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“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.”