The Smoke Ring

Chapter Seven The Honey Hornets

from the Citizens Tree cassettes:

CARLOT WAS WATCHING OVER THEIR SHOULDERS.

“You use—”

“Prikazyvat End log,” said Jeffer.

“ — the same dates we do?”

“Why not?”

“Well, how do you know?” Carlot demanded. “Years, you just watch for the sun to go behind Voy, but what about days? We sleep a couple of days out of five, right? But maybe you lose count—”

“Who cares?” Clave said. “Who knows how many days there are in a year? It depends on where you are.”

Jeffer summoned up numbers on the panel. “The CARM logs a standard day, about four and a half per sleep. We used to keep marks on sticks in the Scientist’s hut. How do you keep time?”

Carlot said, “The Admiralty posts the time.”

Booce laughed. “They must get it the same way! The Library looks a lot like this panel, Jeffer. Like somebody ripped out this part of the CARM.”

“Keys like this too?”

“I wasn’t close enough to see. They don’t let ordinary crew near it. Let’s see…in the crossyear ceremony Radyo Mattson did the talking, but there was a Navy officer standing in front of the Library, and his hands moved…”

And Kendy watched them all.

The CARM autopilot heard everything. Every ten hours and a little, it squirted its records at Discipline. Kendy sorted the conversations for what he could use.

Two CARM autopilots, separated for five hundred and thirty-two years and eleven months, were both keeping Smoke Ring time, with Discipline’s arrival set at zero.

Interesting. The mutineers must have adjusted them after it was certain that they would never return. They had severed relations with the past, with Kendy, with Earth, with the State itself.

Yet they used mutiny as an obscenity. Puzzling.

The CARM flew east, airspeed seventy-one kph, partially fueled, carrying water that would become fuel. Solar collector efficiency was running at fifty-two percent, the collectors partially shadowed by the old pipe moored to the hull.

It was a liquid oxygen pipe ripped from a CARM. Many CARMs must have been dismantled when they stopped working. The Admiralty “Library” was certainly the control panel from a ruined CARM; but was it still functional?

The cabin interior was offensively dirty. Kendy detected traces of old meals eaten aboard; feathers and bird shit from the turkey roundup ten years back; the black clay that had returned the same trip; and mud repeatedly expelled from the water tank. Dirt was not dangerous, only aesthetically distressing. Kendy foresaw no problems other than those of microsociology.

He was on course.

Humankind was scattered. No telling how far they had spread through the Smoke Ring. They had settled cottoncandy jungles and the tufts of integral trees; he knew of four tiny civilizations outside the L4 point. But the Admiralty seemed to be the densest gathering, the most numerous, the best organized: the political entity most suited to become the heart of an expanding empire.

It would not resemble the State at first. Conditions were fantastically different. Never mind. Give them communications, gather them into one political group. Then shape it.

He must know more. Hearsay from a family of wandering loggers wasn’t good enough. The Admiralty “Library,” that would tell him how to proceed next…but he already knew that he must eventually contact the officers themselves.

Somehow the CARM must be moved into the Clump.

Jeffer had seemed to have matters well in hand. The effects of mutiny on Citizens Tree did not concern Kendy …but Clave had ended a mutiny by joining it! Now he must persuade Jeffer and Clave both. But Kendy couldn’t talk to Clave. Exposing Jeffer’s secret would lose Jeffer’s trust.

It was precisely the kind of problem a Checker enjoyed most.

For now Kendy watched six savages in a recording made over the past ten hours. They had much to teach him.

Booce speaking: “We own — owned our own ship. I suppose that made us richer than most. I inherited Logbearer from my father, and I made my first trips with him. Ryllin was another logger’s daughter, and she was used to the life. We had four daughters and a few lost ones out of maybe twenty pregnancies, all while hauling logs. I’ve become a good maternity doctor…” The cassette ended.

Men had changed in the Smoke Ring.

Pregnancy was easy in low gravity. Women became pregnant many times during their lifetimes.

Infant mortality (“lost ones”) was high, perhaps around sixty percent; the natives seemed to take it for granted. Discipline had carried no diseases. Yet the growth of bones and organs was altered by altered gravity. Some children could not digest food. Some grew strangely, until their kidneys or livers or hearts or intestines would no longer work because of their shape.

The environment was user-friendly for those who survived childhood. Kendy’s citizens came in odd shapes. Kendy caught a reference to Merril Quinn and learned that she had died six years ago, in early middle age. Merril had had no legs. She had fought against London Tree, and not as a cripple.

Distorted children had wandered through the CARM to be photographed. Ryllin Serjent had an awesomely long neck, quite lovely and graceful and fragile looking. Carlot’s legs…Kendy wished he could see her walk or run.

They matured more slowly. Carlot claimed fourteen and a half years; she would be twenty by Earth’s reckoning. But she looked no more than fifteen.

Men had not evolved for the Smoke Ring. Infant mortality must have been ghastly among the original crew. Five hundred years of natural selection was taking care of that. As with the cats a few generations back: the near future should see an impressive population explosion.

Kendy would guide the civilization that resulted. He had been right to move now.

The CARM was coming back into range. Kendy’s telscope array picked it up falling east and out, slowing.

In present time, Booce and Carlot and Rather were on watch while the others slept. The CARM moved through a patch of thin fog. Fog didn’t block the CARM’s senses. Kendy noticed the anomaly some time before the crew did.

He saw birds of unfamiliar type. They had lungs (the CARM’s sonar could see the triple cavity), but they had retained part of what must once have been an exoskeleton: an oval of hard sky-blue shell covered one side. Fourteen of these birds, each about the mass of a boar pig, were strung in a line across the sky. They were folded into themselves, fins and wings and heads folded against that oval of shell. Sky-blue blobs, cool in infrared, comatose or dead.

Booce had noticed now. He shook Jeffer awake. “A whole flock of dead birds. What killed them?”

“Nothing that can touch us with the airlock closed.”

Jeffer’s fingers danced. “Outside air’s okay, nothing poisonous. Well, treefodder!”

“What?”

“The temperature. It’s cold out there.”

Kendy had already found the source of the cold.

