"But you should still add something of your own to Bob's message."
"He agrees," Bob relayed. "He says to get another bottle-a very small one will do-and something that will scratch glass. Do you have a carborundum scriber, or a small diamond, Doc?"
"I can get a scriber," Bob's father said.
"He doesn't want the whole tool, just the carbo tip. He's going to write on the inside of the bottle, and he probably couldn't maneuver the whole tool in there even if he could get it through the neck. He won't need a cork or sand ballast. He says he'll just tie the new bottle to the neck of the old one, to make some thing sure to attract attention."
"Then we can really count on being in touch with someone who can cure Bob, at last?" It was his mother, her voice not very steady. "It's been nice for those who could take this all as an intellectual problem, but I haven't been able to do that."
Bob answered his mother with a simple affirmative, but the Hunter's honesty forced him to go farther.
"If only police personnel like myself are on Earth, it may take longer. We might have to wait for a ship to go home and return with the specialist Bob needs."
"I don't want to mention that," Bob muttered back. "Why give her any more to worry about?" "Don't be shortsightedly selfish," his symbiont ad-monished him. "If events disappoint her, you won't be in a position to care; but she has the right to reality. You know that."
"I know you, anyway." Reluctantly, Bob relayed the Hunter's qualification. His mother took a deep breath and shook her head. Then she looked at her son and said, "Thanks, Hunter." Bob raised his eye brows. "And you, of course, Son."
That ended the discussion. Bob was falling asleep, and his parents and Maeta prepared to leave.
"When should I bring that carbide tip, Hunter?" Arthur Kinnaird asked as they reached the door. "Tonight? I can find one all right."
"No," Bob relayed. "He'll have to leave me to do that job, and says he won't do that before tomorrow night. You can all go back to normal living for a day. He'll do the message tomorrow night if I'm all right, and it can go out to the ship on Wednesday." His father nodded understanding, and Bob was asleep a minute later.
The Hunter spent the night as usual, going over and over his host's biochemistry in the endless effort to balance things better. The joint pains bad been absent that day, leaving the alien to wonder whether the infection toxins, the inactivity, Seever's antibiotics, or even the symbiont's own absence might be responsible. He ended the night in His usual mood of futility and frustration.
Bob's arm progressed normally the next day, as did his other injuries. The heart muscle was essentially healed; it had been a clean wound, splitting muscle fibers more than tearing them. The Hunter no longer had to pay much attention to face and ear, though his host complained frequently of itching at both sites. The source of these nerve signals remained obscure to the detective, but he could not bring himself to make a major project of finding it.
Arthur brought the carbide tip during the after noon, and Seever furnished a plain, thin-walled two-hundred-milliliter bottle; so during the night the Hunter was able to leave Bob for a few hours to writehis message on the inner side of the glass. It was a harder job than he had expected. The carbide cut the glass readily enough, but a good deal of force had to be applied. He covered a quarter of the bottle's inner surface with script which would have been microscopic to a human being.
He tried to include all the information which might be necessary to convince the readers of his identity- clearly they weren't at all sure that his quarry wasn't around, too-and to let them find and identify at least one of the human members of the group. He also outlined his difficulty with his host's chemical machinery, making no effort to belittle his own mistakes in the matter. He had planned the wording carefully, and, in spite of the unexpected difficulty, was back with his host in little over three hours.
Bob was able to rise without too much discomfort the next morning. The wind had been high the day before, causing everyone some uneasiness, and he insisted on accompanying Maeta to North Beach. They were alone; it was understood that if it was practical to go out, Maeta would bicycle back to get Bob's mother and Mrs. Seever.
The sun was well up when they reached North Beach, for Bob had slept fairly late. As they approached the outrigger, a small figure which had been seated beside it rose and faced them.
Once again the Hunter was impressed by Andre's plumpness, a rare condition among the Ell children. The generally accepted way of life among them involved intense activity, and Daphne, he remembered, liked to show off her very visible ribs. All three in the group were even more impressed by the thought of what might have happened to the outrigger be fore their arrival. However, Maeta greeted the child with her usual calm friendliness. She might have been about to ask, tactfully, what he was doing there, but he didn't give her the time.
"Can I go out with you?" the boy asked. "Why?" returned Bob.
"I want to see what you're doing. You have the Tavake's metal-finder. I always wanted to try it and they'd never let me, and I've been wondering what metal you could be looking for outside the reef. No one ever drops tools there, and it wouldn't be worth looking for them if they did. Are you treasure hunting?"
"No." Bob's tone was less cordial than was strictly tactful. "Why do you care what grown-ups are doing? Why don't you go with the other kids?"
"Them?" the youngster shrugged his shoulders.
"They're no fun. I'd rather see what you're doing."
"We're not tripping bikes, or playing with their brakes or handlebars, or hiding glass in the sand," was Bob's even less tactful answer. Andre's face became more unexpressive than usual. Then he realized that this was hardly natural, and he put on the appearance of surprise. Then he realized that this had come too late, and gave another shrug.
"All right, forget it. I didn't think you'd want me. The kids you think I should be playing with don't either. I'll think of something else." He turned away.
Neither the Hunter nor his host could quite decide how to respond to this bitter and pitiful remark, but Maeta did not hesitate.
"Andre, you're not making sense. If you really played the tricks Bob mentioned, wouldn't you expect people to be too afraid of you to want you around? And you did play them, didn't you?" The boy eyed her silently for fully a minute.
"Sure I did," he said at last, defiantly. "You know it. Jenny caught me out when she was talking to me the other day, and she told you."
"How do you know she told us?"
"I heard her. I listened outside the window after she went back to the other room with the rest of you.
Bob tried to conceal how this confession affected him. "What did you hear?" he asked.
"Lots."
Bob had never taken lessons from his guest detective, but even he knew better than to be specific.
"Have you listened before?"
"Sure. Lots."
"When have you listened to us?"
"In the hospital, mostly. Down by the creek, the day you and Jenny had been out on Apu, and she and your sister went to the library for the thing you were looking for. On the dock, the night, you came back from the States."
"Did you try to break into my footlocker?"
"No. I was trying something else, that time. Your father said a lot, when he got hurt picking it up."
Maeta interjected. "Andy, do you snoop like this around everyone, or is there something about Bob and Jenny and me that interests you?"