At the camp, rifles and revolvers were hastily wiped clean of cosmoline
and passed around. Binoculars were taken out and adjusted. Cartridges
were divided up, and the supply of knives, machetes and hatchets
quickly disappeared. The expedition's two walkie-talkies were unpacked,
and the men prepared to move out in search of Drake. Then they saw him,
swimming vigorously around the edge of the island.
He waded ashore, tired but uninjured. He and the others put their
information together and reached some unhappy conclusions.
"Do you mean to say," Cable demanded, "that a _bug_ is doing all this?"
"It looks that way," Sorensen said. "We have to assume that it's able
to exercise some kind of thought control. Maybe hypnotic or telepathic."
"It has to sting first," Drake said. "That's what it did with Oro."
"I just can't imagine a scorpion doing all that," Recetich said.
"It's not a scorpion," Drake said. "I saw it close up. It's got a tail
like a scorpion, but its head is damn near four times as big, and its
body is different. Up close, it doesn't look like anything you ever saw
before."
"Do you think it's native to this island?" asked Monty Byrnes, a
treasure-seeker from Indianapolis.
"I doubt it," Drake said. "If it is, why did it leave us and the
animals alone for three months?"
"That's right," Sorensen said. "All our troubles began just after the
schooner came. The schooner must have brought it from somewhere....
Hey!"
"What is it?" Drake asked.
"Remember that scorpion the skipper tried to squash? It came out of the
detector crate. Do you think it could be the same one?"
Drake shrugged his shoulders. "Could be. Seems to me our problem right
now isn't finding out where it came from. We have to figure out what to
do about it."
"If it can control animals," Byrnes said, "I wonder if it can control
men."
* * * * *
They were all silent. They had moved into a circle near the copra shed,
and while they talked they watched the jungle for any sign of insect or
animal life.