Through the Eye of a Needle

14. Professional

The amphibian settled onto Eight's lagoon about an hour before sunset, and taxied close to the beach where the castaways were waiting. A rubber dinghy emerged from the waist hatch, followed by Dr. Seever. He paddled ashore without waiting for anyone to accompany him, and looked over the three standing and lying at thewater's edge. He whistled gently as he saw Maeta.

"Ladies first, it looks like," he remarked as he stepped out of the dinghy and pulled it ashore. He started to bend down for a closer examination, and was visibly startled at the cheerful way the girl spoke.

"I'm reasonably all right, Doctor," she said. The Hunter is with me, and all I need is a gallon or so of water. Better check up on Bob; he got some cuts when we landed."

"I'll last," Bob forestalled questioning. "I was getting feverish two or three hours ago, and Mae noticed it. She told the Hunter to come over and clean me out. I objected, but you don't argue with her, as you may have noticed. She had the Hunter on her side, any way. He took care of the bugs and went back to her, so I'm all right for a while."

"And how about me?" asked Andre".

"A broken shoulder, I think," Bob said to the doc tor. "He may look the best, if you don't count that bruise, but he probably does need you the most."

Seever sighed. "Hunter, if your people really decide to make close contact with humanity, medical practice is certainly going to change a lot. I suppose I should be grateful that it won't disappear entirely, though maybe I wouldn't mind retiring early at that. Come on, all of you. I'll work on you in the plane, Andy; I gather you've joined the group."

"Well," said Bob, "we have to do something to keep him from sticking skewers through people just to see if they can live through it. Maybe you should train him as a surgical assistant, Doc."

By the time the amphibian reached Ell, Seever had immobilized the broken shoulder, used human remedies on Bob's contusions, and dressed Maeta's in juries for the sake of appearances. The Hunter was impatient to get back, since he did not want to discuss his new conclusions in front of Andre, who could be counted on to contribute to the violation of several regulations if he heard them. The boy had been convinced for the moment that he should keep word of the "green things" to himself by stressing the earlier argument-that they didn't want the word to get around, and would be unlikely to form friendships with anyone who let out their secret. It was obvious that more steps were going to have to be taken, but no one knew just what they would be.

The main thing was to get a Castorian professional xenobiologist to work on Bob, and the Hunter wanted to get back to Ell for that purpose. He had finally decided which were the key data, and fitted them together into a coherent picture-the moving generator shield, the booby-trapped spaceship, the fact that the fugitive's ship was in so much better shape than his own had been, the room in the library with the large armchair, the library itself, Maeta's session of carelessness and her experience in fighting thirst with a dip in the sea, and the results of his own staying with Bob for over seven years. He was sure that police procedure meant little now, since the Castorian police had left long before. What he needed was the head quarters of the team which was evaluating Earth and humanity.

And it was quite obvious where they were. There remained just the small, practical problem of getting in touch with a group of scientists who had been-warned that a dangerous criminal might still be loose on Earth, without being killed by them. The messages at the ship were useless; the scientists might possibly visit it once a year, if they felt they could spare the time. Another message had to be delivered, but not to the ship. The place was obvious now, and the Hunter was angry with himself for not thinking of it earlier. The method of delivery was almost as obvious, but the Hunter rather hoped that his human colleagues would make themselves look as foolish as he himself had done. He was quite frank about this, when the entire in-group except Andre were gathered in Maeta's hospital room the night of their rescue from Eight. The girl had quickly mastered the art of relaying what he said to her, without having to pause to listen to him, and the exposition went smoothly.

"First," he started with a question, "is young Andre safely asleep? He's displayed more skill than I like at hearing what isn't meant for him."

"He's in the next room, but sound asleep," Seever replied. "He was uncomfortable enough to accept medication."

"And you're absolutely sure he took it?"

"Yes. I watched him drink it, made sure it wasn't spilled anywhere, and had him talk to me afterward to be sure his mouth was empty. I'm learning, old as I am."

"All right," Maeta relayed. "I am now quite sure I know where to get in touch with the evaluation team from my home world, and we should be able to do it tomorrow. I feel very silly at not seeing it before, and wasting so much of everyone's time and effort, not to mention extending the danger to Bob's life and bringing danger to Jenny and Mae. I want to go through my detailed idea of what has happened on Ell during the last seven years, not because I feel the need for drama but because if I can get through the account without any of you seeing where my people must be, I won't have to feel so foolish. Several mystery novels which Bob had read suggested the technique to me; forgive me if the suspense makes any of you uncomfortable.

"When wedisposed of my original quarry-and it seems that we really did dispose ofhim, Doctor, and though absolute proof would be hard to supply, I examined Andre carefully-I was convinced that I was hopelessly lost from my own people. I had an unrealistic idea of the number of stars in the volume of space whose radius I had traversed. I don't blame myself greatly; a view of the star clouds of the Milky Way is extremely deceptive. Look at a photograph in any of your popular astronomy books; you will certainly not realize that a fair model of this part of the galaxy could he made by scattering tennis balls with an average separation of a thousand miles.