The present-time transmission showed Jeffer easing the CARM alongside one of the big birds. The other crew were in and around the airlock. Debby sent a tethered crossbow bolt into the bird. It twitched. She loosed another…

…while Kendy set a blinking light around the image of the pond.

Only Jeffer was there to see it. He said softly, “Stet.”

They had pulled the bird aboard. Clave said, “Well, it’s dead now.”

“I’ve got something,” Jeffer said. “Clave, there’s a pond in that dense cloud. Do you see anything odd about it?”

“No life around it. That cloud’s awfully thick for being so small. What does it mean?”

“I don’t know.”

Ice. The pond was a core of foamy ice within a shell of meltwater. Ice was rare within the Smoke Ring. The pond was huge now, several hundred thousand tons, but Kendy guessed that it had been bigger yet. A tremendous pond must have been flung out of the Smoke Ring by a gravity-assist from Gold. In the near-vacuum of the gas torus it would have boiled and frozen at the same time, and later fallen back, reduced by evaporation, reduced further by reentry heat. Now it cooled the sky around it as it melted. Kendy could hear the pings as bubbles of near-vacuum crumpled within the ice core.

“I don’t like it here,” Booce said. “It’s too strange.”

“Your wish is granted. Strap the bird down and take your seats.” Jeffer waited while they did that, then fired the aft attitude jets. The CARM surged away.

Carlot pointed into the aft view. “Look!”

The shieldbirds tumbled in the CARM’s hot wake. One by one they fluttered, then spread a rainbow of wings and tails and fluffy feathers. They basked in the heat, catching as much of it as they could. Now their shells were no bigger in proportion than a warrior’s shield. As Discipline moved out of range, the birds were lining up and flying west, putting distance between themselves and the melting glacier.

“There’s no point picking out a tree till you’ve got honey,” Booce said. “You can find a tree a hundred klomters from the Clump and still go half a thousand klomters to find your sting jungle.”

Their catch was moored by cargo hooks, divested of skin and guts and some of the scarlet meat. Booce was holding raw bird flesh sliced thin and rolled around a stalk of lemon fern. He used it to point into the dorsal view.

“And that is a sting jungle. The green dot, straight out.”

“Stet.” Jeffer tapped attitude jets to life. The CARM turned. Carlot squeaked and grabbed Rather, startling him awake. Booce dropped his meal to snatch at a seat back.

Jeffer hid a grin. These sophisticated Admiralty folk found the CARM as unsettling as Jeffer’s own citizens did.

He aimed the CARM east of Booce’s green dot. East takes you out… “Half a day and we’ll have honey. What else do we need?”

“Some way to collect it,” Booce answered.

“We’ll put Rather in the silver suit. No treefeeding insect will sting him through that!”

“Right. Better than armor.”

“Tell us about the Admiralty,” Clave said.

Booce closed his eyes to think. Then: “You’re lonely out here. There’s too much space. Everything is dense in the Clump. Think of a seed pod, and think of the Admiralty as the shell. There are more people in the Market alone, any time of day or night, than you’ve ever seen.

“We pull the logs back to the Clump over the course of a year or two, and we arrange an auction in the Market. Twice we’ve been attacked by happyfeet bandits. Once we got back just as another log was being docked, and we got half what we expected for the wood. But over the years we put enough money together to buy my retailer’s license. This was going to be our last trip. We were going to settle in the Clump, and I’d work the wood myself and sell finished planks and burl, while Ryllin set about finding good husbands for our daughters. That was the point: they’re reaching that age…”

Clave asked, “Can we really make the Admiralty believe we’re loggers?”

“We’ll be loggers,” Booce said. “Rebuilding Logbearer’s no problem. We should have more weapons in case happyfeet come by, and it all has to look like Admiralty gear…and we still won’t look like a typical logging family. But we don’t have to, because I’ve got my retailer’s license.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means we don’t have to sell the log straight off. The Navy ships will escort us in and give us a berth. I can set up shop in the Market and sell wood, and hire anyone I like; which means that the rest of you can be workers hired off a happyfeet jungle, or bought as copsiks. Some of the happyfeet keep copsiks. The Admiralty doesn’t, so you’d be free if I bought you.”

“Free, but not citizens.”

“Right.”

“Why can’t you have hired us off a tree?”

Booce thought about it, and smiled. “You have a gift, Clave. Tell as much of the truth as possible. Debby, you’re from Carther States, directly. You were stranded in the sky, you made your way to a tree, and now you want to live in a jungle again. Okay, Debby?”

Debby’s lips were moving as she silently repeated the details. “Stet.”

“We’ll have to say Citizens Tree is close to the Clump. Otherwise we got home too fast, and we’d have to explain about the CARM.”

Clave nodded. “So then we sell the log. How?”

“Set up in the Market and announce an auction. Buy your earthlife seeds with the money and go home. The Admiralty’ll take half in taxes—”

Clave exclaimed, “Half?”

Jeffer said, “Taxes?”

“Taxes,” Booce said, “is the money the Admiralty takes to run itself. Everybody pays, but the rich pay more. A good log is wealth. For the price of the CARM you could be very rich indeed.”

“The CARM is what makes us what we are. We won’t risk that,” Clave said.

“Then don’t take it into the Clump. The Navy won’t want something that powerful floating around. They’ll pay well, but they’ll buy it whether or not you’re selling.”

Jeffer tapped the forward jets awake. They were pulling near the sting jungle.

Certain mooring loops fit the silver suit too perfectly, as if it were their specific purpose. Four sets. For four suits?

Jeffer pulled it loose. “The silver suit is yours, Rather. I’m going to teach you everything about it.”

Rather had seen the silver suit as a mark of rank. He hadn’t thought of it as an obligation. “Did Mark show you how to work it?”

“I’ve watched him. Lift this latch. Take the head and turn it till it stops. Pull up. Turn it the other way. Lift. Now this latch. Now pull this down…pull it apart… good.”

The suit looked like the flayed skin of a dwarf.

Legs first, then arms. Duck under the neck ring. Rather closed the sliding catches, the latches. “Do I have to close the head?”

“Cover yourself. You don’t want to be stung,” Booce said. “Those little mutineers can sting a moby to death.”

