"He's in the next room, but sound asleep," Seever replied. "He was uncomfortable enough to accept medication."
"And you're absolutely sure he took it?"
"Yes. I watched him drink it, made sure it wasn't spilled anywhere, and had him talk to me afterward to be sure his mouth was empty. I'm learning, old as I am."
"All right," Maeta relayed. "I am now quite sure I know where to get in touch with the evaluation team from my home world, and we should be able to do it tomorrow. I feel very silly at not seeing it before, and wasting so much of everyone's time and effort, not to mention extending the danger to Bob's life and bringing danger to Jenny and Mae. I want to go through my detailed idea of what has happened on Ell during the last seven years, not because I feel the need for drama but because if I can get through the account without any of you seeing where my people must be, I won't have to feel so foolish. Several mystery novels which Bob had read suggested the technique to me; forgive me if the suspense makes any of you uncomfortable.
"When wedisposed of my original quarry-and it seems that we really did dispose ofhim, Doctor, and though absolute proof would be hard to supply, I examined Andre carefully-I was convinced that I was hopelessly lost from my own people. I had an unrealistic idea of the number of stars in the volume of space whose radius I had traversed. I don't blame myself greatly; a view of the star clouds of the Milky Way is extremely deceptive. Look at a photograph in any of your popular astronomy books; you will certainly not realize that a fair model of this part of the galaxy could he made by scattering tennis balls with an average separation of a thousand miles.
"After Bob and Ihad taken an astronomy course while he was in college, I realized that it should actually be quite simple for my people to trace us, and that a search had most probably been conducted. I am now quite sure that one of our ships reached Earth some, time before March, 1949-your data, Mae-within fifteen months after we disposed of my quarry. They detected his ship but not mine, probably because mine was far more badly damaged, and sea water had reached and corroded the units whose force fields are normally detectable from a distance. They investigated his ship, identified it, explored his possible paths to Ell, and found the generator case on Apu, just as we had earlier. They had, after all, the advantage of knowing that such an object was missing from his ship, and must have looked for it specifically. "Not finding any trace of me or my ship, they assumed that I had either failed to reach Earth at all, or had been killed by the crash, by Earth life, or by my quarry. It is also possible that they did find my ship, and deduced from its condition that I had never reached shore."
"But how could you have been killed by the crash?" asked Mrs. Kinnaird. "As I understand it, your ship was merely flattened, not burned or exploded. Merely mashing you up wouldn't kill you."
"You exaggerate a little," replied the Hunter, "but what probably would have killed me was the marine life. I told Bob and Jenny about my troubles while I was down in the pipe. If I hadn't met that shark, I might very well not have survived to reach Ell and find Bob." The woman nodded understanding and the alien went on. "In any case, my friends assumed that I was out of the picture, and that my quarry was loose somewhere on Earth-they hoped, but could not be sure, on Ell.
"Naturally they didn't find him. I suppose it's lucky they didn't find me, under the circumstances, though I might possibly have been able to identify myself to them in time. Anyway, they concluded the unsuccessful search, booby-trapped my quarry's ship, and went back home. Their report caused an evaluation team to be assembled and sent here. They arrived over three years ago-again from your data, Mae."
"I don't see that," the girl said, interrupting her own translation.
"I'm delighted. You will. I skipped one point; sorry. The police would have been the ones to move the generator shield, partly to experiment with it, to see why our quarry might have left it where he did, partly to prevent him from using it again too easily-he might, for all they could know, have been wandering around on Apu at the time. One of them would have stayed with it, probably armed with a paralyzer, in case the other did find it; but what happened was Maeta's picking it up."
"You mean one of your people was inside that thing when I took it home?" Maeta exclaimed.
"I'd be glad to bet any reasonable sum you like; and considering the date you found it, I'm sure it was one of the police group, not the later arrivals. You didn't look inside, I take it."
"Not carefully. It seemed to be full of sand, and I left it outdoors to dry out before I took it into the house."
"Exactly. Into your house. One of your family, probably you, became host for a time to that policeman."
"But he never tried to talk to me!"
"Of course not. No emergency. He didn't find him self isolated halfway around your planet at his first chance to look through your eyes, as I did." The Hunter addressed the entire group again.
"I doubt that he stayed with Mae very long; he'd have wanted to move around a lot in his investigation. There must be a lot of ex-hosts around Ell at the mo ment.
"The next group eventually came, and started where the police had left off. They probably paid little if any attention to the booby-trapped ship. I'm sorry about that, as I said; it was a reasonable theory originally, but general procedures have to be modified by specific situations. My mistake was in taking too long to see how the specific situations applied. Any way, the evaluation team came, and is here now. They're doing a job likely to take five or ten of your years. If the police reported human beings to be as different as they should have, there are probably fifty or so members of the team-including several of the specialists we need to get Bob back together. We'll take a note to their headquarters tomorrow."
"Where's that?' asked Jenny.
"I'll go along with your game, Hunter," said Maeta. "You implied that I'd served as a host another time. Is that relevant to your Agatha Christie puzzle? Bob, did you, ever feel this creature grinning?"
"Cant say that I did," was, the answer. "Let him go on."
The detective continued. "It is very relevant. I expect one of you to come up with the answer at any moment. Yes, Maeta, you were a host, probably several times. I suppose they shifted hosts often to avoid doing what I did to Bob-as I should have one, I see now. At least once, you had an expert who could manipulate the desalting operation; you were quite right, you really didn't get thirsty that time you were stranded on the reef."
"But why would they use me several times? There are a couple of hundred people on Ell-at least a hundred and fifty even if a lot of the children are too small."
"A strong and healthy host is very desirable; spending all our time in protection and repair is hardly life. We like to do things of our own, and the evaluation team members would have a great deal to do. Much more to the point, Mae," the girl continued to trans late in spite of the personal nature of the next sentences, "you are one of the most conveniently located and occupied people on this island, for any member of the headquarters group of the evaluation team. Think, Miss Teroa. A spacewhere an enormous volume of information about Earth and its people is stored in organized form. A place where a host can conveniently be made to feel sleepy if the symbiont wants to work alone for a time, and where a human being can unobtrusively be anesthetized briefly with out risking his falling and hurting himself, if one of the team needs to spend a while with a host. You told Bob it was a very comfortable chair."