Hal Clement - Needle

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TOO MANY PEOPLE

Two alien races lived under a single sun, someplace across the galaxy, sharing

their world . . . sharing life itself. For they lived together in a

partnership more perfect than any other known to the intelligences of the

galaxy. Together, the two races became one, each deriving from the other that

which made him greater than his individual self. Host and symbiote, they lived

together, shared together . . . two bodies in one. For the one race was

symbiotic, amorphous, able to enter the body of the other.

Then one symbiote turned Criminal, and his race could not rest until he was

tracked down. But the Criminal could hide in any living thing . . . and on

Earth there were over two billion humans alone!

HAL CLEMENT blends a masterpiece of science fiction with a story of pure

detection to produce his best novel, and one of the most famous s-f novels of

the past quarter-century.

NEEDLE

Hal Clement

NEEDLE

Printed In the U.S.A.

Second printing, October, 1972

LANCER BOOKS, INC. " 1560 BROADWAY NEW YORK, N.Y. 10036

Chapter I. CASTAWAY

EVEN ON THE earth shadows are frequently good places to hide. They may show

up, of course, against lighted surroundings, but if there is not too much

light from the side, one can step into a shadow and become remarkably hard to

see.

Beyond the earth, where there is no air to scatter light, they should be even

better. The earth's own shadow, for example, is a million-mile-long cone of

darkness pointing away from the sun, invisible itself in the surrounding dark

and bearing the seeds of still more perfect invisibility -- for the only

illumination that enters that cone is starlight and the feeble rays bent into

its blackness by the earth's thin envelope of air.

The Hunter knew he was in a planet's shadow though he had never heard of the

earth; he had known it ever since he had dropped below the speed of light and

seen the scarlet-rimmed disk of black squarely ahead of him; and so he took it

for granted that the fugitive vessel would be detectable only by instruments.

When he suddenly realized that the other ship was visible to the naked eye,

the faint alarm that had been nibbling at the outskirts of his mind promptly

rocketed into the foreground.

He had been unable to understand why the fugitive should go below the speed of

light at all, unless in the vague hope that the pursuer would overrun him

sufficiently to be out of detection range; and when that failed, the Hunter

had expected a renewed burst of speed. Instead, the deceleration continued.

The fleeing ship had kept between his own and the looming world ahead, making

it dangerous to overhaul too rapidly; and the Hunter was coming to the

conclusion that a break back on the direction they had come was to be expected

when a spark of red light visible to the naked eye showed that the other had

actually entered an atmosphere. The planet was smaller and closer than the

Hunter had believed.

The sight of that spark was enough for the pursuer. He flung every erg his

generators could handle into a drive straight away from the planet, at the

same time pouring the rest of his body into the control room to serve as a

gelatinous cushion to protect the perit from the savage deceleration; and he

saw instantly that it would not be sufficient. He had just tune to wonder that

the creature ahead of him should be willing to risk ship and host in what

would certainly be a nasty crash before the outer fringes of the world's air

envelope added their resistance to his plunging flight and set the metal

plates of his hull glowing a brilliant orange from heat.

Since the ships had dived straight down the shadow cone, they were going to

strike on the night side, of course; and once the hulls cooled, the fugitive

would again be invisible. With an effort, therefore, the Hunter kept his eyes

glued to the instruments that would betray the other's whereabouts as long as

he was in range; and it was well that he did so, for the glowing cylinder

vanished abruptly from sight into a vast cloud of water vapor that veiled the

planet's dark surface. A split second later the Hunter's ship plunged into the

same mass, and as it did so there was a twisting lurch, and the right-line

deceleration changed to a sickening spinning motion. The pilot knew that one

of the drive plates had gone, probably cracked off by undistributed heat but

there was simply no time to do a thing about it. The other vessel, he noted,

had stopped as though it had run into a brick wall; now it was settling again,

but far more slowly, and he realized that he himself could only be split

seconds from the same obstacle, assuming it to be horizontal.