Rather closed the headpiece. He said, “The air’s getting stale.”

They couldn’t hear him. He couldn’t really suffocate this fast, could he?

Jeffer lifted the headpiece. “Listen first. Put your hand here.” He guided Rather’s fingers to a row of square buttons on the outside of the neck ring. He pushed one (colored lights lit below Rather’s chin), and another (air jetted inward from all around the neck ring). He used Rather’s fingertip to roll a small wheel back and forth (the air jets grew weaker, then stronger). “Close the helmet.”

Rather did as Jeffer had shown him. Air from the neck ring hissed around his head.

Clave was saying something inaudible. Jeffer guided Rather’s fingertip to another tiny wheel, and suddenly Clave’s voice was a roar. “ — use up the air? Does that thing have to be closed? We’re not going back out of the Smoke Ring again, are we?”

“Let’s hope not. Rather, you’re leaking. Close that flap at your chest. The way Booce talks about honey hornets, you don’t want anything open.”

Rather felt it out, then used finger pressure to close a snap he’d missed.

Now he was being shown little wheels on his chest.

He moved the left one experimentally. His left foot kicked upward and he was wheeling in the air, banging his head and elbow, snatching for a mooring loop while his other hand rolled the wheel back to zero. He banged both knees before he could stop his spin.

Clave and Debbie were helpless with laughter. Jeffer had jumped clear. “Leave those alone while you’re inside! You fly with those. Now I’m going to walk you out the airlock. Play around with the jets. If you get in trouble we’ll come after you.”

Rather braced himself in the airlock, feeling imprisoned. The sting jungle was a fat, fluffy ring half a klomter across, dark green around the outside, slowly rotating. The inner rim flamed in orange and scarlet. Rather, looking out through the airlock, saw motion there like jittery fog.

Clave and Booce eased him into the sky.

They couldn’t have any idea what the boy was going through, Kendy thought. How would they? None could fly the ancient pressure suit. Rather would have to be an agoraphile and an acrophile both.

Kendy had explained the pressure suit with diagrams and pointers; but had he shown Jeffer how to replenish the suit’s oxygen and fuel? Replay that memory…no. Do that soon, if it wasn’t already too late. What Kendy was watching was already two hours past.

But the CARM was in range again, and in present time the boy was aboard, and out of the suit, and still alive.

Kendy kept the tape running:

Debby and Clave hovered a safe distance away. The boy floundered. He was all over the sky, spinning, faster …slower, tilting himself back and sideways to slow the spin…learning to move arms and legs to change his attitude. He found the throttle dials and turned both jets to minimum. He circled the CARM, then arced off toward the green doughnut that Booce had made his target.

Jeffer spoke through the suit radio. “Not yet. Rather. Come back. You don’t have anything to carry the, the, Booce?”

“Honey.”

“The honey. Booce, what does he need?”

“That’s what the sacks are for.”

Rather oriented toward the CARM, increased the thrust, doubled on himself for two seconds, then arched backward as he fell toward the airlock. Fir sprayed from his ankles, arcing forward. Nice, Kendy thought. Of course he wasn’t a complete novice. He’d flown with those giant swim-fin fans.

The boy left his helmet open (but didn’t turn off the air jets!). Debby began strapping twelve coarse sacks to his back, got yelled at, and strapped them to his chest instead, where he could reach them. She used several loops of line. The savages were never without line, Kendy recalled. Good practice in a free-fall environment.

In present time Rather was leaving the airlock again, and the signal was fading. Kendy waited.

The great green torus became landscape as Rather came near. It was darker than integral tree foliage, and fluffy, finely divided to catch as much sunlight as possible. Scarlet and orange peeked over the curve, becoming clearer. Orange hom shapes, rocket-nostril shapes, quite pretty. Thousands of them.

The jittering mist cleared too: not steam roiled by wind, but myriads of particles swirling round the blossoms, dipping in and out. Now the motes abandoned the horn shapes and streamed toward Rather.

They were all around him, a humming black cloud of rage.

“Scientist? I’m in the center. I can hardly see. The honey hornets are—”

“Look for red,” said Booce’s voice.

Orange and scarlet. Orange horns the size of drinking gourds, and scarlet of another shape. Rather jetted closer.

The honey hornets came with him. Thousands of thumb-sized birds: tiny harpoon for a nose, invisible blur of wing behind. He could hear the angry buzz through his helmet. “I’ve got a red thing…Booce, it’s a kind of a sloppy polyhedron half a meter through, covered with lots of little triangle holes. It’s growing between these horn shapes.”

“Those are flowers. It didn’t grow there, it’s attached. Did you take a knife?”

“No. Wait a breath, there’s a matchet on mv leg. It must be Mark’s.”

“Cut the honeypod loose and put the sack around it. Tie the neck shut.”

Rather swung the matchet behind the scarlet polyhedron. The silver suit made all movements stiff. Presently the honeypod was floating loose. Rather pulled a sack free, opened the mouth, and swept it around the honeypod.

“Got it? Tie the bag shut. Done?”

“Done. There’s sticky red stuff all over my gloves.”

“Stet. Now keep doing that till you run out of sacks. Don’t lick the honey.”

“With my helmet closed?”

“Don’t ever lick honey. It’s suicide.”

Chapter Eight The Honey Track

from the Citizens Tree cassettes, year 1426 State:

“YOU SEE THE PROBLEM? TOO MUCH OF IT IS GIBBERish,” Jeffer told the children. Rather and Carlot were nodding, but their eyes were glassy. “You can look up some of the words. You can guess a little. Goldblatt’s World is Gold. There’s a file on Earth and Neptune and the rest of the solar system, but it’s hard going. Roche tides, Roche Limit — that seems to be a balance point between tide and some other force, maybe the same force that changes your orbit if you pass too close to Gold. Fusion is power: it makes the Sun bum, and Discipline ran on fusion. Oort cloud, magnetic field, supernova — Lawri and I never figured those out.”

He turned to Booce. “The kids need this, but I hate to make you sit through it again at your age—”

Booce’s eyes were glassy too. “No, no, no. This is all new to me.”

