Hal Clement - Needle

It was just as well, though, to have actual proof that life was present rather than merely possible, and he was well satisfied to locate in the mud a number of small bivalve mollusks which, upon trial, proved quite edible. Realizing that it was night on this part of the planet, he decided to postpone further outside investigation until there was more light and turned his attention back to the remains of his ship. He had not expected the examination to turn up anything encouraging, but he got a certain glum feeling of accomplishment as he realized the completeness of the destruction. Solid metal parts in the engine room had changed shape under the stresses to which they had been subjected. The nearly solid conversion chamber of the main drive unit was flattened and twisted. There was no trace whatever of certain quartz-shelled gas tubes; they had evidently been pulverized by the shock and washed away by the water. No living creature handicapped by a definite shape and solid parts could have hoped to come through such a crash alive, no matter how well protected. The thought was some comfort; he had done his best for the petit even though that had not been sufficient.

Once satisfied that nothing usable remained in his ship, the Hunter decided no more could be done at the moment. He could not undertake really active work until he had a better supply of oxygen, which meant until he reached open air; and the lack of light was also a severe handicap. He relaxed, therefore, in the questionable shelter of the ruined hull and waited for the storm to end and the day to come. With light and calm water he felt that he could reach shore without assistance; the wave noise suggested breakers, which implied a beach at no great distance.

He lay there for several hours, and it occurred to him once that he might be on a planet which always kept the same hemisphere toward its sun; but he realized that in such a case the dark side would almost certainly be too cold for water to exist as a liquid. It seemed more probable that storm clouds were shutting out the daylight.

Ever since the ship had finally settled into the mud it had remained motionless. The disturbances overhead were reflected in currents and backwashes along the bottom which the Hunter could feel but which were quite unable to shift the half-buried mass of metal. Certain as he was that the hull was now solidly fixed in place, the castaway was suddenly startled when his shelter quivered as though to a heavy blow and changed position slightly.

Instantly he sent out an inquiring tentacle. He molded an eye at its tip, but the darkness was still intense, and he returned to strictly tactile exploration. Vibrations suggestive of a very rough skin scraping along the metal were coming to him, and abruptly something living ran into the extended limb. It demonstrated its sentient quality by promptly seizing the appendage in a mouth that seemed amazingly well furnished with saw-edged teeth.

The Hunter reacted normally, for him-that is, he allowed the portion of himself in direct contact with those unpleasant edges to relax into a semi-liquid condition, and at the same moment he sent more of his body flowing into the arm toward the strange creature. He was a being of quick decisions, and the evident size of the intruder had impelled him to a somewhat foolhardy act. He left the wrecked space ship entirely and sent his whole four pounds of jellylike flesh toward what he hoped would prove a more useful conveyance.

The shark-it was an eight-foot hammerhead-may have been surprised and was probably irritated, but in common with all its land it lacked the brains to be afraid. Its ugly jaws snapped hungrily at what at first seemed like satisfying solid flesh, only to have it give way before them like so much water. The Hunter made no attempt to avoid the teeth, since mechanical damage of that nature held no terrors for him, but he strenuously resisted the efforts of the fish to swallow that portion of his body already in its mouth. He had no intention of exposing himself to gastric juices, since he had no skin to resist their action even temporarily.

As the shark's activities grew more and more frantically vicious, he sent exploring pseudopods over the ugly rough-skinned form, and within a few moments discovered the five gill slits on each side of the creature's neck. That was enough. He no longer investigated; he acted, with a skill and precision born of long experience.

The Hunter was a metazoon-a many-celled creature, like a bird or a man-in spite of his apparent lack of structure. The individual cells of his body, however, were far smaller than those of most earthly creatures, comparing in size with the largest protein molecules. It was possible for him to construct from his tissues a limb, complete with muscles and sensory nerves, the whole structure fine enough to probe through the capillaries of a more orthodox creature without interfering seriously with its blood circulation. He had, therefore, no difficulty in insinuating himself into the shark's relatively huge body.

He avoided nerves and blood vessels for the moment and poured himself into such muscular and visceral interstices as he could locate. The shark calmed down at once after the thing in its mouth and on its body ceased sending tactile messages to its minute brain; its memory, to all intents and purposes, was nonexistent. For the Hunter, however, successful insterstition was only the beginning of a period of complicated activity.

First and most important, oxygen. There was enough of the precious element absorbed on the surfaces of his body cells for a few minutes of life at the most, but it could always be obtained in the body of a creature that also consumed oxygen; and the Hunter rapidly sent sub-microscopic appendages between the cells that formed the walls of blood vessels and began robbing the blood cells of their precious load. He needed but little, and on his home world he had lived in this manner for years within the body of an intelligent oxygen-breather, with the other's full knowledge and consent. He had more than paid for his keep.

The second need was vision. His host presumably possessed eyes, and with his oxygen supply assured the Hunter began to search for them. He could, of course, have sent enough of his own body out through the shark's skin to construct an organ of vision, but he might not have been able to avoid disturbing the creature by such an act. Besides, ready-made lenses were usually better than those he could make himself.

His search was interrupted before it had gone very far. The crash had, as he had deduced, occurred rather close to land; the encounter with the shark had taken place in quite shallow water. Sharks are not particularly fond of disturbance; it is hard to understand why this one had been so close to the surf. During the monster's struggle with the Hunter it had partly drifted and partly swum closer to the beach; and with its attention no longer taken up by the intruder, it tried to get back into deep water. The shark's continued frenzied activity, after the oxygen-theft system had been established, started a chain of events which caught the alien's attention.

The breathing system of a fish operates under a considerable disadvantage. The oxygen dissolved in water is never at a very high concentration, and a water-breathing creature, though it may be powerful and active, never has a really large reserve of the gas. The Hunter was not taking very much to keep alive, but he was trying to build up a reserve of his own as well; and with the shark working at its maximum energy output, the result was that its oxygen consumption was exceeding its intake. That, of course, had two effects: the monster's physical strength began to decline and the oxygen content of its blood to decrease. With the latter occurrence the Hunter almost unconsciously increased his drain on the system, thereby starting a vicious circle that could have only one ending.

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