It was. The Hunter's ship, still spinning wildly although he had shut off the

remaining drive plates at the last moment, struck almost flat on water and at

the impact split open from end to end along both sides as though it had been

an eggshell stepped on by a giant. Almost all its kinetic energy was absorbed

by that blow, but it did not stop altogether. It continued to settle,

comparatively gently now, with a motion like a falling leaf, and the Hunter

felt its shattered hull come to a rest on what he realized must be the bottom

of a lake or sea a few seconds later.

At least, he told himself as his wits began slowly to clear, his quarry must

be in the same predicament. The abrupt stoppage and subsequent slow descent of

the other machine was now explained -- even if it had struck head-on instead

of horizontally, there would have been no perceptible difference in the result

of a collision with a water surface at their speed. It was almost certainly

unusable, though perhaps not quite so badly damaged as the hunter's ship.

That idea brought the train of thought back to his own predicament. He felt

cautiously around him and found he was no longer entirely in the control room

-- in fact, there was no longer room for all of him inside it. What had been a

cylindrical chamber some twenty inches in diameter and two feet long was now

simply the space between two badly dented sheets of inch-thick metal which had

been the hull. The seams had parted on either side, or, rather, seams had been

created and forced apart, for the hull was originally a single piece of metal

drawn into tubular shape. The top and bottom sections thus separated had been

flattened out and were now only an inch or two apart on the average. The

bulkheads at either end of the room had crumpled and cracked -- even that

tough alloy had its limitations. The perit was very dead. Not only had it been

crushed by the collapsing wall, but the Hunter's semi-liquid body had

transmitted the shock of impact to its individual cells much as it is

transmitted to the sides of a water-filled tin can by the impact of a rifle

bullet, and most of its interior organs had ruptured. The Hunter, slowly

realizing this, withdrew from around and within the little creature. He did

not attempt to eject its mangled remains from the ship; it might be necessary

to use them as food later on, though the idea was unpleasant. The Hunter's

attitude toward the animal resembled that of a man toward a favorite dog,

though the perit, with its delicate hands which it had learned to use at his

direction much as an elephant uses its trunk at the behest of man, was more

useful than any dog.

He extended his exploration a little, reaching out with a slender pseudopod of

jellylike flesh through one of the rents in the hull. He already knew that the

wreck was lying in salt water, but he had no idea of the depth other than the

fact that it was not excessive. On his home world he could have judged it

quite accurately from the pressure; but pressure depends on the weight of a

given quantity of water as well as its depth, and he had not obtained a

reading of this planet's gravity before the crash.

It was dark outside the hull. When he molded an eye from his own tissue --

those of the pent had been ruptured -- it told him absolutely nothing of his

surroundings. Suddenly, however, he realized that the pressure around him was

not constant; it was increasing and decreasing by a rather noticeable amount

with something like regularity; and the water was transmitting to his

sensitive flesh the higher-frequency pressure waves which he interpreted as

sound. Listening intently, he finally decided that he must be fairly close to

the surface of a body of water large enough to develop waves a good many feet

in height, and that a storm of considerable violence was in progress. He had

not noticed any disturbance in the air during his catastrophic descent, but

that meant nothing -- he had spent too little time in the atmosphere to be

affected by any reasonable wind.

Poking into the mud around the wreck with other pseudopods, he found to his

relief that the planet was not lifeless -- he had already been pretty sure of

that fact. There was enough oxygen dissolved in the water to meet his needs,

provided he did not exert himself greatly, and there must, consequently, be

free oxygen in the atmosphere above. It was just as well, though, to have

actual proof that life was present rather than merely possible, and he was

well satisfied to locate in the mud a number of small bivalve mollusks which,

upon trial, proved quite edible. Realizing that it was night on this part of

the planet, he decided to postpone further outside investigation until there

was more light and turned his attention back to the remains of his ship. He

had not expected the examination to turn up anything encouraging, but he got a

certain glum feeling of accomplishment as he realized the completeness of the

destruction. Solid metal parts in the engine room had changed shape under the

stresses to which they had been subjected. The nearly solid conversion chamber

of the main drive unit was flattened and twisted. There was no trace whatever

of certain quartz-shelled gas tubes; they had evidently been pulverized by the

shock and washed away by the water. No living creature handicapped by a

definite shape and solid parts could have hoped to come through such a crash

alive, no matter how well protected. The thought was some comfort; he had done

his best for the petit even though that had not been sufficient.

