Alice nodded uncomprehendingly. "Couldn't we—couldn't we get rid of the Hyra, Mac?" she asked timidly. On impulse she put out her hand and touched his sleeve. "We could think up some way of killing them if we tried, I guess. You're awfully smart. And then we could start back home. I'm so scared, honey. Those Hyra scare me so."
McFeen turned on her fiercely. "You blasted fool," he said, "don't you know how it is with us? Is something the matter with your head? I've been blacklisted. There isn't a place in the system I could get a job. There isn't a man in the system I could borrow money from. If this trip fails I'm sunk, done for, finished. Get rid of the Hyra! You brainless, blathering idiot! Do you want to starve?"
Alice shrank into herself. "But, Mac—"
"If we can get through to Varro with the Hyra we've got, the big bosula groups will make us rich. We can have everything we've ever wanted. Now shut up."
He went to a locker and began getting equipment out of it. Alice watched him, running her tongue over her swollen lips. "What are you going to do, Mac?" she asked at last.
"Rig up an electro-magnet around the Hyra," he said without turning. "It might help. It's got to help."
It didn't work. Whether or not McFeen's theory was at fault, the apparatus he rigged up around the cage of Hyra did no good. He tried chemical solutions, sprays, hard and soft radiations—nothing helped. He took to spending most of his time in two hold, trying desperately, with the help of the auto-weld, to keep the eroded patches on the hull under control. Without telling Alice, he made experiments designed to "get rid" of at least some of the Hyra. These too failed. The silicious, gelatinous bodies of the Hyra were extremely hard to destroy. Short of methods which would have endangered the whole ship, there was nothing he could do.
McFeen's natural moroseness was changing rapidly into an inflammable desperation when, quite abruptly, the increase of the Hyra stopped. At first he was incredulous. He tried over and over to count those in the cage, and gave up in disgust. More convincing was the evidence of the hull; no more eroded patches were appearing. For some twenty-four hours he held on to his incredulity; then he allowed himself to be conquered by relief.
He went to Alice with the news and found her as incredulous as he had been. He had to take her into two hold and show her the hull's gleaming, intact sides piece by piece before she would be convinced. Then she began to giggle in hysterical relief.
"Poor old Hyra," she said, "poor old things. I guess I was pretty mean about them, Mac. I'm sorry. Poor old things!" She looked toward the crowded Hyra cage and then, rather hastily, away again. "But everything's going to be all right now, isn't it, Mac? Now they've stopped increasing, everything's going to be all right."