Needle

He clenched both fists tightly, and the quivering stopped, to his intense relief; the Hunter knew he could never overcome muscles opposed to his own attempts. However, when the fists cautiously relaxed after a few moments, the detective made another try-this time on the arm and chest muscles-in an effort to bring the hands back to the typewriter. Bob, with a gasp of dismay, leaped to his feet, knocking the chair back against his roommate's bed. The Hunter was able to deposit a much heavier net of his flesh about these larger muscles, and the unwilled tug had been quite perceptible to the boy. He stood motionless, now badly frightened, and tried to decide between two courses of action.

There was, of course, a stringent rule that all injuries and illnesses must be reported promptly to the school infirmary. Had Bob suffered damage such as a cut or bruise he would have had no hesitation in complying with this order, but somehow the idea of owning to a nervous disorder seemed rather shameful, and the thought of reporting his trouble was repugnant. He finally decided tentatively to put it off, in the hope that matters would be improved by morning. He put the typewriter away, took out a book, and settled down to read. At first he felt decidedly uneasy, but as the minutes passed without further misbehavior on the part of his muscular system he gradually calmed down and became more absorbed in the reading matter. The increasing peace of mind was not, however, shared by his unsuspected companion.

The Hunter had relaxed in disgust as soon as the writing machine had been put away, but he had no intention of giving up. The knowledge that he could impress himself on the boy's awareness without doing him physical damage was something gained; and even though interference with the youngster's muscles produced such a marked disturbance, there were other methods which suggested themselves to the alien. Perhaps they would prove less disconcerting, and he knew they could be equally effective as means of communication. The Hunter may have had a smattering of the psychology peculiar to the races he knew, but he was certainly failing to analyze properly the cause of his host's disturbance.

His race had lived with others for so many hundreds of generations that the problems of starting the relationship had been forgotten much as man has forgotten the details surrounding his mastery of fire. Nowadays children of the other race grew up expecting to find a companion of the Hunter's kind before they passed adolescence, and the Hunter failed completely to realize how a person not brought up with that conditioning might be expected to react.

He put down Bob's disturbance to the particular method he had employed, rather than to the very fact that he had interfered. He did, in consequence, the worst thing he could possibly do: he waited until his host seemed to be over the shock of the first attempt, and then promptly tried again.

This time he worked on Bob's vocal cords. These were similar in structure to those he had known, and the Hunter could alter their tension mechanically in the same way he had pulled at muscles. He did not, of course, expect to form words; that would have required control of diaphragm, tongue, jaw, and lips, as well as the vocal cords, and the symbiote was perfectly aware of the fact; but if he did his pulling while the host was exhaling air, he could at least produce sound. He could control it only in an off-and-on fashion, so he could hardly send an articulate message that way; but he had an idea in mind for proving that the disturbance was being produced deliberately.

He could use bursts of sound to represent numbers and transmit series-one and its square, two and its square, and so on. No one, surely, hearing such a pattern of sound, could suppose it originated naturally. And now the boy was calmed down again, reading, fully absorbed, and breathing slowly and evenly.

The alien got further than any human being, knowing the facts, would have believed possible, principally because Bob was just finishing a yawn as the interruption started and was not able to control his own breathing right away. The Hunter was busily engaged in producing a set of four rather sickly croaks, having completed two and paused, when the boy caught his breath and an expression of undiluted terror spread across his face. He tried to let out his breath slowly and carefully, but the Hunter, completely absorbed in his work, continued his u

His own emotional control relaxed at this realization, for, recognizing clearly that he had failed again, knowing perfectly that his young host was almost frantic with terror that robbed him of most of his control, the alien nevertheless not only failed to desist from his attempts but started still another system of "communication." His third method involved cutting off the light from his host's retinas in patterns corresponding to letters of the English alphabet-in utter disregard of the fact that by this time Robert Ki

The inevitable results of interference with his host's eyesight under such circumstances did not impress themselves upon the Hunter's mind until Bob actually missed a step and lunged forward, grasping futilely for the rail.

The alien recovered his sense of duty rapidly enough. Before the hurtling body touched a single obstacle he had tightened around every joint and tendon with his utmost strength to save Robert a serious sprain. Moreover, as a sharp, upturned comer of one of the metal cleats which held the rubber treads on the stairs opened the boy's arms from wrist to elbow, the Hunter was on the job so fast that practically no blood escaped. Bob felt the pain, looked at the injury which was being held closed under an almost invisible film of unhuman flesh, and actually thought it was a scratch that had barely penetrated the skin. He turned the corner of the cleat down with his heel and proceeded to the dispensary at a more moderate pace. He was calmer when he got there, since the Hunter had been sobered into discontinuing his efforts to make himself known.

The school did not have a resident doctor, but did keep a nurse on constant duty at the dispensary. She could make little of Robert's description of his nervous troubles, and advised him to return the next day at the hour when one of the local doctors normally visited the school. She did examine the cut on his arm, however.

"It's clotted over now," she told the boy. "You should have come here with it sooner, though I probably wouldn't have done much to it"

"It happened less than five minutes ago," was the answer. "I fell on the stairs coming down to see you about the other business; I couldn't have brought it to you any faster. If it's already closed, though, I guess it doesn't matter."

Miss Rand raised her eyebrows a trifle. She had been a school nurse for fifteen years and was pretty sure she had encountered all the more common tales of malingerers. What puzzled her now was that there seemed no reason for the boy to prevaricate; she decided, against her professional knowledge, that he was probably telling the truth.

Of course some people's blood does clot with remarkable speed, she knew. She looked at the forearm again, more closely. Yes, the clot was extremely fresh-the shiny, dark red of newly congealed blood. She brushed it lightly with a fingertip, and felt, not the dry, smooth surface she had expected, or even the faint stickiness or nearly dry blood, but a definite and unpleasant sliminess.

The Hunter was not a mind reader and had not foreseen such a move. Even if he had, he could not have withdrawn his flesh from the surface of Robert's skin; it would be many hours, more probably a day or two, before the edges of that gash could be trusted to hold themselves together under normal usage of the arm. He had to stay, whether he betrayed himself or not.