Once satisfied that nothing usable remained in his ship, the Hunter decided no

more could be done at the moment. He could not undertake really active work

until he had a better supply of oxygen, which meant until he reached open air;

and the lack of light was also a severe handicap. He relaxed, therefore, in

the questionable shelter of the ruined hull and waited for the storm to end

and the day to come. With light and calm water he felt that he could reach

shore without assistance; the wave noise suggested breakers, which implied a

beach at no great distance.

He lay there for several hours, and it occurred to him once that he might be

on a planet which always kept the same hemisphere toward its sun; but he

realized that in such a case the dark side would almost certainly be too cold

for water to exist as a liquid. It seemed more probable that storm clouds were

shutting out the daylight.

Ever since the ship had finally settled into the mud it had remained

motionless. The disturbances overhead were reflected in currents and

backwashes along the bottom which the Hunter could feel but which were quite

unable to shift the half-buried mass of metal. Certain as he was that the hull

was now solidly fixed in place, the castaway was suddenly startled when his

shelter quivered as though to a heavy blow and changed position slightly.

Instantly he sent out an inquiring tentacle. He molded an eye at its tip, but

the darkness was still intense, and he returned to strictly tactile

exploration. Vibrations suggestive of a very rough skin scraping along the

metal were coming to him, and abruptly something living ran into the extended

limb. It demonstrated its sentient quality by promptly seizing the appendage

in a mouth that seemed amazingly well furnished with saw-edged teeth.

The Hunter reacted normally, for him -- that is, he allowed the portion of

himself in direct contact with those unpleasant edges to relax into a semi-

liquid condition, and at the same moment he sent more of his body flowing into

the arm toward the strange creature. He was a being of quick decisions, and

the evident size of the intruder had impelled him to a somewhat foolhardy act.

He left the wrecked space ship entirely and sent his whole four pounds of

jellylike flesh toward what he hoped would prove a more useful conveyance.

The shark -- it was an eight-foot hammerhead -- may have been surprised and

was probably irritated, but in common with all its land it lacked the brains

to be afraid. Its ugly jaws snapped hungrily at what at first seemed like

satisfying solid flesh, only to have it give way before them like so much

water. The Hunter made no attempt to avoid the teeth, since mechanical damage

of that nature held no terrors for him, but he strenuously resisted the

efforts of the fish to swallow that portion of his body already in its mouth.

He had no intention of exposing himself to gastric juices, since he had no

skin to resist their action even temporarily.

As the shark's activities grew more and more frantically vicious, he sent

exploring pseudopods over the ugly rough-skinned form, and within a few

moments discovered the five gill slits on each side of the creature's neck.

That was enough. He no longer investigated; he acted, with a skill and

precision born of long experience.

The Hunter was a metazoon -- a many-celled creature, like a bird or a man --

in spite of his apparent lack of structure. The individual cells of his body,

however, were far smaller than those of most earthly creatures, comparing in

size with the largest protein molecules. It was possible for him to construct

from his tissues a limb, complete with muscles and sensory nerves, the whole

structure fine enough to probe through the capillaries of a more orthodox

creature without interfering seriously with its blood circulation. He had,

therefore, no difficulty in insinuating himself into the shark's relatively

huge body.

He avoided nerves and blood vessels for the moment and poured himself into

such muscular and visceral interstices as he could locate. The shark calmed

down at once after the thing in its mouth and on its body ceased sending

tactile messages to its minute brain; its memory, to all intents and purposes,

was nonexistent. For the Hunter, however, successful insterstition was only

the beginning of a period of complicated activity.

First and most important, oxygen. There was enough of the precious element

absorbed on the surfaces of his body cells for a few minutes of life at the

most, but it could always be obtained in the body of a creature that also

consumed oxygen; and the Hunter rapidly sent sub-microscopic appendages

between the cells that formed the walls of blood vessels and began robbing the

blood cells of their precious load. He needed but little, and on his home

world he had lived in this manner for years within the body of an intelligent

oxygen-breather, with the other's full knowledge and consent. He had more than

paid for his keep.

