurt a lot, and I may have to stay put in a little while and let you work on both of us, if you possibly can."

The Hunter had no way of answering. He thought intensely as he watched Bob walk off after the boy, through the temporary eye he had improvised. It might have been better for Bob to go in the opposite direction, but there was no opposite direction to go; they were at the end of a small island immediately beside the reef passage. The two or three hundred yards of sand to the northwest, merging into coral on the side toward the breakers, were their total re source area. There were other islets around the atoll, and the culture tank occupied most of the tiny la goon, but the canoe was gone. Two of them could not possibly swim, and Bob was not likely to take the risk in his present condition. It might be impossible for him, too, in a few hours.

The Hunter decided to waste a little of Maeta's blood, and began to permit clots to form over her in juries. She might have to hold the rest of it in by her-self for a while.

Bob was back in a minute or two with a large fish which seemed to have been washed through the reef and stranded. It was in very unappetizing condition for a human being, but quite usable for the Hunter. He set it down beside the still, unconscious girl; the alien extruded tissue from her skin, enveloped the fish, and began salvaging amino adds and carbohydrates. It massed ten or twelve pounds, quite enough for immediate needs. The Hunter concentrated on his job, but tried to keep aware of the other two.

They found enough food to keep them going, though Bob was not at all fond of shellfish; but as the day wore on, the far more serious question of water began to loom.

There was no spring or rivulet on the little island. The few pools which existed had been filled by the spray, and were rapidly vanishing in any case. Bob considered complaining to be beneath him, but the child did not, and his whines about his thirst alternated with questions about when they could expect to be rescued.

Bob was optimistic about this. "They know we were out in Mae's canoe, or they could have found out soon enough when we didn't show up for supper. They'd know which way the wind would send us. The Dumbo was at Tahiti, but they'd call it down by radio this morning, and this island will be about the first place they'll look. If you want to be useful in stead of noisy, go and make a great big "S O S" on the beach-as big as you can fit between the coral and the lagoon. I expect they'll see us easily enough anyway, since there's nothing to hide us, but that would catch an eye from farther away."

The Hunter took Bob's words at their face value, since they seemed reasonable, and stopped worrying about water as far as the males were concerned; they could last for a day or so. Maeta, however, could not; she had lost far too much blood. She regained consciousness about noon, and the symbiont explained the situation to her, vibrating her hearing apparatus as he normally did Bob's. She took it calmly enough, but her first words were also about water. The Hunter admitted that none was available.

"Are you sure you can't do anything about that?" she asked. "I don't want to sound like a crybaby, but I don't know all about your powers. I know you can do funny things with body chemistry, and I wondered if you could take the salt out of sea water if I drank it, or maybe filter it out of the water before it got into us? Or could a person dip an arm or a leg into the sea, and have you bring in just water through the skin andleave the salt outside?"

The Hunter admitted that this might be possible; there were organisms on his world which possessed desalting organs, though he knew only in a very general way how these worked.

"It will certainly take energy," the detective pointed out. "It's a pity that you, who need the water most be-cause of your blood loss, have such a poor food reserve. I did feed you a lot from the fish Bob brought, but most of it's already gone to repair and reconstruction. I'm not really sure I can do this desalting trick, since I've never had to do it before, but I'll try. Ask Bob to get you into the water."

"Even if you can't do it," she said, "it will be more comfortable there. It's pretty hot here on the sand. I remember long ago when I was working out on one of the reef islets at Ell, and the people who were sup posed to pick me up were late, I felt a lot better just by lying in the water while I waited. Maybe a person's skin can take water out of the ocean anyway."

The Hunter assured her that it could not-that water would normally tend to flow the other way, if at all, osmosis being what it was. To his surprise, she knew what he was talking about, and conceded the point, theoretically.

"But then I should have gotten thirstier that day, and not felt better," she remarked. The Hunter, willing to prolong any discussion to keep the girl's mind off her very genuine thirst, pointed out that the human species seemed to him a very suggestible one. She did not answer this; Bob had approached, and she was telling him what the Hunter had said about getting her into the water. Bob, of course, knew the osmosis situation equally well and rather doubted the practicality of the attempt, but decided not to argue with the Hunter. The water, fortunately, was only a few feet away, and with a little help from the girl her self he got her legs and feet immersed as much as the very shallow slope of the beach allowed. The Hunter sent out his own tissue through her skin, and tried to remember what he had learned about desalting glands.

