Seever accepted the change of subject. "It'll need size, too, to carry air pumps and hoses and all that stuff," he said.

"Maybe not. Dad's going to try to find free-diving gear-the sort of stuff that fellow Cousteau has been developing. I was pricing it back in the States, but couldn't afford it or I'd have brought a set with me."

"Maybe the company has some."

"Dad was going to check that. Even if it does, though, I'll have trouble using their stuff full time."

"You'll have trouble doing anything full time except work for PFI. I may be able to clear you from heavy muscle work or fix you up so you can do it, but I don't see you spending eight hours a day poking around on the ocean bottom outside the reef. Thorvaldsen is very pro basic research, but your project would hardly fit anything he's likely to have in mind."

The Hunter and his host had talked this situation over at great length, and Bob was able to respond promptly.

"We've had some ideas on that. Remember, I have an even better certainty that it can be done about both fusion power and faster-than-light travel than Toke had about biological engineering back in the twenties, when he started PFL. I'm as certain about them as the Russians were about the nuclear bomb-they didn't have to steal anything; when we used it, we'd given them free the only bit of knowledge whose lack might have kept them from making their own. If I could convince Old Toke that I really had something in either line, he'd probably back me carte blanche for basic research. There are only two troubles. One is that I'll have to solve my medical difficulties first, before I'll really have much to show him; and second, I can't honestly tell him either that I know how the Hunter's people do these things, or that they start giving up technical information hand over fist after they've cured me. In fact, as the Hunter admits, they'd probably be very cagey about letting me or any other human being learn many details for a generation or so, even after they open Earth up to symbiosis, if they do. I don't like the idea of deceiving the old guy for several reasons, not the least of which is my doubt that I'd get away with it.

"Of course, this just may be my uneasiness about telling anyone about the Hunter and his people any-way; every time I think of it, I think of the word spreading that R. N. Kinnaird has lost his marbles."

"You know I could prove your story," Seever pointed out. "I did to your parents."

"You'd be taking a chance. Not everyone has been cured of synthetic pneumonia by a lump of green jelly, and not everyone who learned about the jelly would react in a nice, friendly, rational manner. I don't want to sound too paranoid, but I can see people who learned about the Hunter resenting my advantages."

"Your present 'advantages' are hardly targets of jealousy."

"We're assuming my problems are going to be solved-remember? I'm trying to take the long view. Let's make the spreading of the word to the upper echelons the very last string to the bow, and concentrate on finding a decent boat."

"With no diving gear at all, even the self-contained sort you mentioned what hurry is there for a boat? Surface diving off the reef won't let you search below three or four fathoms, and even that would take roughly forever," Seever pointed out.

"Of course. And I couldn't do much in one day without wearing myself out, unless you can do something about these weakness attacks. That wasn't the idea. Do you remember that piece of metal the fellows and I found out on one of the reef islands, the one that almost got Kenny Rice drowned?"

"I remember your telling me about it. You said it was a generator casing or something like that from one of the ships. I never saw it myself."

"That's it, we want to find it again, and let the Hunter check it over more carefully. He thinks he can get some idea of how far the other one traveled with it. He'll try to move it around himself under water to get some idea of the effort involved, maybe even backtrack. That thing certainly wouldn't have dragged very freely through the coral."

"Won't the coral have grown enough in the last seven or eight years to make that sort of detailed study pretty futile?"

"Maybe, but the Hunter thinks it's worth doing, and I agree. At least it will help us narrow down possibilities ties until we get the diving gear. Of course, any other ideas which anyone gets will be welcome, too." I

Seever sighed. "All right," he agreed, "let's get down to my strictly medical part of the problem. Let me take a blood sample, not that I have the lab equipment I'd like, and I'll see if I can get any ideas from what I don't find in you." His expression was clearly pessimistic. "There's one sort of known illness which vaguely resembles what you describe, and I've heard of a drug which might possibly help the symptoms. Just to make you happy, there's no claim it will touch the cause, which no one has yet identified. Of course, I don't have the drug here."

"Where would you have to send for it?" asked Bob. The States?"

"Japan would probably be faster."

"Is it something you ever use? I mean, will anyone here get suspicious if you order it?"

"Don't get paranoid, youngster. No one ever checks on what I order. I'm my whole department. There's no one on Ell who would react to the name 'neostigmine' even if he saw the order, except maybe Old Toke himself. If you really want to worry, devote your thoughts to the fact that I'm only 'guessing it may help. Maybe I'll get more ideas from your blood, but don't count on it. Even though the Hunter is a detective, not a biochemist, and has grown up with a nonhuman species, he must know more about human physiology and biochemistry than I do. If he tells you to do anything, do it; don't wait for my advice."

The Hunter knew that Seever was right, but rather, regretted his having brought up the point. Bob's morale was already quite low enough, and keeping him alive was already hard enough. Trying, to keep the young chemist's hopes up was complicated by his intelligence; anything encouraging, to be worth, saying, had to be reasonable. He and the Hunter had talked, long before and very briefly, of the possibility of finding the fugitive's ship and learning enough from it to let them build a larger one capable of taking Bob himself to Castor. Bob had dismissed the notion out of hand; it had been perfectly obvious to him that the job would have been analogous to a Cro-Magnon man's trying to copy an airplane engine. It was not a matter of native intelligence, but of the culture's back-ground knowledge.

"I'll take blood from inside the right elbow, Hunter, if you want to get out of the way," Seever said as he approached with a large syringe. "I won't bother with the ligature if you'll supply a little back pressure on the vein."

The Hunter agreed, Bob nodded, and seconds later the doctor had his sample.

"What now?" he asked. "Have you started to feel that fatigue yet today?"

"Nope, not yet. All I've done is bike down here, of course."

"What are you going to do now? Start looking for a boat, or entertain your sister?"

"She's in school for a few more hours, thank goodness. It's a pity vacation starts so soon. I'm just as bothered how to keep her little nose out of this project as I am about keeping it secret from the rest of the island-I suppose those amount to the same thing; if she knows, she'll tell her friends. However, we'll play that by ear. The first problem is a boat."

"What happened to the one your bunch used to have?"

"It sort of died of old age. The last time it started to fall apart, none of us had the time to fix it."

"Well, I have a suggestion, but you may not like it."

"What?"

"Jenny has a boat-more of a canoe, really-that she might be willing to lend."

"Without being told the whole story? I can't believe it."