The second need was vision. His host presumably possessed eyes, and with his

oxygen supply assured the Hunter began to search for them. He could, of

course, have sent enough of his own body out through the shark's skin to

construct an organ of vision, but he might not have been able to avoid

disturbing the creature by such an act. Besides, ready-made lenses were

usually better than those he could make himself.

His search was interrupted before it had gone very far. The crash had, as he

had deduced, occurred rather close to land; the encounter with the shark had

taken place in quite shallow water. Sharks are not particularly fond of

disturbance; it is hard to understand why this one had been so close to the

surf. During the monster's struggle with the Hunter it had partly drifted and

partly swum closer to the beach; and with its attention no longer taken up by

the intruder, it tried to get back into deep water. The shark's continued

frenzied activity, after the oxygen-theft system had been established, started

a chain of events which caught the alien's attention.

The breathing system of a fish operates under a considerable disadvantage. The

oxygen dissolved in water is never at a very high concentration, and a water-

breathing creature, though it may be powerful and active, never has a really

large reserve of the gas. The Hunter was not taking very much to keep alive,

but he was trying to build up a reserve of his own as well; and with the shark

working at its maximum energy output, the result was that its oxygen

consumption was exceeding its intake. That, of course, had two effects: the

monster's physical strength began to decline and the oxygen content of its

blood to decrease. With the latter occurrence the Hunter almost unconsciously

increased his drain on the system, thereby starting a vicious circle that

could have only one ending.

The Hunter realized what was happening long before the shark actually died but

did nothing about it, though he could have reduced his oxygen consumption

without actually killing himself. He could also have left the shark, but he

had no intention of drifting around in comparative helplessness in the open

sea, at the mercy of the first creature large and quick enough to swallow him

whole. He remained, and kept on absorbing the life-bearing gas, for he had

realized that so much effort would be needed only if the fish were fighting

the waves -- striving to bear him away from the shore he wanted to reach. He

had judged perfectly by this time the shark's place in the evolutionary scale

and had no more compunction about killing it than would a human being.

The monster took a long time to die, though it became helpless quite rapidly.

Once it ceased to struggle, the Hunter continued the search for its eyes, and

eventually found them. He deposited a film of himself between and around their

retinal cells, in anticipation of the time when there would be enough light

for him to see. Also, since the now-quiescent shark was showing a distressing

tendency to sink, the alien began extending other appendages to trap any air

bubbles which might be brought near by the storm. These, together with the

carbon dioxide he produced himself, he gradually accumulated in the fish's

abdominal cavity to give buoyancy. He needed very little gas for this purpose,

but it took him a long time to collect it, since he was too small to produce

large volumes of carbon dioxide very rapidly.

The breakers were sounding much more loudly by the time he was able to take

his attention from these jobs, and he realized that his assumption of a

shoreward drift was justified. The waves were imparting a sickening up-and-

down motion to his unusual raft, which neither bothered nor pleased him; it

was horizontal motion he wanted, and that was comparatively slow until the

water became quite shallow.

He waited for a long time after his conveyance stopped moving, expecting each

moment to be floated and dragged back into deep water again, but nothing

happened, and gradually the sound of waves began to decrease slightly and the

amount of spray falling on him to diminish. The Hunter suspected that the

storm was dying .out. Actually, the tide had turned; but the result was the

same as far as he was concerned.

By the time the combination of approaching dawn and thinning storm clouds

provided enough light for his surroundings to be visible his late host was

well above the reach of the heaviest waves. The shark's eyes would not focus

on their own retinas out of water, but the Hunter found that the new focal

surface was inside the eyeball and built a retina of his own in the

appropriate place. The lenses also turned out to be a little less than

perfect, but he modified their curvature with some of his own body substance

and eventually found himself able to see his surroundings without exposing

himself to the view of others.

There were rifts in the storm clouds now through which a few of the brightest

stars were still visible against the gray background of approaching dawn.

Slowly these breaks grew larger, and by the time the sun rose the sky was

almost clear, though the wind still blew fiercely.