“Didn’t you have classes? There’s the Library—”

“For officer’s kids only,” Booce said brusquely. “Go on with this. What’s eccentric?”

“That’s a round path that isn’t a circle. It goes out and in. Booce, am I committing a crime if I teach you and Carlot these things?”

“But I want to learn!”

“Shush, Carlot. It’s never come up before,” Booce said. “You’re not showing us the Library, after all.”

Carlot demanded, “Scientist, what’s the point in stopping now?”

Jeffer laughed. He tapped, and the window was restored. The Clump was nearer now, and a score of parallel dashes lay across the CARM’s path. “You’re right. Carlot, but the lesson’s over anyway. We’re getting too close.”

Debby answered with a raspberry.

“Booce?” Jeffer said. “Any special favorites?”

“The smallest, I’d think, but let’s have a better look.”

Booce disengaged his seat tethers and moved aft. “Jeffer, would you open those doors?”

“Will do.” He did. “Booce, don’t you trust the windows?”

“I prefer my eyes. Swing us around, will you?” He braced himself in the airlock. Others of the crew had followed him.

Jeffer began the maneuver. In the forward view, now moving into the port view, one of the trees had begun blinking: a green halo going on, off, on, off.

Nobody was near. Jeffer whispered, “Why?”

Now a point far in along the trunk was doing the blinking. Then that stopped—

An arm stabbed past Jeffer’s ear, and he had to repress a shriek. “There,” Booce said, pointing at one of the trees. “Thirty klomters, and it seems healthy.”

“What about this one, Booce?” Jeffer tapped the tree that had blinked at him.

“Nothing wrong with it. It’s bigger, twice the mass. Take us longer to get it to the Market, but of course there’d be more wood too, and there’s the CARM… Why that one?”

“A hunch. You’ve got no objection?”

Now Clave was behind him too. “Jeffer, are you playing dominance games?”

“?”

“I’m the Chairman, you captain the CARM, Booce is the logger. Booce chooses the tree.”

Jeffer repressed a sigh. “Yes, Chairman. Booce?”

Booce pointed to Jeffer’s selection. “That one.”

Ten klomters above the tuft, the wood of the trunk had grown to enclose a node of foreign matter. Jeffer saw Booce catch his daughter’s eye as Carlot was about to speak. She held her silence.

At the tree midpoint Jeffer nosed the CARM against the trunk. He ran the attitude jets while his crew pounded spikes into the bark to mark a rectangle the size of the CARM’s bow. The CARM drifted while they chopped out a dock with matchets.

Even on this younger tree, the bark was a meter thick.

They made life easier for themselves by chopping along cracks. The five of them lifting together could rip great mattresses of bark away from the wood beneath, then saw off sections. Booce and Carlot used the saw, then let others take over until they got the hang of it.

Booce and Carlot rejoined Jeffer in the CARM. Booce said, “They seem to be doing all right.”

“But it’s scarred,” Carlot objected.

“And how much wood will that cost us?”

She shrugged. “Five percent? And weren’t we in a hurry to get home?”

Booce was smiling. “Exactly. Jeffer, why this tree?”

“You’ll be painting a line of honey down the trunk, stet? Have a look at that scar.”

“Can you tell me what I’m supposed to find?”

“No, I can’t.”

“Jeffer the Scientist, Citizens Tree gave us shelter and a place among you. We’re grateful. I will not quarrel with any decision you make. You won’t need to test it again.”

Jeffer could feel his ears and cheeks burning. “If that scar isn’t more interesting than you expect, you can count on it that I won’t make a fool of myself twice. Stet?”

“Stet. I won’t raise this subject with the Chairman, ever.”

“You are kind. What’s next?”

“The honey line.”

In the cabin the roar of the main drive was like a great beast heard far away; but outside the airlock the roar was deafening. A translucent blue flame reached out from the CARM’s main rocket nostril. Warmth backwashed against the bark.

Carlot’s eyes were big with fear. Rather pulled at her arm to set her kicking toward the in tuft, and followed, with Booce following him.

They stopped where the noise had decreased somewhat. The rough bark itself absorbed sound. Booce screamed, “That noise is beyond belief! What is that damn CARM, a ship from the stars?”

“Jeffer says it rode here on the starship. My father never saw Discipline.” What Rather said would be true whoever his father was. “But he’s seen the stars. They’re real.”

“I’m afraid of it. I admit it. Look, the noise is scaring the bugs out of the bark! Let’s get to work.”

Booce used a branchwood matchet to open a hole in one of the honeypots. The interior was partitioned; the cells held red, sticky honey. Booce used the blade to paint it on the bark.

“You’ll find a few hornets still in there,” he told Rather. “They try to sting through the sack if you give them a few days to get restless, and then they die. But don’t count on it. Don’t let one get at you. Now you paint dabs a couple of meters apart. Closer, you waste honey. Farther apart, the bugs lose their way.”

Rather had thought he was a climber, but this was different. He had problems keeping up. He was almost lost among the sacks he was carrying. Booce and Carlot climbed head down; they would have left him behind if Booce had not been stopping to paint the trunk.

They took a breather when the sun was at nadir and the shadows had become confusing. The sun was passing closer to Voy as the year waned.

A day later they took a longer rest. “This is the part I like best,” Booce said. “We’re usually in too much of a hurry. This time your CARM is already pushing us home. We can take our time, do what we like!”

“Like what?”

“I’ll show you as we go.” Booce began tearing up sheets of bark greater than a man, mooring them edgewise against the bare wood. When he had them arrayed he set them alight.

The smoke tended to stay where it formed. Booce moored a four-kigram slab of shellbird meat in the cloud. They broiled smaller steaks on their matchets, closer to the fire, and ate them still hot.

“The smoked meat will keep till we’re down,” Booce said. “But there are other things on the trunk. You’ve never climbed?”

“When we were children we did a little climbing, but just on the lower trunk. We weren’t supposed to go more than a klomter up. If you fell, the foliage would catch you. Any higher, we rode the elevator.”

They slept carefully tethered in cracks in the bark.

Sometimes, for moments, the roar of the CARM could be heard above the wind. A dark cloud had formed above them and was gradually drifting down.

