The inevitable results of interference with his host's eyesight under such circumstances did not impress themselves upon the Hunter's mind until Bob actually missed a step and lunged forward, grasping futilely for the rail.
The alien recovered his sense of duty rapidly enough. Before the hurtling body touched a single obstacle he had tightened around every joint and tendon with his utmost strength to save Robert a serious sprain. Moreover, as a sharp, upturned comer of one of the metal cleats which held the rubber treads on the stairs opened the boy's arms from wrist to elbow, the Hunter was on the job so fast that practically no blood escaped. Bob felt the pain, looked at the injury which was being held closed under an almost invisible film of unhuman flesh, and actually thought it was a scratch that had barely penetrated the skin. He turned the corner of the cleat down with his heel and proceeded to the dispensary at a more moderate pace. He was calmer when he got there, since the Hunter had been sobered into discontinuing his efforts to make himself known.
The school did not have a resident doctor, but did keep a nurse on constant duty at the dispensary. She could make little of Robert's description of his nervous troubles, and advised him to return the next day at the hour when one of the local doctors normally visited the school. She did examine the cut on his arm, however.
"It's clotted over now," she told the boy. "You should have come here with it sooner, though I probably wouldn't have done much to it"
"It happened less than five minutes ago," was the answer. "I fell on the stairs coming down to see you about the other business; I couldn't have brought it to you any faster. If it's already closed, though, I guess it doesn't matter."
Miss Rand raised her eyebrows a trifle. She had been a school nurse for fifteen years and was pretty sure she had encountered all the more common tales of malingerers. What puzzled her now was that there seemed no reason for the boy to prevaricate; she decided, against her professional knowledge, that he was probably telling the truth.
Of course some people's blood does clot with remarkable speed, she knew. She looked at the forearm again, more closely. Yes, the clot was extremely fresh-the shiny, dark red of newly congealed blood. She brushed it lightly with a fingertip, and felt, not the dry, smooth surface she had expected, or even the faint stickiness or nearly dry blood, but a definite and unpleasant sliminess.
The Hunter was not a mind reader and had not foreseen such a move. Even if he had, he could not have withdrawn his flesh from the surface of Robert's skin; it would be many hours, more probably a day or two, before the edges of that gash could be trusted to hold themselves together under normal usage of the arm. He had to stay, whether he betrayed himself or not.
He watched through his host's eyes with some uneasiness as Miss Rand drew her hand away sharply and leaned over to look still more closely at the injured arm. This time she saw the transparent, almost invisible film that covered the cut, and leaped to a perfectly natural but completely erroneous conclusion. She decided the injury was not so fresh as Robert had claimed, that he had "treated" it himself with the first substance he had found handy-possibly model airplane dope-and had not wanted the fact to come out since it constituted a violation of the school rules.
She was doing a serious injustice to the boy's common sense, but she had no means of knowing that. She was wise enough to make no accusations, however, and without saying anything more took a small bottle of alcohol, moistened a swab with it, and began to clean away the foreign matter.
Once again only his lack of vocal cords kept the Hunter silent. Had he possessed the equipment, he would have emitted a howl of anguish. He had no true skin, and the body cells overlying the cut on his host's arm were unprotected from the dehydrating action of the alcohol. Direct sunlight had been bad enough; alcohol felt to him as concentrated sulphuric acid feels to a human being-and for the same reason. Those outer cells were killed almost instantly, desiccated to a brownish powder that could have been blown away, and would undoubtedly have interested the nurse greatly had she had a chance to examine it.
There was no time for that, however. In the shock of the sudden pain the Hunter relaxed all of the "muscular" control he was exerting in that region to keep the wound closed; and the nurse suddenly saw a long, clean slash some eight inches from end to end and half an inch deep in the middle, which started to bleed freely. She was almost as startled as Robert, but her training showed its value; she quickly applied compresses and bandages, though she was surprised also at the ease with which she managed to stop the bleeding. With that accomplished she reached for the telephone.
Robert Kinnaird was late getting to bed that night.
Chapter V. ANSWER
THE BOY was tired, but he had trouble in getting to sleep. The local anesthetic the doctor had used while sewing up the gash was beginning to wear off, and he was becoming progressively more aware of the wound as the night wore on. He had almost forgotten the original purpose of his visit to the dispensary in the subsequent excitement; now, separated by a reasonable time from the initial fright, he was able to view the matter more clearly. There had been no recurrence of the trouble; maybe he could let it go. Besides, if nothing more were going to happen, how could he show anything to the doctor?
The Hunter also had had time to alter his viewpoint. He had left the arm entirely when the anesthetic was injected and busied himself with his own problem. He had finally realized that any disturbance of a sense organ or other function of his host was going to result in emotional trouble, and he was beginning to have a shrewd suspicion that the mere knowledge of his own presence might be as bad, even though he did not actually make himself felt. Equally bad, nothing originating in the boy's own body was ever going to be interpreted by him as an attempt at communication. The idea of symbiosis between two intelligent life forms was completely foreign to this race, and the Hunter was slowly coming to realize just what that meant in terms of mental attitudes. In his own mind he was berating himself for not recognizing the situation much earlier.
He had been blinded to any idea save that of communication from within by at least two factors: lifelong habit, and a reluctance to leave his present host. Even now he found himself trying to evolve a plan which would not involve his departure from Robert's body. He had realized from the beginning what his chance of return would be if the boy saw him coming; and the thought of being barred from the home to which he had become so well adjusted, of sneaking about as an almost helpless lump of jelly in an alien and unfriendly world, seeking host after host as he worked his way stepwise back toward the island where he had landed, seeking unaided for traces of a fugitive almost certainly as well hidden as was the Hunter himself right now-it was a picture he put from his mind.
Yet communicate he must, and he had demonstrated to his own satisfaction the futility of trying it from within. Therefore he must-what? How could he get into intelligent conversation with Robert Kinnaird, or any other human being, from outside? He could not talk, he had no vocal apparatus, and even his control over his own shape would be overstrained by an attempt to construct a replica of the human speech apparatus from lung to lip. He could write, if the pencil were not too heavy; but what chance would he get? What human being, seeing a four-pound lump of gelatinous material trying to handle writing materials, would wait around for legible results- or would believe, if he stayed to read?
Yet there might be a way, at that Every danger he had envisioned was a provisional one: he could not get back into the boy's body if Bob saw him coming; no human being would take his senses seriously if he saw the Hunter writing; no human being would believe a message written by the Hunter without seeing him-if the Hunter could not furnish substantial evidence of his existence and nature. Although the last two difficulties seemed to possess mutually exclusive solutions, the puzzled detective suddenly perceived an answer.