Chapter IV. SIGNAL
Two nights after the Hunter made his decision to act the opportunity occurred. It was a Saturday evening, and the school had won a hockey game that afternoon. Bob had come through it without injury, to the Hunter's surprise and relief, and had managed to cover himself with a certain amount of glory, and the combination of institutional and personal triumph proved sufficient stimulus to cause the boy to write to his parents. He went to his room immediately after supper-the other occupant was not in at the time-and pounded off a description of the day's events with very fair speed and accuracy. At no tune did he relax sufficiently to give an opportunity for control, in the alien's opinion; but with the letter finished and sealed, Robert suddenly remembered a composition which his English teacher had decreed should be turned in the following Monday. It was as foreign to his nature as to that of most other schoolboys to get his work done so early, but the typewriter was out, and the hockey game offered itself as a subject which he could treat with some enthusiasm. He inserted a fresh piece of paper in the machine, typed the standard heading of title, pupil's name, and date, and then paused to think.
The alien wasted no time whatever. He had long since decided on the wording of the first message. Its first letter lay directly under the boy's left middle finger, and the net of unhuman flesh about the appropriate muscle promptly tugged as hard as it could on the tendon controlling that finger. The finger bent downward obediently and contacted the desired key, which descended-halfway. The pull was not powerful enough to lift the type bar from its felt rest. The Hunter knew he was weak compared to human muscles but had not realized he was that weak; Bob's manipulation of the keys had seemed so completely effortless. He sent more of his flesh flowing into the net which was trying to do the work of a small muscle and tried again-and again and again. The result was the same: the key descended far enough to take up the slack in its linkage, and stopped.
All this had attracted Bob's attention. He had, of course, experienced the quivering of muscles abruptly released from a heavy load, but there had been no load here. He pulled the offending hand away from the keyboard, and the suddenly frantic Hunter promptly transferred his attention to the other. As with a human being his control, poor enough in the beginning, grew worse with haste and strain, and the fingers of Robert's right hand twitched in a most unnerving fashion. The boy stared at them, literally terrified. He was more or less hardened to the prospect of physical injury at any time, as anyone who plays hockey and football must be, but there was something about nervous disorder that undermined his morale.
He clenched both fists tightly, and the quivering stopped, to his intense relief; the Hunter knew he could never overcome muscles opposed to his own attempts. However, when the fists cautiously relaxed after a few moments, the detective made another try-this time on the arm and chest muscles-in an effort to bring the hands back to the typewriter. Bob, with a gasp of dismay, leaped to his feet, knocking the chair back against his roommate's bed. The Hunter was able to deposit a much heavier net of his flesh about these larger muscles, and the unwilled tug had been quite perceptible to the boy. He stood motionless, now badly frightened, and tried to decide between two courses of action.
There was, of course, a stringent rule that all injuries and illnesses must be reported promptly to the school infirmary. Had Bob suffered damage such as a cut or bruise he would have had no hesitation in complying with this order, but somehow the idea of owning to a nervous disorder seemed rather shameful, and the thought of reporting his trouble was repugnant. He finally decided tentatively to put it off, in the hope that matters would be improved by morning. He put the typewriter away, took out a book, and settled down to read. At first he felt decidedly uneasy, but as the minutes passed without further misbehavior on the part of his muscular system he gradually calmed down and became more absorbed in the reading matter. The increasing peace of mind was not, however, shared by his unsuspected companion.
The Hunter had relaxed in disgust as soon as the writing machine had been put away, but he had no intention of giving up. The knowledge that he could impress himself on the boy's awareness without doing him physical damage was something gained; and even though interference with the youngster's muscles produced such a marked disturbance, there were other methods which suggested themselves to the alien. Perhaps they would prove less disconcerting, and he knew they could be equally effective as means of communication. The Hunter may have had a smattering of the psychology peculiar to the races he knew, but he was certainly failing to analyze properly the cause of his host's disturbance.
His race had lived with others for so many hundreds of generations that the problems of starting the relationship had been forgotten much as man has forgotten the details surrounding his mastery of fire. Nowadays children of the other race grew up expecting to find a companion of the Hunter's kind before they passed adolescence, and the Hunter failed completely to realize how a person not brought up with that conditioning might be expected to react.
He put down Bob's disturbance to the particular method he had employed, rather than to the very fact that he had interfered. He did, in consequence, the worst thing he could possibly do: he waited until his host seemed to be over the shock of the first attempt, and then promptly tried again.
This time he worked on Bob's vocal cords. These were similar in structure to those he had known, and the Hunter could alter their tension mechanically in the same way he had pulled at muscles. He did not, of course, expect to form words; that would have required control of diaphragm, tongue, jaw, and lips, as well as the vocal cords, and the symbiote was perfectly aware of the fact; but if he did his pulling while the host was exhaling air, he could at least produce sound. He could control it only in an off-and-on fashion, so he could hardly send an articulate message that way; but he had an idea in mind for proving that the disturbance was being produced deliberately.
He could use bursts of sound to represent numbers and transmit series-one and its square, two and its square, and so on. No one, surely, hearing such a pattern of sound, could suppose it originated naturally. And now the boy was calmed down again, reading, fully absorbed, and breathing slowly and evenly.
The alien got further than any human being, knowing the facts, would have believed possible, principally because Bob was just finishing a yawn as the interruption started and was not able to control his own breathing right away. The Hunter was busily engaged in producing a set of four rather sickly croaks, having completed two and paused, when the boy caught his breath and an expression of undiluted terror spread across his face. He tried to let out his breath slowly and carefully, but the Hunter, completely absorbed in his work, continued his unnerving operation regardless of the fact that he had been interrupted. It took him some seconds to realize that the emotional disturbance of his host had reappeared in full force.
His own emotional control relaxed at this realization, for, recognizing clearly that he had failed again, knowing perfectly that his young host was almost frantic with terror that robbed him of most of his control, the alien nevertheless not only failed to desist from his attempts but started still another system of "communication." His third method involved cutting off the light from his host's retinas in patterns corresponding to letters of the English alphabet-in utter disregard of the fact that by this time Robert Kinnaird was rushing down the hallway outside his room, bound for the dispensary, and that a rather poorly lighted stairway lay ahead.