His vantage point was not ideal, but he was able to make out a good deal of

his surroundings. In one direction the beach extended a short distance to a

line of tall, slender trees crowned with feathery tufts of leaves. He could

not see beyond these, his point of observation being too low, though they were

not themselves set thickly enough to obstruct the view. In the opposite

direction was more debris-strewn beach, with the roar of the still-heavy surf

sounding beyond it. The Hunter could not actually see the ocean, but its

direction was obvious. To the right was a body of water which, he realized,

must be a small pool, filled by the storm and now emptying back into the sea

through an opening too small or too steep for the surf to enter. This was

probably the only reason the shark had stranded at all -- it had been washed

into this pool and left there by the receding tide.

Several times he heard raucous screeching sounds and saw birds overhead. This

pleased him greatly; evidently there were higher forms of life than fishes on

the planet, and there was some hope of obtaining a more suitable host. An

intelligent one would be best, since an intelligent creature is ordinarily

best able to protect itself. It would also be more likely to travel widely,

thus facilitating the now-necessary search for the pilot of the other ship. It

was very likely, however, as the Hunter fully realized, that there would be

serious difficulty in obtaining access to the body of an intelligent creature

who was not accustomed to the idea of symbiosis.

All that, however, would have to wait on chance. Even if there were

intelligent beings on this planet they might never come to this spot; and even

if they did, he might not recognize them for what they were in time to get any

good out of the situation. It would be best to wait, several days if need be,

to observe just what forms of life frequented this locality; after that he

could make plans to invade the one best suited to his needs. Time was probably

not vital; it was as certain as anything could be that Ms quarry was no more

able to leave the planet than was the Hunter himself, and while he remained on

it the search would be decidedly tedious. Time spent in careful preparation

would undoubtedly pay dividends.

He waited, therefore, while the sun rose higher and the wind gradually died

down to a mild breeze. It became quite warm; and he was aware before long of

chemical changes going on in the flesh of the shark. They were changes which

made it certain that, if a sense of smell were common to many of the creatures

of this world, he was bound to have visitors before too long. The Hunter could

have halted the process of decay by the simple expedient of consuming the

bacteria that caused it, but he was not particularly hungry and certainly had

no objection to visitors. On the contrary!

Chapter II. SHELTER

THE FIRST visitors were gulls. One by one they descended, attracted by sight

and smell, and began tearing at the carcass of the shark. The Hunter withdrew

to the lower parts of the body and made no attempt to drive them off, even

when they pounced upon the eyes of the great fish and speedily deprived him of

visual contact with the outside world. If other life forms came he would know

it anyway; if they didn't, it was just as well to have the gulls there.

The greedy birds remained undisturbed until mid-afternoon. They did not make

too much progress in disposing of the shark -- the tough skin defied their

beaks in most places. They were persistent, however, and when they suddenly

took wing and departed in a body, it was evident to the Hunter that there must

be something of interest in the neighborhood. He hastily extruded enough

tissue from one of the gill slits to make an eye and looked cautiously about

him.

He saw why the gulls had left. From the direction of the trees a number of

much larger creatures were coming. They were bipeds, and the Hunter estimated

with the ease of long practice that the largest weighed fully a hundred and

twenty pounds, which, in an air-breather, meant that the addition of his own

mass and oxygen consumption was unlikely to prove a serious burden. Much

closer to him was a smaller four-legged creature running rapidly toward the

dead shark and uttering an apparently endless string of sharp yelping sounds.

The Hunter placed it at about fifty pounds and filed the information mentally

for future use.

The four bipeds were also running, but not nearly so rapidly as the smaller

animal. As they approached, the hidden watcher examined them carefully, and

the more he saw the more pleased he was. They could travel with fair speed;

their skulls were of a size that gave promise of considerable intelligence, if

one could safety assume that this race kept its brain there; their skins

seemed almost entirely unprotected, giving promise of easy access through the

pores. As they slowed up and stopped beside the hammerhead's body, they gave

another indication of intelligence by exchanging articulate sounds which

unquestionably represented speech. The Hunter, to put it mildly, was

delighted. He had not dared hope for such an ideal host to appear so quickly.