The bugs of the tree had found the honey.

They breakfasted on smoked bird. Then Carlot did the painting while Booce carried the food.

The sun circled them, once and again. Always they stopped when the shadows were pointing straight out.

Water was beginning to flow sluggishly in alongside their path. “Bugs like it damp,” Booce said. “The bark’s wet enough for them around the midpoint, but not lower down. You have to paint down the east side, alongside the waterfall, or they won’t come. Also the trunk blocks the wind. You don’t want the bugs blown away.”

There was fan fungus like so many pallid hands reaching from the bark. Carlot showed Rather how to tear the red fringe off before eating the white interior. It was bland, almost tasteless, but went well enough with the strongly flavored smoked meat.

With lunch came entertainment: a gust of roses on the wind. The stems were four meters long. Dark-red blossoms fragile as tissue paper pointed straight toward Voy, soaking up blue Voy-light. Rather had never seen the like.

He and Carlot watched the roses blowing east until they were out of sight.

Rather took his turn painting. Booce kept a close watch, but it seemed simple enough. A dab the size of a baby’s hand; the next dab two meters lower.

A dark cloud flowed after them down the trunk.

The wind grew stronger, though the trunk blocked most of it. The growing tide made climbing easier for Rather. The water flowed more strongly. It was cleaner than pond water, cleaner than the water that reached the basin in the commons. It tasted wonderful, and painting was hard, thirsty work.

In two days. Rather’s arm was one long cramp.

He was too tired to help with dinner. Booce managed alone. He found shelled things hiding in the bark and pulled them loose. Roasted, their white flesh made a fine meal.

Again they wedged themselves along a wide crack in the bark, with Carlot between the men. There were dangers on the trunk.

Rather’s aches kept him awake. He presently noticed Carlot’s feet stirring restlessly. “Carlot?”

He would not have spoken twice, but she answered at once. “Can’t sleep?”

“No. My father told me about climbing up a tree. When they got to the top the tree came apart.”

“That’s one reason we don’t just chop off the tuft or burn it loose. This is easier, but it also gets the bugs away from the midpoint. When the tree dies, they’re not there to eat it apart.”

“How do you get rid of the out tuft?”

“Oh, some of the bugs won’t follow the honey. They’ll be breeding while we travel. When we get close to the Clump we’ll paint another trail out.”

“Why are you awake?”

“Tide. I have trouble sleeping in tide.” But her voice trailed off raggedly. He stopped talking, and presently slept.

After breakfast Booce said, “There’s something I want to see on the west side of the trunk. Leave the gear here.”

Climbing was easy if you didn’t have to paint too. In less than a day they had half circled the trunk. Above them by a quarter klomter, the bark bulged like a wave surging across a pond. They climbed toward that.

“Jeffer wanted us to look at this,” Booce told them. “Something must have hit the trunk while it was younger. The wood’sgrown around it.”

The wood bulged to hide it like some secret treasure.

Rather was almost inside the crater before he could see anything. Carlot, ahead of him, had stopped. Booce was at his shoulder. Rather heard him gasp.

Carlot said, “Metal!”

“I must apologize to Jeffer,” Booce said. “Metal indeed! The tree may consider it poisonous; see how reluctant the wood is to touch it! But the Admiralty won’t think so.”

Rather asked, “We want this?”

“We do. Secret auction, I think.” Booce was deep into the crater, running his hands over the reddish-black surface of the metal. “Six or eight thousand kilos. No point in trying to move it. We’ll have to show it to the Navy anyway, unless…hmm.”

Carlot looked at her father. “We don’t want to attract attention.”

“Exactly. I have to think about this. Well, my merry crew, I think we’ve earned a holiday.”

They climbed back around the trunk, taking their time.

Booce knew just where to find the shelled burrowers.

After lunch they spent a day tethered in the now strongly running waterfall, first washing each other and squeezing honey out of their clothing, then wrestling. They still got some painting in before sleeptime.

In twenty days they had reached the wild tuft.

Rather had never appreciated foliage before. It had surrounded him all his life. He gorged, savoring the taste and texture. “You love it too,” he observed. “Carlot, Booce, why don’t you live in a tree?”

“Oh, there’s foliage in the Clump too,” Carlot said.

“All kinds. Rather, I can’t wait to show you!”

They slept in foliage. Rather slept like a dead man, from exhaustion and the familiar sensation of sleeping under tide, in a womb of soft foliage. He woke early, feeling wonderful.

Carlot lay not far from her father. Her face was griefstricken. She thrashed in slow motion, unconsciously trying to hold herself against the tide.

Rather took her hand, gently. “Hey. Nightmare?”

Her eyes opened. “Oh. Rather. I was trying to get to Wend. She was screaming and trying to fly with just her bare feet—” She shook her head violently and sat up.

“Something I have to tell you.”

“Okay.”

“When we were swimming. Father noticed you were up.”

“Up? Oh, up. You’re very pretty,” Rather said a little awkwardly.

“We can’t make babies.”

“We can’t? Hey, the jungle giants and the London Tree citizens didn’t have any trouble. I’m a dwarf, but—”

Carlot laughed. “Father says we can’t. He wants me to marry another logger. I think he wants it to be Raff Belmy, from Woodsman, but definitely another logger. I thought I’d better say something before…well, before you got to thinking.”

“Thinking. Well, it’s too late, then.”

“It’s all right, then?”

“Sure. Go back to sleep.” The truth was that Rather was almost relieved. Carlot with her clothes off made his head swim and his blood boil: an uncomfortable feeling.

And Booce didn’t want his daughter to love a dwarf savage. Should he resent that? Somehow he didn’t.

Breakfast was more foliage. Then Booce gave Rather the matchet. “Pry the bark off. We want a complete ring of bare wood half a meter across. We’ll paint along behind you.”

Three and a half days later he was halfway around.

The bark was soft, easy to pry loose, but the trunk must have been a good two klomters in circumference. They returned to the wild tuft to sleep and eat. Rather was one vast ache, but it still felt good to be sleeping in tide, in foliage.