"After Bob and Ihad taken an astronomy course while he was in college, I realized that it should actually be quite simple for my people to trace us, and that a search had most probably been conducted. I am now quite sure that one of our ships reached Earth some, time before March, 1949-your data, Mae-within fifteen months after we disposed of my quarry. They detected his ship but not mine, probably because mine was far more badly damaged, and sea water had reached and corroded the units whose force fields are normally detectable from a distance. They investigated his ship, identified it, explored his possible paths to Ell, and found the generator case on Apu, just as we had earlier. They had, after all, the advantage of knowing that such an object was missing from his ship, and must have looked for it specifically. "Not finding any trace of me or my ship, they assumed that I had either failed to reach Earth at all, or had been killed by the crash, by Earth life, or by my quarry. It is also possible that they did find my ship, and deduced from its condition that I had never reached shore."

"But how could you have been killed by the crash?" asked Mrs. Kinnaird. "As I understand it, your ship was merely flattened, not burned or exploded. Merely mashing you up wouldn't kill you."

"You exaggerate a little," replied the Hunter, "but what probably would have killed me was the marine life. I told Bob and Jenny about my troubles while I was down in the pipe. If I hadn't met that shark, I might very well not have survived to reach Ell and find Bob." The woman nodded understanding and the alien went on. "In any case, my friends assumed that I was out of the picture, and that my quarry was loose somewhere on Earth-they hoped, but could not be sure, on Ell.

"Naturally they didn't find him. I suppose it's lucky they didn't find me, under the circumstances, though I might possibly have been able to identify myself to them in time. Anyway, they concluded the unsuccessful search, booby-trapped my quarry's ship, and went back home. Their report caused an evaluation team to be assembled and sent here. They arrived over three years ago-again from your data, Mae."

"I don't see that," the girl said, interrupting her own translation.

"I'm delighted. You will. I skipped one point; sorry. The police would have been the ones to move the generator shield, partly to experiment with it, to see why our quarry might have left it where he did, partly to prevent him from using it again too easily-he might, for all they could know, have been wandering around on Apu at the time. One of them would have stayed with it, probably armed with a paralyzer, in case the other did find it; but what happened was Maeta's picking it up."

"You mean one of your people was inside that thing when I took it home?" Maeta exclaimed.

"I'd be glad to bet any reasonable sum you like; and considering the date you found it, I'm sure it was one of the police group, not the later arrivals. You didn't look inside, I take it."

"Not carefully. It seemed to be full of sand, and I left it outdoors to dry out before I took it into the house."

"Exactly. Into your house. One of your family, probably you, became host for a time to that policeman."

"But he never tried to talk to me!"

"Of course not. No emergency. He didn't find him self isolated halfway around your planet at his first chance to look through your eyes, as I did." The Hunter addressed the entire group again.

"I doubt that he stayed with Mae very long; he'd have wanted to move around a lot in his investigation. There must be a lot of ex-hosts around Ell at the mo ment.

"The next group eventually came, and started where the police had left off. They probably paid little if any attention to the booby-trapped ship. I'm sorry about that, as I said; it was a reasonable theory originally, but general procedures have to be modified by specific situations. My mistake was in taking too long to see how the specific situations applied. Any way, the evaluation team came, and is here now. They're doing a job likely to take five or ten of your years. If the police reported human beings to be as different as they should have, there are probably fifty or so members of the team-including several of the specialists we need to get Bob back together. We'll take a note to their headquarters tomorrow."

"Where's that?' asked Jenny.

"I'll go along with your game, Hunter," said Maeta. "You implied that I'd served as a host another time. Is that relevant to your Agatha Christie puzzle? Bob, did you, ever feel this creature grinning?"

"Cant say that I did," was, the answer. "Let him go on."

The detective continued. "It is very relevant. I expect one of you to come up with the answer at any moment. Yes, Maeta, you were a host, probably several times. I suppose they shifted hosts often to avoid doing what I did to Bob-as I should have one, I see now. At least once, you had an expert who could manipulate the desalting operation; you were quite right, you really didn't get thirsty that time you were stranded on the reef."

"But why would they use me several times? There are a couple of hundred people on Ell-at least a hundred and fifty even if a lot of the children are too small."

"A strong and healthy host is very desirable; spending all our time in protection and repair is hardly life. We like to do things of our own, and the evaluation team members would have a great deal to do. Much more to the point, Mae," the girl continued to trans late in spite of the personal nature of the next sentences, "you are one of the most conveniently located and occupied people on this island, for any member of the headquarters group of the evaluation team. Think, Miss Teroa. A spacewhere an enormous volume of information about Earth and its people is stored in organized form. A place where a host can conveniently be made to feel sleepy if the symbiont wants to work alone for a time, and where a human being can unobtrusively be anesthetized briefly with out risking his falling and hurting himself, if one of the team needs to spend a while with a host. You told Bob it was a very comfortable chair."

Maeta had not yet achieved Bob's skill at communicating with the Hunter without speaking aloud, but she tried.

"That last gives Bob and me an unfair advantage, don't you think? I see it now. Should I speak up?"

"Bob hasn't Go ahead." The girl nodded, and spoke aloud.

"All right Doctor, if you can lend me a crutch, I'll go to work tomorrow. There's still plenty to be done downstairs. If the Hunter will write a note in his own language tonight, I'll tuck it into that chair that Old Toke found too comfortable; and some time during the morning I'lltake a rest in it. Maybe a larger sign that I can prop up on the table, so it can be read from the sides of the room, calling attention to the note in the chair, would also be a good idea. If I hear anyone coming, I can slip it under a book, so there won't be any violation of the rules. All right, Hunter?"

It was quite all right