"You've been more in the water than out of it for the last hour and more, Mae. I know you don't feel either cold or tired, but take care of yourself. Get some rest before you go in again." The girl laughed. "I could stay in all day. I have, sometimes," she pointed out, looking back at the doctor without interrupting the rhythm of her paddle. "I not only don't feel tired; I'm really not."
"Ordinarily I'd agree with you, young lady," Seever answered, "but this time you've spent a lot of time under water. I know you've trained for that, too, and are probably in better condition than anyone else on Ell for such things-yes, I know all about your reputation; who doesn't? Still, there are things no human body can put up with indefinitely. You take care of that one."
Maeta laughed. "Aren't you going to tell me to put something on to keep the sun off, over this bathing suit?"
"No. I'm a professional trying to do his job, not an old fogey asking to look ridiculous. If my daughter or Bob were dressed as you are, I'd have jumped on them already. I know as well as you do that you don't1 need it. Are you trying to get compliments out of a middle-aged man? There must be better directions to shoot."
Maeta said nothing, nor did Jenny, but the latter looked at her father as teen-agers have been looking at their parents for generations. Bob paid no attention; he was listening to the Hunter's generally favorable report on his own condition, and promising himself that a very careful check of ropes, wires, and other equipment would precede any future operations.
The rope which had failed had been examined closely by everyone. Jenny had suggested openly that Malmstrom had done something to it. Bob had countered with the suggestion that it was the "pest" Andre desChenes. The rope itself failed to support either contention; it had not been cut, quite certainly. There was no obvious, reason why it had failed, and the rather futile argument was still going on when they reached North Beach.
"When the Hunter finishes his checkup, I'd like very much to go back out," Maeta said when the outrigger had bees pulled up. "I like being on the water, and this is as good an excuse as anyone could have- not that anyone needs an excuse. I wouldn't have to do enough diving to bother you, Doctor, judging by the number of times they've found large pieces of metal. There's room for me in your kayak if you'd rather use that; I admit it's a lot lighter."
Jenny's feelings were mixed. The search itself was getting boring, except when she remembered what it meant to Bob. Even then it was beginning to be duty rather than pleasure. Also, she was beginning, to change her mind, for reasons she couldn't have given even to herself, about the wisdom of having Maeta in the group.
Bob thought the idea was excellent, however, and the Hunter also voted in favor of it; so the group headed for the kayak, with Seever and Maeta carrying the concrete-and-pipe assembly. The remains of the other coil of rope, which had failed the day before, still lay on one of the duckboards in the kayak's bottom, and Jenny picked this up and tossed it out on the sand. Then she gave an exclamation. "Hey! Look at this!"
The others, gathering beside her, had no trouble seeing what she meant. At the side of the duckboard, where it came closest to the canvas but had been hidden by the rope, both the wood and the canvas were deeply stained. Jenny touched the canvas, and cried out again as the brown-tinted portion, nearly three inches across, crumbled away.
Her father bent over and sniffed.
"Nothing I can tell now," he said, "but it looks like acid-battery acid, for a guess."
"That punk Shorty!" snapped Jenny.
"Or Andre?" queried Bob.
"Why him?" asked the redhead. "He's asked me if he could come out with us, and I said yes, in a few days."
"Maybe the few days got too many. I can't see Shorty doing anything as serious as this; he's more the chalk-in-the-blackboard-eraser type."
"I suppose the acid was poured on the rope, and the bit that got on the canvas was accidental," Seever said slowly. "I can't see why it was done at all, though I'm afraid I agree with Bob that it's something Andre might do."
"It's certainly a serious question," Maeta agreed, "but there's another. Are you going to let this hold up the real project? Isn’t it still important to find those ships if we can? Or do you want to wait until the diving equipment gets here, if it ever does?"
"Things will go so much faster with it that I'd al most just as soon wait," Bob admitted. "We're spending an awful lot of time and effort to cover an awful tiny patch of map. Maybe I'll last until the breathing stuff gets here-"
"And maybe you won't," snapped Jenny. "Mae's right. We've got to keep this going."
"We can use my rigger until your kayak is fixed," Maeta added. "After that, too, if you want. The rest-of my family won't mind-and I don't have to tell them what we're doing, Bob." The Hunter was impressed; he hadn't known that the small girl had been so aware of Bob's feelings. Had she been reading his host's expression that well, or had Jenny told her? Maeta was continuing with her ideas. "Look, I don't work at the library every day. Jen, you and I can do some of the job while Bob is working at the refinery-"
Bob cut in with the Hunter's objection to being so far separated from his host. Maeta waved it away.
"He won't have to be," she said. "We won't need the Hunter. I can go down to check how far off the bottom the box is every few minutes, and we can make position work easier by using a lot of those marker buoys. We can make more of them easily. We'll fill that map three or four times as fast as you're doing it now. Come on, we'll start right now. I suppose you don't want to come, Doctor; Bob's all right now, and you don't like to spend too much time away from your office. But come along if you like, of course; there's plenty of room in the rigger."
The Hunter, who had seen comparatively little of human females during Bob's college career, was beginning to wonder whether the tendency to take control of things was universal among them, or merely half-universal among human beings. Many of Bob's male friends at college had been pretty bossy, too, the alien reflected.
"Thanks, I’ll go back to the office," Seever answered, "but you take care of yourself out there, Mae. You're probably safe from sunburn and coronary, but there are other things under the water, and you'll be alone." Maeta's face lost its expression of rather pixyish humor, and she looked Seever soberly in the eye.
"I know, Doctor.
Ill be careful-really."
She turned to the others. "Let's go."
The next day or two went well, except for Bob's condition; joint and muscle pains were growing much worse, and neither Seever nor the Hunter was able to do anything about them. The neostigmine Seever had sent for seemed to palliate the weakness, which had not been experienced for some time, and the nausea attacks also seemed to have vanished. Both the human and nonhuman experimenters would have liked to take credit for the latter, but neither dared to; neither was sure it wouldn't come back.
The weather permitted the girls to work outside the reef, and a very encouraging amount of area was added to the Hunter's map from their reports.
The Hunter himself was shocked to find that he had mixed feelings about this. He would have been happier to be on the spot himself. Now he found that he was spending much of his host's sleeping time wondering what they would do when the entire planned area had been covered without success. Should they expand the area, or go over the whole thing again? Which would give the better chance? There had been little more than guesswork available to establish the area in the first place, but it had seemed such reasonable guesswork!