After breakfast Rather was still on the matchet. The Serjents seemed to share Citizens Tree’s faith in a dwarf’s superior strength. He finished the job before they slept again. They were ahead of schedule. Jeffer would not bring the CARM down for them for another six or seven days.

From the base of the trunk they watched a moby attack the bugs descending along the honey track. Mobies normally skimmed clouds of bugs from the sky for their food. This was a tremendous creature, mostly mouth and fins, riding the wind toward the trunk and the bug-swarm at a hundred meters per breath. It realized its mistake just in time. It thrashed madly, gaping, irresistibly comical, as the wind hurled it toward the tree. Its flank smashed loose a shower of bark as it passed.

The bugs descended like a cloud of charcoal dust. They reached the ring of painted bare wood and spread to north and south. The cloud condensed, growing darker, swarming-a few ce’meters out from the bark.

“Carlot. Do you like it on the tree?”

She nodded, watching the bugs.

“Booce? I’ve watched you. You like it here.”

“I love it.”

“Then how can you kill trees?”

Booce shrugged. “There are plenty of trees.”

Chapter Nine The Rocket

from Logbearer’s log. Captain Booce Serjent speaking:

THE CARM PICKED THEM UP ON THE BRANCH AND REturned to its dock with the cabin half filled with foliage. Rather suspected that they would not eat foliage again, nor sleep in decent tide, for a long time.

He heard the argument when Clave wanted to restart the motor. “There’s no point,” Jeffer told him. “We’d be using fuel to fight wind. We’re doing fine.”

Booce added his voice to Jeffer’s. “We’ll sail even further in after the tuft severs. Leave us something to breathe!”

Had anyone else seen Clave glance aft? Clave had taken less than a breath to read the faces of his crew, but Rather had caught it.

Not so long ago, far away in Citizens Tree, Gavving had spoken thus to his eldest son: “You’re a citizen now. Watch Clave during a meeting. He leads where we’ll go. He always has. You don’t have to go Clave’s way just because Clave says so…”

The motor stayed off.

The tree moved ponderously west and in. Its westward motion slowed over several days. The days were shorter, and Voy had come nearer. The smallest children learned never to look directly at Voy; but Rather could tell. In the corner of his eye the violet-white pinpoint was more intense, closer and smaller, with less sky to blur and distort it.

It took six days to make a sleep; then seven. Time whirled around them until they stopped caring. The journey had become more important than their destination.

The crew lived on the bark, all but Jeffer. They found the CARM too strange. Even Rather left the CARM after a few sleeps. He had learned that he liked strangeness; but he sensed that Jeffer saw him as an intruder. The Scientist captains the CARM.

Debby and Booce disappeared down the trunk to monitor the progress of the bugs. They returned with smoked dumbo meat and two cured skins, which Booce shaped into armor that looked remarkably like the silver suit.

“We won’t use it this trip, but it’s standard gear. The Navy will expect us to have it.”

A grove of integral tree sproutlings passed Voy-ward of the tree, the first the citizens had ever seen. They were a few scores of meters long, tufted only at the out end.

“The seeds drop away, out and in,” Booce told them. “After they sprout, they have to sail back to the median. They’ll grow the other tuft when there’s enough to feed them.”

The day came when Carlot called her father and pointed outward. “Isn’t that a pod grove?”

Backlit by the sun, the cluster might almost have been a miniature tree grove hundreds of klomters out. “Small …yes. Too far, though.”

“Why?” Debby asked.

“Well, it’d take too long to…I’d forgotten the CARM. Let’s ask Jeffer.”

Jeffer summoned up his windows-within-windows. “Sure, we can get there. Clave, want to take a trip?”

“Can we find our way back? The tree looks big when you’re tied to it, but from six hundred klomters away—”

“Trust me.”

Forty plants grew in a loose cluster, all much alike.

From a fibrous cup that faced west, a long, limp leaf trailed eastward, waving sluggishly in the wind. A thick vine reached a hundred meters out from the boll, ending in a kind of collar. Each collar held a brown egg-shape.

“Those are jet pods,” Debby realized suddenly. “We used to ride them in Carther States.”

Booce directed Rather to one of the largest plants. Carlot and Debby hung back. Rather the Silver Man circled the pod, cautious in the face of a new thing: a fibrous brown egg as big as the common room in his father’s hut.

There was tide enough to pull the vine taut. Smaller pods grew in a spiral around the stem end, ranging from fistsized to man-sized. Replacements, he surmised, that would grow after the ripe one dropped away.

Satisfied, Rather wrapped his legs around the stem for leverage and swung his matchet.

The sound blasted his whole body. The sky spun round him. Tide was pulling him apart. His fingers and toes felt like they were inflating as spin pulled blood into them.

Against the tide that was pulling him rigid, Rather forced his legs vertical to his torso, pulled an arm against his chest, and fired the ankle jets. The spinning sky slowed. He aimed his feet against the spin and brought it to a stop.

Battered and deafened, he pulled his helmet open to hear what Booce was shouting at him.

“That one was ripe! Try another plant!”

Rather jetted toward the grove. Booce guided him from a distance. “No, that one’s stunted. We want a big one.”

“Aren’t the big ones likely to be riper?”

“That’s why we use armor! Try there—”

The pod exploded, blowing him west and away, while seeds sponged off the silver suit. The spin was less this time; the blow had been more direct. Rather opened his helmet. “I think I had more fun on the tree!”

“It’s too wet here. The pods like to spread their seeds when there’s water around. Try that one. Close your helmet!”

Rather seriously considered telling the alien merchant to go feed himself to the tree. But he was already moving toward a third vine. There isn’t any other Silver Man, he thought. He swung viciously at the base of the pod. And what am I, if I’m not the Silver Man?

The pod dropped out and away. Carlot and Debby flapped after it.

The next one didn’t explode either. Rather chased the seed pod down, with Booce chasing him. They braced their shoulders against the pod and started back. They were near the CARM when Rather’s jets died.

He fiddled with the throttle wheels. Nothing.

“Booce! Don’t leave me!”

“What’s wrong?”

“The suit won’t move!”

Booce laughed. “Are we going to have to put wings on that thing?”

