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He had some cause to feel useful. Without him she would have been dead in minutes from blood loss; or, failing that, from shock within an hour or two. If he could stay with her for a few days, she would not even be scarred, a factor which the girl herself would certainly appreciate and which, the Hunter had reason to suspect, would also be appreciated by his own host.
That left him free to worry about Bob, who must certainly have picked up more infecting microorganisms from the sand in his unclotted wounds. The Hunter had indeed disposed of the original ones, but recent experience had made it clear that it would not take long to get his partner back into serious trouble. The Hunter hoped he would not have to decide between Bob and Maeta. There was no question where his responsibility lay, but if he saved Bob and let the girl die, the former would be extremely hard to live with for a time.
The wind was much weaker by sunrise, and an hour later they were no longer being soaked by spray from the reef. Bob removed the sand cover to let the sun warm them, looked over his own scratches with out saying anything to the Hunter, and bent to examine Andre. The boy had been quiet for some time, and the conscious members of the group had hoped that he was asleep, but he answered at once when Bob asked how he felt.
"Terrible," was the answer. "My shoulder hurts, and I'm cold and hungry."
"You'll probably be too warm when the sun gets a little higher. There's no shade here. We should be able to find some shellfish. I don't know what I can do about your shoulder; let me see."
The boy sat up, but shrank away the moment he was touched. "That hurts. Stop it."
"All right," Bob said. "I'm no doctor, anyway, and you didn't give me much chance to feel, but you'd better assume that something is broken in there, and keep it still." The Hunter had not reported to Bob on the boy's condition. "Does it hurt to move your arm?"
"Yes. A lot."
"Then let's get my shirt off and let me try to make it into a sling for you, so the arm won't move. You'll have to decide whether you want to put up with the pain while I do that, so there'll be less pain later, or not. I'm not going to waste time arguing."
"Leave it alone. Why can't your green thing help me?"
"He's busy with Maeta, who needs him a lot worse than you do." The boy looked at Maeta closely for the first time, turned visibly pale, and said nothing for several seconds. Then he looked at his own shoulder, which was by now covered with a single huge area of blue, black, and yellow bruise. He seemed about to say something, looked back at Maeta's torn back and leg, and walked away down the beach.
"Find some shellfish!" Bob called after him. There was no answer.
"I'll find something for you and Mae, Hunter," Bob said, giving up Andre as a minor problem for the moment "Stand by a couple of minutes. There'll surely be something around, since you're not choosy. I'll have to work fast; these cuts of mine are starting to hurt a lot, and I may have to stay put in a little while and let you work on both of us, if you possibly can."
The Hunter had no way of answering. He thought intensely as he watched Bob walk off after the boy, through the temporary eye he had improvised. It might have been better for Bob to go in the opposite direction, but there was no opposite direction to go; they were at the end of a small island immediately beside the reef passage. The two or three hundred yards of sand to the northwest, merging into coral on the side toward the breakers, were their total re source area. There were other islets around the atoll, and the culture tank occupied most of the tiny la goon, but the canoe was gone. Two of them could not possibly swim, and Bob was not likely to take the risk in his present condition. It might be impossible for him, too, in a few hours.
The Hunter decided to waste a little of Maeta's blood, and began to permit clots to form over her in juries. She might have to hold the rest of it in by her-self for a while.
Bob was back in a minute or two with a large fish which seemed to have been washed through the reef and stranded. It was in very unappetizing condition for a human being, but quite usable for the Hunter. He set it down beside the still, unconscious girl; the alien extruded tissue from her skin, enveloped the fish, and began salvaging amino adds and carbohydrates. It massed ten or twelve pounds, quite enough for immediate needs. The Hunter concentrated on his job, but tried to keep aware of the other two.
They found enough food to keep them going, though Bob was not at all fond of shellfish; but as the day wore on, the far more serious question of water began to loom.
There was no spring or rivulet on the little island. The few pools which existed had been filled by the spray, and were rapidly vanishing in any case. Bob considered complaining to be beneath him, but the child did not, and his whines about his thirst alternated with questions about when they could expect to be rescued.
Bob was optimistic about this. "They know we were out in Mae's canoe, or they could have found out soon enough when we didn't show up for supper. They'd know which way the wind would send us. The Dumbo was at Tahiti, but they'd call it down by radio this morning, and this island will be about the first place they'll look. If you want to be useful in stead of noisy, go and make a great big "S O S" on the beach-as big as you can fit between the coral and the lagoon. I expect they'll see us easily enough anyway, since there's nothing to hide us, but that would catch an eye from farther away."
The Hunter took Bob's words at their face value, since they seemed reasonable, and stopped worrying about water as far as the males were concerned; they could last for a day or so. Maeta, however, could not; she had lost far too much blood. She regained consciousness about noon, and the symbiont explained the situation to her, vibrating her hearing apparatus as he normally did Bob's. She took it calmly enough, but her first words were also about water. The Hunter admitted that none was available.
"Are you sure you can't do anything about that?" she asked. "I don't want to sound like a crybaby, but I don't know all about your powers. I know you can do fu
The Hunter admitted that this might be possible; there were organisms on his world which possessed desalting organs, though he knew only in a very general way how these worked.
"It will certainly take energy," the detective pointed out. "It's a pity that you, who need the water most be-cause of your blood loss, have such a poor food reserve. I did feed you a lot from the fish Bob brought, but most of it's already gone to repair and reconstruction. I'm not really sure I can do this desalting trick, since I've never had to do it before, but I'll try. Ask Bob to get you into the water."
"Even if you can't do it," she said, "it will be more comfortable there. It's pretty hot here on the sand. I remember long ago when I was working out on one of the reef islets at Ell, and the people who were sup posed to pick me up were late, I felt a lot better just by lying in the water while I waited. Maybe a person's skin can take water out of the ocean anyway."
The Hunter assured her that it could not-that water would normally tend to flow the other way, if at all, osmosis being what it was. To his surprise, she knew what he was talking about, and conceded the point, theoretically.
"But then I should have gotten thirstier that day, and not felt better," she remarked. The Hunter, willing to prolong any discussion to keep the girl's mind off her very genuine thirst, pointed out that the human species seemed to him a very suggestible one. She did not answer this; Bob had approached, and she was telling him what the Hunter had said about getting her into the water. Bob, of course, knew the osmosis situation equally well and rather doubted the practicality of the attempt, but decided not to argue with the Hunter. The water, fortunately, was only a few feet away, and with a little help from the girl her self he got her legs and feet immersed as much as the very shallow slope of the beach allowed. The Hunter sent out his own tissue through her skin, and tried to remember what he had learned about desalting glands.