Needle

"Bob! You'll need some help with your stuff, getting it ashore, won't you?" Teroa was calling down to the boy. "Yes, thanks," Bob called back. "I'll be right there." He took one more quick look around, and his grin broadened at something he saw; then he was speeding over the catwalks to the stern. Partly visible around the corner of the dock from where he had been standing was the long causeway that co

The baggage was tumbled out onto the dock in record time, but the jeep had squealed around the corner and come to halt beside the hoses some minutes before Bob and the mate came down the plank with the last piece between them. Bob dropped his end of the foot locker and ran to meet the man standing beside the little car. The Hunter watched with interest and some sympathy.

Even he was sufficiently familiar with human faces by now to detect the resemblance between father and son. Bob still had six or seven inches of height to pick up, but there was the same dark hair and blue eyes, the same straight nose and broad, easily smiling mouth, and the same chin.

Bob's greeting had the exuberance natural to his age; his father, while equally delighted, maintained an undercurrent of gravity that went u

"Bob boy! I don't know what everyone's been up to since you left; you'll have to ask them. I'm going to have to be here until they finish loading; you'd better take the jeep up to the house with your luggage-I expect your mother could stand seeing you, if you can spare the time. Your friends won't be out of school yet, anyway. Just a minute." He rifled through the jeep's toolbox recklessly, finally extracting a well-cased set of calipers from the collection of center punches, cold chisels, and wrenches.

"Oh, my gosh, that's right; I'll have to see about school myself, won't I? I'd forgotten I wasn't coming back for vacation this time." He looked so sober for a moment that his father laughed again, not realizing the cause of his son's sudden thoughtfulness. Bob recovered quickly, however, and looked up again. "Okay, Dad, I'll get the stuff home. See you at supper?"

"Yes, provided you get that jeep back here as soon as you've finished with it. And no remarks about my needing exercise!"

Bob gri

The loading was quickly accomplished, and Bob, sliding under the wheel, sent the little vehicle rapidly along the causeway to the shore. From here, as he had told the Hunter, a paved road led straight inland for a quarter of a mile, where it joined the main thoroughfare of the island at right angles. There was a large cluster of corrugated-iron sheds flanking the short road, and when they reached the turn the Hunter could see that these extended to the left, up the shorter arm of the island. He could also see the white concrete of at least one more culture tank peering around the corner of the hill in that direction and resolved to ask Bob at the first opportunity why these were not built in the water like the others.

Just at the turning where the two roads met, the dwelling houses started to replace the storage sheds. Most of the former were on the shoreward side of the main road, but one, surrounded by a large garden, lay on their right just before the turning. A tall, brown-ski

"Bob! Didn't know you were coming back so early. What have you been doing, kid?" Charles Teroa was only three years older than Bob, but he had finished school and was apt to use a condescending tone to his juniors who had not. Bob had given up resenting it; besides, he now had ammunition if there was to be a contest of repartee.

"Not as much as you have," he answered, "from what your father tells me."

The younger Teroa grimaced. "Pop would tell. Well, it was fun, even if that friend of yours did back out."

"Did you really expect them to give work to someone who spends half his days sleeping?" Bob gibed, mindful of the order to keep the job a secret for the present.

Teroa was properly indignant. "What do you mean? I never sleep when there's work to do." He glanced at a patch of grass in the shade of a large tree which grew beside the house. "Just look; best place in the world for a nap, and you found me working. I'm even going back to school."

"How come?"

"I'm taking navigation from Mr. De

Bob raised his eyebrows. "Next time? You're hard to discourage. When will that be?"

"Don't know yet. I'll tell you when I think I'm ready. Want to come along?"

"I do

Teroa nodded and stepped back from the side of the jeep. 'Too bad you're not one of those things we learned about in school, that splits in two every so often. I was wishing I was a little while ago, then part of me might have gotten away with that stunt."

Bob, on occasion, was a quick thinker. This time, at least, he managed to conceal the jolt Charles's words had given him; he repeated the farewells, started the vehicle, swung around the corner to the right, and stepped on the gas. For the half mile the road ran among the houses and gardens he said nothing, except at the very end, when he pointed out a long, low building on their left as the school A short distance beyond this, however, he pulled to the side of the road and stopped. They were out of sight of the rest of the island, having driven with startling sudde

"Hunter," the boy said tensely as soon as they were stopped, "I never thought of it, but Charlie reminded me. You folks are like amoebae, you said. Are you entirely like them? I mean-is there any chance of-of our having more than one of your people to catch?"

The Hunter had not understood the boy's hesitance and did not understand the question until he had digested it a moment.

"You mean, might our friend have split in two, as your amoebae do?" he asked. "Not in the sense you mean-we are slightly more complicated beings. It would be possible for him to bud off an offspring-separate a portion of his flesh to make a new individual, but that one would be at least one of your years reaching full size. He could, of course, release it at any time, but I don't think he would, for a very good reason.

"If he tried it while in the body of a host, the new symbiote would have no more knowledge, than a newborn child of your own race; it would certainly kill the host in its blind search for food, or simply while moving around in ignorance of its surroundings. While it is true we know more biology than your race, we are not born with the knowledge; learning to live with a host takes time and is one of the chief phases of our education.