“Can you push me—”

“Can and will. Here comes Debby. I’ll push you and the ladies can have the pods.” Booce seemed indecently cheerful, and Rather was a long time understanding why. Booce had found a flaw in Citizens Tree’s intimidating science.

“You ran out of fuel, that’s all,” Jeffer told him. “See that little red light below your chin?”

“It was on when I started out. I don’t know what it means.”

“Means you’re out of hydrogen. There must be a way to refuel the suit. I’ll search the cassettes. If I can’t find anything we’ll have to ask Mark, after this is all over. Calm, now! We’ve got pods and we’ve got honey. Maybe we won’t need the silver suit again.”

A forty-klomter-long tree is hard to lose from six hundred klomters away. Jeffer had no trouble bringing them home.

Booce attacked the first pod gingerly, hacking at the stem with the matchet, flinching back at each blow. At the sixth blow the pod suddenly spewed foggy air under terrific pressure. Booce threw himself into the sky. He flapped back, staying well clear.

He opened the other pod in the same cautious fashion. Then he and Carlot sawed it in half. The inside was lined with fist-sized puffballs, each with a dangling tendril. Booce scraped these away.

He sawed the stem off the first pod, leaving a small hole. He shaved the edges until the hole was just smaller than the metal pipe, and quit for dinner.

They resumed work after breakfast. It took four of them to shove the ends of the pipe into the holes in both pods.

Clave asked, “Now how do you get water in there?”

“Punch a little hole in the other end of the tank. Put the pipe in a’pond and suck. You need good lungs to be a logger.”

“We’re too far in to find many ponds.”

“I know. Usually we fuel Logbearer before we go to work on the tree. But, dammit, we’ve got the CARM, and there’ll be a pond somewhere, and Logbearer is whole again! Except for the lines. And cabins. We’ll need wood to build cabins.”

“We’ll go for wood after the next sleep,” Jeffer said. “The out branch, I think. The in branch may be about to fall off.”

“No. Another thirty days at least.”

Carlot said, “Father—”

“Don’t trust that,” Booce said instantly. “We’ll use the out branch.”

“You’re the logger. What changed your mind?”

Booce sighed. “I was guessing. I don’t really know when the in branch will fall off. Jeffer, there’s likely to be a shock when the branch tears loose. Stay aboard the CARM. Stay strapped in when you sleep. Leave the motor off.”

“Stet. Will the rest of you be okay on the trunk?”

“As long as we keep our wings handy. Always have your wings in reach…always. But you should be in the CARM in case we need rescue.”

The steam rocket still required attention. Booce and Carlot festooned the water tank with lines and wove a braid of lines around the bow end. “We’ll moor the cabins here. Other than that…I still don’t know what we’re going to use for sikenwire. There has to be some way to hold the coals in place.”

Clave had a suggestion. “We could arrive crippled. Get a push from the CARM to drift the log into range, then signal for help somehow. Tell the Navy we lost our sikenwire, got home by luck.”

“Mmm…maybe. I’d look like a fool, but maybe. I just don’t want to be in too much of a hurry.” He stopped abruptly. Then he said, “Ryllin and the girls, they — we were in a hurry to get back to the Admiralty. We started the rocket running before the tuft dropped off.”

“What’s — ?”

“Did I tell you you’re rich?”

“I don’t know what it means,” Clave said.

“That wart on the trunk is thousands of kilos of metal. With metal you can buy anything that’s for sale in the Market. It also makes us a target. Someone might try to steal it.”

“Good news and bad news.”

“Right. We’ll set up shop to sell the wood, and take our time selling the metal. No hurry.”

Food had grown short again. Debby and Clave flew in along the trunk until they found a covey of flashers. With the trunk as a backstop they fired their full complement of arrows and shot half a dozen of the small birds. It took them six days.

They built a fire on the trunk to cook the birds. Logbearer’s crew was ready for a feast.

Booce was the exception. He ate little. He was uncharacteristically silent, his eyes on the fire, until Carlot said, “Dad? Twenty, twenty-five days?”

“About that,” Booce said. Then: “I guessed last time. I should be in the tuft watching the bugs.”

“Dad, you couldn’t warn us from down there anyway.”

“I could start climbing ten or fifteen days early…”

“Dad—”

“I’m glad we don’t have the rocket running. We were running the rocket when it happened.”

The silence stretched. Debby asked, “What happened?”

Booce told it.

Booce was fast asleep when the cabin’s yielding wooden wall slammed into his face and chest. His grunt of surprise was lost among feminine shrieks. He was reaching for his wings before his eyes were fully open.

The women were a flurry of action around him, snatching for their wings, moving out. Ryllin reached the door, looked about her, then immediately turned toward a violet-white glare that hadn’t been there when they’d gone to sleep. Carlot and Karilly followed. Wend hadn’t found her wings. She was near tears as she searched.

Booce left her. Nothing terrible could happen to Wend aboard Logbearer, and this would teach her always to know where her wings were.

He saw it all at a glance:

Logbearer was moored against a vast wall of bark, the east side of the trunk. Coals in their retaining net burned bright orange along the middle length of the pipe. The nozzle cone pointed east toward the Clump. Some meters from the cone, live steam condensed into a white stream klomters long.

The Clump was a distant whori of white-and-gray storm, with the misty white tube of the Smoke Ring converging beyond and below it. The eye might follow that white line down the sky…and where the tree converged to a point, there was Voy.

The glare-white pinpoint had been masked by the in tuft when Booce went to sleep. The in tuft was gone. It had torn loose days before Booce expected it. Freed from its weight, the tree had lurched outward. Booce had guessed as much; now he could see it.

In toward Voy, a fluttering black silhouette was haloed in blue light.

Mishael had been outside on watch. The lurch had torn her loose. She was far in along the trunk, flapping outand-east to bring her out, just as she’d been taught. But he’d never taught her to lose one of her wings!

Ryllin and the girls flew toward her: foreshortened black silhouettes. They made slow progress. In-and-west would have taken them straight in, but the west was a wall of black bark.

Booce followed slowly. Mishael seemed to have it under control.

