“We’re not here just to look for teeth, Elaine,” he said abruptly. She stared at him expectantly.
“Ha’apu really thinks—I know it sounds absurd— that this monster is still swimming around somewhere to the east of here. Supposedly it’s taken two fishermen along with the front half of their boat. Probably a cleverly faked fraud the villagers have made up, for what purpose I don’t know yet. Commercial, probably.”
“I see,” she replied easily. “Be careful you don’t run over any of the local craft when we hit the beach.”
For all the surprise she’d shown you might have thought they were here for an evening feast and a casual swim in the little lagoon.
They were on the best of terms with the islanders right from the start. Poplar had rammed the runabout into a beached paopao, spilling them both into the shal-
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low water. Being men of the sea, the villagers thus felt the same sort of sympathy for Poplar that they’d have given any idiot.
When Ha’apu had finally managed to separate himself from his immediate family and Poplar and Elaine had dried out a little, the Matai beckoned them inland.
“The remains of the dugout are in front of my fale, Doctor.”
Tafahi was far from being a major island, but it was large enough to support a fair population. A televiskm-FM antenna poked its scarecrow shape above the tallest coconut palm. It jutted from an extra-large fale that served as combination school, church, and town hall.
If the damage to the outrigger had been faked, it was the product of experts. Poplar knelt, ran his hands over the torn edges of the opened hull. Great triangular gashes, each larger than his fist, showed clearly around the shredded edges. Apparently it had been hit —or the hit had been faked to indicate an attack from an angle slightly to port.