Of course there were problems still to be solved. It was a fairly safe bet

that the creatures were not accustomed to the idea of symbiosis, at least as

the Hunter's race practiced it. The alien was sure he had never seen members

of this race before, and was equally sure he knew all those with whom his

people normally associated. Therefore, if these beings actually saw him

approaching, they would almost certainly go to considerable lengths to avoid

contact; and even if this proved futile, forcible entry on the Hunter's part

would create an attitude highly unlikely to lead to future co-operation. It

seemed, therefore, that subtlety would have to be employed.

The four bipeds remained looking down at the shark and conversing for only a

few minutes, then they walked off a short distance up the beach. Somehow the

Hunter got a vague impression from their attitudes that they found the

neighborhood unpleasant. The quadruped remained a little longer, examining the

carcass closely; but it apparently failed to notice the rather oddly placed

eye which was following its movements. A call from one of the other creatures

finally attracted its attention, and as the Hunter watched it bounded off in

the direction they had taken. He saw with some surprise that they had entered

the water and were swimming around with considerable facility. He marked down

the fact as another point in their favor; he had seen no trace of gills in his

rather careful examination of their bodies, and as air-breathers they must

have had a considerable margin between their ability to absorb oxygen and

their actual need for it to remain under water as long as he saw one of them

do. Then he realized that there was another good point: he could probably

approach them much more easily in the water.

It was evident from their behavior that they could not see very well, if at

all, under water -- they invariably raised their heads above the surface to

orient themselves, and did this with considerable frequency. The quadruped was

even less likely to see him approaching, as it kept its head above water at

all times.

The thought led to instant action. A threadlike pseudo-pod began groping

rapidly toward the pool an inch or two under the sand. The eye was kept in

operation until most of the jelly-like body had crossed the four-yard gap,

then another was formed at the water's edge, and the Hunter drew the rest of

his body into a compact mass just below it The operation had taken several

minutes; winding among sand grains had been an annoyingly devious mode of

travel.

The water was quite clear, so it was not necessary to keep an eye above the

surface to direct the stalk. The mass of jelly quickly molded itself into an

elongated, fishlike shape with an eye in front, and the Hunter swam toward the

boys as rapidly as he could. In one way, he reflected, it was really easier to

see under water. He could use a concave lens of air, held in shape by a film

of his own flesh, which was far more transparent than an optical system

composed entirely of the latter substance.

He had intended to swim right up to one of the boys, hoping his approach would

not be noticed and his efforts at contact marked by swirling water or his

subject's friends -- they were indulging in acts of considerable violence as

they swam and plunged. However, it speedily became evident that only luck

would bring him in contact with one of the creatures, since they swam much

more rapidly than the Hunter could; and, realizing this, he found what seemed

to be an excellent means of making an under* cover approach. He suddenly

noticed beside him a large jellyfish, bobbing rather aimlessly along after the

manner of its kind; and with his attention thus diverted, he saw that there

were quite a number of the things in the vicinity. Evidently the bipeds did

not consider them dangerous or they would not be swimming here.

Accordingly, the Hunter altered his form and method of locomotion to agree

with those of the medusae and approached more slowly the area in which the

boys were playing. His color was slightly different from that of any of the

other jellyfish but these, in turn, differed among themselves, and he felt

that shape must be a more important criterion than shade. He may have been

right, for he got almost up to one of the bipeds without apparently causing

any alarm. They were fairly close together at the moment, and he had high

hopes of making contact -- he did, in fact, with a cautiously extended

tentacle, discover that the varicolored integument covering a portion of their

bodies was an artificial fabric -- but before he could do any more, the

subject of his investigation slid to one side and moved several feet away. He

gave no sign of alarm, however, and the Hunter tried again. The approach ended

in precisely the same fashion, except that this time he did not get so close.

He tried each of the other boys in turn, with the same annoying near-success.

Then, puzzled by a phenomenon which seemed to be exceeding the generous limits

of the law of chance, he drifted a short distance away and watched, trying to

learn the reason for it. Within five minutes he realized that, while these

creatures seemed to have no actual fear of jelly-fish, they sedulously avoided

physical contact with them. He had chosen an unfortunate camouflage.

