"But PFI mightreact by sending me to Tahiti, or even to Japan or the States, for more checkups and treatment."
"Can't you tell them just a little? That the tests seem funny and you want to make sure, and I should be kept at desk work or something so you can get at me whenever you want during the day? If I'm not doing heavy work I might either avoid the fatigue or be able to hide it, and I can cover up the joint pains well enough."
"That's all I can see our doing for now," Seever agreed. "I'll write it up that way, and you report for work tomorrow and see what happens. We may as well try it this way. I don't see what else we can work on until the diving gear comes, since you won't let Maeta in on the operation."
"I'm not quite sure about that." Jenny spoke up for the first time since the medical questions had come up. Both men looked at her inquiringly, and her father asked for clarification.
"You mean we can do something to get the equipment here sooner? Or do you know of some here already?"
"Neither. I think I have an idea about getting something done before the diving stuff arrives at all. I'm not really sure, and I want to think it over. Bob, if you'll come here tomorrow after work-you'll want to anyway, so Dad can see how you're doing-I think maybe I can come up with something that will bypass the diving equipment for a while. All right?"
"You're sure you don't want to tell us now?" asked Bob. "It could save a day, you know."
"I'm sure I don't, because I'm not sure I'm right I don't want to look silly." Bob looked at her father, who shrugged.
"I guess that adjourns the meeting," he said. "Bob, you go home and get as many hours sleep as you possibly can. Hunter, there's nothing I can tell you to do. Jenny, work your think box, and if I can help any way without butting into your secret, tell me. One other thing, Bob; drop by on your way to work in the morning and pick up my report on you. I'll do my best, but don't expect too much. Old Toke has always had the idea that recent graduates should be impressed as quickly as possible with the fact that they're not really indispensable, or even very important."
The meeting broke up. Bob went home without any attempt to adjust his bicycle, and he was late getting the rest Seever had recommended because Daphne was on hand.
After she went to bed he updated his parents on progress, but omitted any mention of the bicycle incident. The Hunter spent the night on biochemical work which might or might not have been useful; Bob did not have the joint pains in the morning. Seever's re-port apparently accomplished something, for the Hunter and his host spent the day in the refinery watching dials and turning valves. The work wasn't too hard. Bob's muscles held out to get him back to the doctor's in the late afternoon.
And Jenny's idea was of the sort one kicks one'sself for not thinking of earlier.
8. Routine, Modified
It may not have been completely safe, but for the Hunter it was quite comfortable. A foot-and-a-half length of three-inch pipe had been secured with wire to one side of the concrete outer case of the metal-detector. A wooden plug closed the upper end of the pipe. The inner side of the plug held a small improvised electric switch, which closed the circuit in a two-strand wire leading upalong the rope which supported everything. The Hunter could send buzzer signals to those above, though they had no direct communication with him so far.
The bottom of the pipe was open, allowing the alien to look down with an eye composed of his own tissue. It was planned to make an artificial one for him from a lens and a short cylinder of opaque material, but this had not yet been completed. It would have advantages; the Hunter's flesh was not completely transparent, so that it did not make a particularly, and was not completely opaque so that his "eye" did not exclude stray light really well. He could see, but generally preferred other eyes to his own.
The bottom was very irregular, and the coral growing from it was even more so, so he had to keep sending "up" and "down" signals to the people above. The most inconvenient part of the setup was the fact that the phones of the detector were also up in the boat, and there was no convenient way for Bob and Jenny to let the Hunter know when the device responded. They had tried tying a string to a washer held in the Hunter's tissue inside the pipe, but there were so many spurious signals from the boat's own motion that this had been given up. Bob had suggested a flashlight bulb in the pipe, operated by a key in the boat through a separate circuit, but this had not yet been built.
Over a week had passed since Jenny's suggestion had been made. Between work and weather, very few hours had been spent in actual search. The vague beginnings of amap of the sea's bottom beyond the reef existed, but filled a very small fraction of the master sheet which Arthur Kinnaird had made, from the company map of the reef itself.
Checking the position of the boat every minute or two in order to keep track of the area which had been covered was a major nuisance, even though a brain-storming session in which all had participated one evening had resulted in a fairly rapid fix technique based on horizontal angles measured between corners of selected pairs of the tanks in the lagoon. The Hunter would buzz a number whenever he saw a fairly distinctive feature, and note its details with a piece of pencil graphite on a sheet of paper lining the pipe; at the sound of the buzz, those in the boat would measure and record position. During the evenings of days when they managed to work at all, the Hunter and Bob would correlate the sets of records, and make the appropriate additions to the main chart. There was a good deal of metal on the bottom; human beings seemed to have a tendency to lose things overboard. So far, all the specimens had been too small to give signals which could possibly be from a spaceship, except for one which had been found the first hour of operation. Checking it out had been long and complicated; the word had not reached the Hunter until the kayak had pulled into North Beach for rest and lunch. Afterward the site had to be found again, and the Hunter lowered to the bottom so that he could extend a pseudopod into the mud to analyze the object. It had proved to be a well-rusted, extremely large anchor. All the Hunter could do was buzz "no" to his crew. When he gave them the details later, they guessed it had been lost from a sailing ship at least a century before, possibly while trying to hold off the reef during a storm.
Procedures were gradually improved as the days went on, but the charted area increased with painful slowness. There was no real danger, though the Hunter was constantly beset by very small fish and arthropods. Biochemically his tissues were Earthlike enough to be digestible by Earth organisms, and conversely; it was something of a race every hour he was in the water to see who ate more of whom. Because of the protection of the pipe, the Hunter was able to keep ahead, but he realized how lucky he had been to meet and occupy the shark so soon after his crash beside the island.
For Bob, the days were not going very badly; fate seemed to be holding its fire for the moment. He had not suffered the strange fatigue for nearly two weeks, either because of or in spite of Seever's and the Hunter's combined efforts there was no way to tell. To forestall any complacency, the weariness had been re-placed by the joint pains in more serious form, and, after a few days, by muscle aches and cramps. The cramps were usually in the legs and waist, and some-times he was finding it difficult to conceal them from his fellow workers; they struck suddenly and without warning. Malmstrom, whom he saw at times, made
occasional remarks about his old friend's deteriorated condition but didn't seem to mean them too seriously