It was a difficult job. His chemical senses operated essentially on large molecules such as proteins and polysaccharides; he could identify and distinguish these by means most nearly analogous to the human sense of touch. It was intuitively obvious to him why many of them behaved as they did in a human organism-or any other living thing-just as a simple gear train is obvious in its operation to most human beings. However, if the same human being, who had no training in complex mechanics, were suddenly to be con fronted with the maintenance of a twenty-eight cylinder "corncob" airplane engine, he would be in somewhat the Hunter's situation faced with the up keep of a living body from a planet his people had not visited before.

The salt problem looked simpler, but actually branched out into another field. It was a little like asking a mechanic who had been trained on the air plane engine to work on a television set. The sodium and chloride ions, as well as the magnesium and other chemical species in sea water, were very different from proteins-far smaller, and too uniformly charged to offer a handle to most of the alien's sensing and manipulating powers. He knew that all living cells had selective permeability to such things by nature of their chemical architecture. He knew some of the ways in which this was done, but by no means all of them; even to him, a cell was a very complex structure. On a scale which represents a water molecule by a fairly large pea, a human red blood cell is over half a mile across, and has much detail to be learned by anyone proposing to repair or alter its structure-or even imitate it.

There were many members of the Hunter's species to whom the construction of an effective desalting gland would have been a trivial matter, but the highly experienced detective was not among them.

He tried, butt asking Maeta occasionally how she felt was superfluous. He knew that he was getting very little deionized water through her skin.

Bob kept feeding them, and of course a certain amount of waterwas available from the oxidized foods, but it was not enough to keep the girl comfort able. The Hunter could, and did, block the nerves which would have been transmitting excruciating pain from her injuries, but the thirst sensation was far more subtle in origin, and he could do nothing about it.

Maeta did not complain, but sometimes she could not help saying something which showed how she felt. She never blamed the Hunter or anyone else, except once to comment on her own poor judgment in putting to sea when she had. But to the detective the whole situation was obviously his own fault. His feelings of guilt never wavered. He wished she would not talk at all, but could not bring himself to ask her not to.

It was fortunate that he did not. It was one of her remarks which dropped the most important piece of the jigsaw puzzle into place for him. The remark was painful to him, painful enough so that he could not resist arguing, in fact, but it proved useful.

"I'm afraid I felt better the other time I fought thirst this way, Hunter," she said. "I suppose it isn't working so well this time because I've been hurt so. You're sure I won't die of thirst this time?"

"Unless it takes two or three days for us to be found," the symbiont assured her, "you're in no real danger. With enough food, I could get the water to keep you alive indefinitely, though perhaps not very comfortably. I'm getting a little into you from the sea, too-more than would come through your skin with out help, in spite of what you were saying."

"That's hard to believe," she said slowly and drowsily. "The other time I didn't get thirsty at all. I re member." The Hunter was slightly irritated by his failure at what the human beings considered a simple job. His answer showed this slightly.

"It may have been your additional reserves, Maeta, but I suspect it's just ordinary human good-old-times reaction," he said. "There is just no way that significant amounts of water-even sea water-could get through your skin, which is effectively designed to keep water inside your system. If any did get in, it wouldn't help your thirst at all.”

"It did. I remember. Twice."

"But you weren't hurt, and you were only a few hours without water, and you knew it was coming soon. You've never been in a situation like this, I'm sure."

"I wasn't hurt, no, and the first time, you're right-it was only five or six hours and I'd emptied my can teen without thinking how long I was going to be there. I was a little careless in those days. The second time I'd accidentally spilled my bucket during the first hour, and I'd done a lot of work and was really thirsty before I noticed it had tipped. The boat didn't come back to pick me up until way after dark. It was a very long day. And I soaked in the lagoon. And I didn't get thirsty."

A thought crossed the Hunter's mind, startling enough to silence him for several seconds while he tried to work out its implications.

Finally he asked, "How long ago was all this? The last two or three years, or back when you were very young?"

Maeta answered with no hesitation. "Not very long ago. Both times, I was collecting for the Museum Ex change-that's the group that arranges trades of specimens between exhibitors and collectors all over the world-and I didn't start working with them until after I started at the library, of course. I didn't know about them until then." "Less than three years, then."

"About that," she agreed.

The Hunter decided not to ask for details about the carelessness she had been showing at about that time. She was a very alert young woman, he had come to realize^ and lie did not want her thinking, just yet, along the lines which had just occurred to him. He was not sure enough yet; one didn't jump to conclusions, at least not out loud.

Also, he didn't know whether to be annoyed at the waste of the time spent on looking for spaceships, or to be relieved that there would be no need to deliver anymore messages to the one with the booby trap.