The passage might, as Maeta's brother had said, be wide enough for a small tanker, but it looked awkwardly narrow at the moment. It was straight, the girl knew-it would have been made so for the tankers if it had not been that way naturally-but unfortunately it was not quite in the wind's direction. Once into it, they would have to paddle hard to the right to avoid being blown into the left side of the channel. Maeta, to give them as much room as possible for leeway, cut as closely as she dared to the breakers on the right as they entered.
The reef was low, and gave no protection at all from the wind. It broke the waves, but this was worse than useless; instead of coming harmlessly under their stern and lifting the canoe for a moment, the water now was hurled skyward by the coral and shredded into spray by the wind. As the outrigger made its turn into the passage, everyone aboard was blinded, and the canoe itself began to fill rapidly.
"Both of you bail!" cried Maeta. "I'll do the paddling!"
She could not see where they were going, and her only way to maintain heading was to keep the impact of the spray on the right side of her back. No one with only human senses and muscles could have done much better.
They emerged from the worst of the spray to find themselves almost on the coral that rimmed the left side of the passage. Maeta made a frantic effort to sweep them still more to the right, but simply wasn't strong enough. They very nearly made it, but struck unyielding coral only a yard or two from the relative safety of the lagoon.
The main hull of the canoe may have survived briefly, but the three human bodies were hurled for ward. Bob struck Andre a split second before Maeta hurtled into both of them. There was another violent bump which they deduced later was the boy striking the bow of the canoe. The tangled bodies did a half somersault, found themselves either under water or in spray too dense to let them breathe, and felt one more violent shock. Then they were lying together on hard sand, spray still blowing over them.
Bob was conscious and not too badly hurt. The
Hunter had taken care, reflexively, of a number of small cuts from coral, but he had been cushioned to a large extent by the other two bodies. Neither of these was nearly as well off.
13. Reconstruction
Andre was unconscious, but had only minor visible cuts and scrapes. Though this would have been a good time to check for the presence of a symbiont, Bob paid little attention to him, because Maeta was in far worse condition. She had been underneath when they hit the coral. Deep cuts covered her back and hips, and much flesh had been torn from her right leg. Arterial blood was spurting over the sand, and being quickly diluted to invisibility by the spray.
Bob and his partner saw and evaluated the situation instantly, and reacted almost as promptly. The human member of the team grasped the injured leg just above the knee, pressed the heel of his hand against the most prominent source of bleeding, and snapped to his partner, "Get in there and earn your living! I'll hold on long enough to be sure you're there, but give me a twinge, in the palm of the hand ten seconds or so before you're completely out of me."
The Hunter, just for a moment, thought of objecting on the grounds that Bob was his primary responsibility and was also injured. He even started to mention this, though he had already started the transfer and knew what Bob's answer would be. He was right.
"Stop dithering," snarled the young man. "None of these nicks will let me bleed to death even if my clot ting isn't up to par, and she'll be dead in five minutes if you don't take care of her. I can't hold all this bleed ing; I haven’t enough hands. I assume you've already taken care of any infecting organisms that got into me, and even if you haven't you can come back, or partly back, to do it later. And don't waste time going just through my hand-I know what you look like, and it's years too late to shock me. Hurry up!"
The alien obeyed, and within half a minute had the worst of the girl's bleeding stopped. It took four or five more to complete the transfer, partly because he found it difficult to pull himself away from the regions of Bob's injuries. It took a surprising effort to force intelligence to overcome habit; he was somewhat addicted to Bob, in a sense, too.
He was relieved, though quite surprised, to find that Maeta had no fractures, though several fragments of coral had broken off at the impact and were deeply imbedded in the injured leg. Her unconsciousness was due entirely to loss of blood, and he had to take rapid steps to counteract shock.
What she really needed most was replacement ma terial-food. The easiest way to provide this would have been for the Hunter to catch and digest some thing, and release amino acids into her circulatory system. If there had been a dead fish or crab beside her it would have helped greatly. There wasn't, how ever, and with the wind and spray still lashing the islet on which they were stranded, there would be little chance for Bob to find anything even if he knew of the need.
Bob himself at the moment was more concerned with the small boy. He examined the limp form as carefully as possible, ascertained that at least none of the major limbs was fractured, and straightened him out into a more comfortable position. There was a little bleeding from relatively minor nicks and scrapes, but this was already stopping. Bob's was not, but he refused to worry about it yet. His broken arm seemed to be no worse than it bad been.
While he was considering what to do, the shadow of the tank gradually extended across the islet. Even Bob, used to New England temperatures, felt a new chill in his wet clothes, and realized that something would have to be done for the night if the injured ones were not to die of exposure. Tropical Pacific water and tropical Pacific air are not very cold, but they are below human body temperature and can carry heat from a human body faster than that body can replace it.
For warmth, all Bob could think of was a hole in the sand. He scooped out one big enough for the three of them and covered them all, fairly completely, with more sand. This was wet with the spray, of course, but water did not move through it very fast; once it was warm, it stayed so. The combined heat loss of the three bodies dropped to a level their combined metabolisms-the Hunter's didn't count significantly-could offset.
The detective took advantage of the situation to send a pseudopod into Bob's ear and tell him about Maeta's real need for food. It was a slightly risky action, but he could have spared the tissue if Bob had moved inopportunely. He could probably, for that matter, have recovered it.
With much less danger he explored the unconscious Andre and established that there was no symbiont in the child's body; the boy was genuinely plump. He also had a broken collar bone which Bob had missed, but there was nothing the Hunter could do about this. Setting it was far beyond his strength. The boy regained consciousness during the night. He was no longer self-possessed; he wept loudly and almost continuously, partly from pain and partly from terror. For the first time since the fire accident which Jenny had tried to use as a lesson, he was realizing that really serious things, not just minor pain that a "green thing" could take care of, could happen to him. Bob, wide awake because of his own discomfort, sympathized, yet he also hoped that the event would prove educational for Andre.
The night proved long even for the Hunter, who had plenty to keep him from boredom. It took several hours to work the fragments of coral out of Maeta's tissue without doing even more damage. He could do nothing to speed the formation of new blood cells or other tissue until food was available, but he held the torn flesh in, position so that healing need not involve extensive bridges of scar tissue. As long as the young woman remained unconscious, nothing needed to be done about pain, and she was unlikely to wake up for many hours with so much blood gone. The alien was ready for it when it should happen, how ever.