Robert Kinnaird avoided jellyfish almost without conscious thought. He had

learned to swim at the age of five, and in that and each of the nine

subsequent years of his life he had enough first-hand experience with their

stinging tentacles to assure his avoiding their company. He had been fully

occupied in ducking one of his companions when the Hunter had first touched

him, and even though he had dodged hastily on noticing the lump of jelly in

the water beside him he had not really thought about the matter -- if he did,

it was merely a brief reflection that he was lucky not to have been stung. He

forgot the incident promptly, but his attention had been sufficiently diffused

by it to prevent the thing's again approaching so closely.

About the time the Hunter realized what was wrong, the boys grew tired of

swimming and retired to the beach. He watched them go in mounting annoyance,

and continued to watch as they ran back and forth on the sand playing some

obscure game. Were the mad creatures never still? How in the Galaxy could he

ever come in contact with such infernally active beings? He could only watch,

and ponder.

Ashore, once the salt had dried on their sun-browned hides, the boys did

finally begin to quiet down and cast expectant glances toward the grove of

coconut palms between them and the center of the island. One of them seated

himself, facing the ocean, and suddenly spoke.

"Bob, when are your folks coming with the grub?"

Robert Kinnaird flung himself face downward in the sun before replying. "

'Bout four or half-past, Mother said. Don't you ever think of anything but

eating?"

The redheaded questioner mumbled an inarticulate reply and subsided flat on

his back, gazing up into the now cloudless blue sky. Another of the boys took

up the conversational ball.

"It's tough, you having to go tomorrow," he said. "I kind of wish I was going

with you, though. I haven't been in the States since my folks came out here. I

was only a kid then," he added serenely.

"It's not so bad," returned Bob slowly. "There are a lot of good fellows at

the school, and there's skating and skiing in the winter that you don't get

here. Anyway, I'll be back next summer."

The talk died down and the boys basked in the hot sunshine as they waited for

Mrs. Kinnaird and the food for the farewell picnic. Bob was closest to the

water, lying stretched in full sunlight; the others had sought the rather

inadequate shade of the palms. He was already well tanned but wanted to get

the last possible benefit out of the tropical sun, which he would miss for the

next ten months. It was hot, and he had just spent an active half-hour, and

there was nothing at all to keep him awake ...

The Hunter was still watching, eagerly now. Were the peripatetic things really

settling down at last? It looked as though they were. The four bipeds were

sprawled on the sand in various positions which they presumably found

comfortable; the other animal settled down beside one of them, letting its

head rest on its forelegs. The conversation, which had been almost incessant

up to this point, died down, and the amorphous watcher decided to take a

chance. He moved rapidly to the edge of the pool.

The nearest of the boys was about ten yards from the water. It would not be

possible to maintain a watch from the Hunter's present position and at the

same tune send himself under the sand to a point below the now-motionless body

of his intended host. He must, however, keep the other in sight. Once more

camouflage seemed indicated, and once more the ever-present jellyfish seemed

to fill the need. There were a number of them lying on the sand motionless;

perhaps if he moved slowly and emulated their shape the Hunter could escape

notice until he was close enough for an underground attack.

He may have been excessively cautious, since none of the creatures was facing

his way and all were nearly if not entirely asleep, but caution is never

really wasted, and the Hunter did not regret the twenty minutes he took

getting from the water's edge to a point some three yards from Robert

Kinnaird. It was uncomfortable, of course, since his skinless body had even

less protection from the hot sun than the jellyfish it was imitating; but he

stood it, and eventually reached a point which his earlier experience

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HalClement-NeedleTOOMANYPEOPLETwoalienraceslivedunderasinglesun,someplaceacrossthegalaxy,sharingtheirworld...sharinglifeitself.Fortheylivedtogetherinapartnershipmoreperfectthananyotherknowntotheintelligencesofthegalaxy.Together,thetworacesbecameone,eachderivingfromtheotherthatwhichmadehimgreaterthan...

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Hal Clement - Needle

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