The child vanished.
The rest of the day was spent, not very productively, on the lagoon. Daphne enjoyed herself, and even the older human beings had a good time, but the Hunter was impatient and bored. He could not, in spite of his long life and general tendency toward calm, understand how Bob could apparently put the problem of his own life so casually and completely out of mind. Granted that the trouble was the Hunter's fault, it was Bob's life. It did occur to the alien that this might be another consequence of the relatively short human life span; but that could not be the whole story. The Castorian humanoids he knew lived an even shorter time on the average and he doubted that any of these could have been so casual in such a situation. Certainly none of the individuals he had known personally would have been.
Since most of Ell ate the evening meal shortly after sundown, there was no great difficulty about intercepting Maeta at her home. Daphne had been sent off with the message that her brother would be home a few minutes later; Jenny accompanied him to the home of the Teroas, who lived in the middle of a fairly extensive garden just at the point where the roads met, and only a few score yards from the library.
Bob and Jenny were greeted cordially. Charles, the son of the family, had been one of Bob's close friends for many years. He and his father were at sea just now, as usual, and the older sister was working in the Tahiti office of PFI, but Maeta, her mother, two of the latter's sisters and a brother-in-law were all there. More time than Bob would have wished was consumed in answering their questions about his college life-not the sort of questions a Boston or New York provincial would have expected from Polynesians. For once, the Hunter was not bored by human conversation, even though it had no connection with his problem.
It did take a while to steer the talk toward the object in the library, but Bob eventually succeeded, Maeta nodded when he mentioned Daphne's calling attention to it, and admitted, with no particular surprise at the question, that she was the donor of the ornament. When he asked where she had found it she did show a polite curiosity about the reason for his interest, and he told the partial truth that he had used before.
"I thought I saw it in the water years ago, but never tried to collect it," he said. "It was on the outer side of Apu, and I didn't want to be served up as hamburger. You must have had a very calm day, or else you are an awfully good swimmer."
One of the aunts chuckled. "Maeta is a better swimmer and a better sailor than any man on Ell." The girl accepted the compliment with a nod, and Bob remembered hearing something similar from Charles in the past. It was quite believable; her strength was not obvious to the eye, but her coordination was, whenever she moved. Bob did not consciously look at her particularly, but Jenny felt that he was and, to her own surprise, she felt a bit annoyed about it. It would not have been surprising if he had; Maeta Teroa might not have been better looking than Jenny, who had a high and quite justified opinion of her own appearance, but she was at very little disadvantage compared to the much taller redhead. Maeta was just over five feet tall, weighing just over a hundred pounds. Names meant little on Ell as far as ancestry was concerned; she showed her Polynesian background in her brown skin and black hair, but Europe-Scotland, Charles had once mentioned -was visible in her blue eyes and relatively straight nose and pointed chin.
"I won't argue," she said in response to the aunt's compliment. "One doesn't contradict one's elders even to be modest, and I'm not that modest. There really wasn’t any risk, though, Bob; I didn't find it on Apu. I spotted it from the Haerehaere on the bottom of the lagoon at least a mile from there-oh, about midway between Tanks Seven and Twelve, as I remember. I was a little surprised to see such a growth there-it's a species you expect out in the reef-so I went down to get it. It was pretty, and I didn't let it go to the Exchange, but kept it at home. When the new library was finished and I started working there I took it over-we all helped decorate the place. I've never figured out how it got so far from the reef. I thought at first that someone had found it there and dropped it overboard bringing it in, but, I couldn't see why the person didn't get it back, in that case. It was in less than twenty feet of water. Besides, you'd think that any previous owner would have noticed when it appeared in the library; there can't be many people, on the island who haven't seen it there."
The Hunter put a question to Bob which puzzled him, but the young man passed it on as his own.
"Did you improve on it any? That is, did you break off any of the coral to make it look prettier, or is it just the way you found it?"
"I certainly didn't. I can't see anything pretty about a broken coral branch, and I remember how glad I was that all the branches were whole. As far as I know it's still that way, though I haven't looked closely at it for a long while. I meant to ask Dad or Charlie what the piece of machinery inside it might be-I suppose it must have come from some ship-but I never happened to think of it while they were around. Maybe you know? You were looking at it today."
"I don't know that much about ships, I'm afraid," Bob evaded. The Hunter prompted him again. "Would you come and look at it with me again some time, and tell me whether it's changed any?"
"Of course." Maeta was clearly puzzled by his interest, but was far too polite to ask for an explanation if Bob didn't volunteer one. "I can't go right now -we're about to have dinner-but afterward if you like. You'll stay and eat with us?"
Bob and Jennymadethe standard courtesies about being expected at their homes, and left after agreeing to meet Maeta at the library the next morning. Outside, the Hunter asked why Bob hadn't arranged the examination for that night,
" I doubt they'll really be through eating before the library closes up," he answered, "and I certainly wouldn't want to seem in a hurry to leave the meal, or to hurry them away from it by coming back later." Jenny, who of course had heard nothing of this exchange, interrupted it by asking Bob the purpose of the question about the coral.
"I don't know," he had to answer. "The Hunter fed them to me, and I was passing them on for him."
"Without knowing why?"
"There was no way to ask him without being obvious about it. I don't have to speak out loud-he can feel the tension in my vocal cords when I'm not quite speaking-but I'd have had to pause in my other conversation, and people would have noticed."
"Well, why not ask him now?"
"How about it, Hunter?" The alien had no reason to hold back.
"I thought I saw a regularity in the coral arrangement when we were in the library. I'm not sure enough to want to be more explicit until we have another look, and get Maeta's assurance that its present condition either is or isn't the way it was when she first noticed it. Also, I'd like to see if either of you notices anything when you see it next time, so I'd rather not tell you what to look for." Bob relayed this to the girl. Neither was particularly satisfied, and Jenny kept trying to persuade the Hunter to say more all the way to her house. Bob knew better, so the conversation was less strained the rest of the way to his own home.
Predictably, his strength was back to normal when he woke up the next morning. However, a new complication had developed in the form of extreme pain in his joints, especially knees and ankles. As usual, the Hunter could find no specific cause, certainly nothing as clear-cut as the crystals of uric or oxalic acid of gout. The Hunter looked for these with especial care; he had persuaded Bob to take a course in human physiology, and had been very conscientious in doing his host's reading with him.