The fish was his only hope, for he had not been able to locate another fish-mind of the same calibre. And now his savior was dying.
More carefully now, with his mind inside the amphibian, he examined the structure of its brain and nervous and muscular systems. Would it be possible to close that terrible wound?
He traced the nerves to the muscles of that portion of the body and skin. He tested and tried everything he could figure out.
Finally, Hanlon found the nerve-muscle combination that controlled exactly that portion of the body. He made it contract—and felt the muscle tighten about his fingertip. Gently he withdrew the latter from the wound, and made the muscles close it tightly and completely. It was necessary to keep doing it consciously, for the moment he relaxed his concentration it opened again.
He noted subconsciously that there had been no more shots for some time. "Maybe the guy's outta bullets," he thought. "Or perhaps they think I'm dead—can see the blood-stains and think they're mine. Or maybe," as an after-thought, "they've lost track of me in the dimness and the choppy waters."
Whatever the reason, Hanlon knew a deep thankfulness. He relaxed as best he could, shivering in the icy waters, still holding loosely onto the fin of the fish-thing.
He did not try to make it swim. In fact, he kept it from doing so. He would take time out to try to regain some of his own strength, while letting the fish overcome, if possible, some of its own weakness and shock from the pellet-wound.
Adwal Irad had been growing strangely worried. Acting on a compulsion he did not realize existed, he moved Admiral Newton to a different and, a certain being in a spaceship high above hoped, a more concealed place of imprisonment.