Later in the afternoon, after their work was done and he had some free time, Hanlon thought more concisely about the matter. If he could help any, he would make a friend of Inver, he felt sure. More than ever he liked the young fellow, whom he decided was a real man in every respect.
But he must be careful not to give himself away—not to display knowledge Estrellans did not know.
Suddenly he recalled the shooting of the fish, and what he had been able to do there. "I wonder if I can help this healing in any way, with my mind?" he pondered.
The other grooms, including Endar, had left the stables for the bunkhouse, so Hanlon was there alone. He sat down near the injured caval's stall, insinuated his mind into that of the animal, and began studying its brain, nerves and muscles. After considerable intensive study he found the way to make its muscles relax—he had already long since established a nerve block so that the caval felt no pain. Now he learned to make those muscles and nerves contract or relax, even to the point of almost causing a temporary paralysis.
Deeper and ever deeper he probed into its physical structure. Especially now, he tried to trace the nervous system connecting with its various glands, looking for confirmation or refutation of a startling concept he had glimpsed.
After much study and experimentation by the trial and error method, he was beginning to find it possible to partially control the increase or decrease of flow of the secretions of its glands—but far from perfectly. For it was an intricate and involved method, necessitating as it did the locating of the nerves that led to and controlled those glands, and then learning how to activate or inhibit them—nor could he be sure it was not chance only the few times he made them operate as he wished.
Yet he watched carefully to see the results of the activations of each gland, and finally believed he had found the one that was the master gland in charge of the body's healing functions. He now worked on this, trying to direct the added secretions through the blood stream and into the caval's injured parts.
Soon, even though his forcings were spasmodic and infrequent, he could begin to perceive that this was actually the way it should be done—the wounded ligaments and flesh and muscles showed signs of starting to heal a bit faster than nature was doing it.
His deep concentration was rudely broken by a heavy hand on his shoulder, and an angry voice saying, "What d'you think you're doing here?"
Looking up, he saw that it was Endar. Hanlon recalled the portion of his mind from that of the caval.