With the in tuft gone the center of mass was higher on the tree. Tide was pulling Booce away from the tree, and in. A new breeze announced that the tree was under sail, accelerated by the wind on the out tuft. He kick-flapped to adjust. Ryllin and the girls had nearly reached Mishael. Karilly looked up and flapped to turn. She was shouting at him. The wind tore her voice away. He tried to hear.

She kicked toward him, screaming—

Booce turned toward Logbearer, too late.

The lurch and the breeze and Booce’s inattention, these had caused the disaster. A flurry of coals had been jarred loose from the sikenwire cage. Irradiated by the pipefire, the bark had been drying and warming for tens of days. It had been ready to ignite.

Under normal circumstances an integral tree is in equilibrium with the wind. A steady gale blows at each tuft, and no wind blows at its center. Air must move past a fire to keep it burning. But a tree under sail is moving, and there is wind. Coals reached the bark and blazed up.

Booce flapped hard toward a Logbearer already embedded in flame.

He hadn’t panicked then. There was a hose, and pressure in the water tank, for the fire would be heating it. He would use the hose to spray water and steam on the fire. Booce breathed deeply as he flew, hyperoxygenating. He’d hold his breath while he worked. The danger was that he might breathe flame.

Wend crawled gingerly through the cabin door. Her feet were wingless, her eyes and mouth wide in terror. She saw Booce, gathered herself, and leapt toward him, into the sky.

The water tank ruptured.

Booce saw Wend blown outward in a wind of live steam laced with boiling water. He flapped to catch her, hearing his own howl. She was flying past him. He stretched impossibly and caught her bare ankle, and felt the scalded skin slide loose beneath his hand.

There were comforting hands on Booce, on his shoulders and arm and ankle, for touching was the way of Citizens Tree. Rather hung back, uncertain, reluctant to take such liberties. Booce was a mature adult.

Where was Carlot?

Booce was hoarse, for he had been shouting, howling; but he sounded almost calm now. “Everything’s blurred after that…Lawri the Scientist was feeding me foliage and I couldn’t remember anything. It all came back a bit at a time.”

Rather eased away from the cookfire and flew toward Voy. Behind him Booce was speaking mostly to Debby, who was rubbing his temples.

“It never happened before…not to us. Sometimes a logging concern just disappears. We wonder why. We never find out. For Ryllin, for the girls, I should give it up. But logging’s all I know…”

The memories must have been too much for Carlot. If she wanted to hide…a crack in the bark? Bark walls would muffle the agony in her father’s voice. She might have gone in any direction…but the cracks ran out and in. Try in.

Rather coasted above the bark. He didn’t mind being seen. She’d have kept going until she couldn’t hear the words.

“Go away.”

He somersaulted and kicked air to stop himself. “Carlot?”

No answer. It had come from his left, from the north. There: scarlet showed in a crack. He said, “I wouldn’t have found you if you’d kept your mouth shut.”

She was pulled into herself, like the shellbirds around the ice pond. Her wings were on her back. He fluttered into the crack beside her but didn’t touch her. “It must have been bad.”

“It was bad.”

He tried again. “Want a hug?”

“I want Wend back.”

“You have to learn to think of her as a lost one.”

“She was fifteen!”

(“She wasn’t even two!” Jill had wailed after a sister sickened and died. Ilsa had hugged her daughter frequently. When Ilsa died at thirty-one, it had been no better for Jill.)

(Age didn’t matter. Touching helped.) Rather worked his fingers into her hair and began a scalp massage. She didn’t move. He said, “I’ve had brothers and sisters die. We all have. You forget.”

She’d removed her sleeves after the fluff died. The skin of her arms was smooth and richly dark, and she suddenly wriggled about and had him in a deathgrip.

Rotating, they drifted in the sky. Rather still wore his wings; his instincts told him to return to the tree. He held her.

She wasn’t sobbing. Presently she pulled her chin off his shoulder and kissed him.

He asked, “Better?”

“Yes. I don’t want to go back.”

“Will you be all right here? Shall I stay?” Half a dozen finger cacti drifted east, less than a klomter distant. A windborne finger cactus could be lethal. These were only drifting, and drifting away at that…but you never stopped looking for danger.

Carlot hadn’t answered. He said, “Your father might get upset if we stay here too long—”

“Father’s made mistakes before.”

“He tells you who to make babies with, though. Mishael had to ask, and she’s older than you.”

“Do you want to go?”

“…No.”

“I thought hard before I took my clothes off in front of you.”

He remembered swimming in the waterfall, and laughed. “I noticed. But Booce was there.”

She freed him, and all the muscles in his body jumped. Loose in the sky! But he had wings. Carlot drifted, rotating away from him…donning her wings? No: she pulled her tunic over her head, then rolled her pants off and balled them up together.

He looked. Now she was tying her wings to her ankles. Her clothes too. Nudity was not strange to him, but this was different. Carlot was long, one and a half times his own height. Her breasts were perfect cones, an abrupt break in the long smooth stretch of her torso. Rather resisted the urge to touch her. He spoke hurriedly, before he could lose that fight. “Now, what would happen if we really did make a baby? Could you still marry anyone you want to?”

She said, “It’s all right. We just have to watch what time we do this.”

“Yeah?” Rather had never heard anything about how not to make a baby. “When can you do it?”

“Now.”

“I’ve never done this before.” He swam toward her.

“I’ll show you. Take these off.”

Chapter Ten Secrets

from the Citizens Tree cassettes, year 31 SM:

RATHER WOKE BECAUSE HIS EYES BURNED.

They were filled with tears. Blinking did no good. The tears were under his eyelids, filling them. The pain had him whimpering. He tried lifting his eyelids with his fingertips to let the water out. That hurt. Mopping his eyes with his tunic brought agony. He couldn’t see!

“Carlot?” He remembered that she wasn’t with him. They had not returned to the cookfire until all were asleep except Debby, on watch. She had winked at them… they had separated…

Sleep, then daggers in the eyes. He would not have wanted Carlot to see him like this. But he was alone, and blind!

“Clave? Debby? Anyone?”

Rather could feel bark surrounding him. Yell again?

He’d yelled when the silver suit’s jets gave out. The memory embarrassed him. He’d had gritty eyes before, when he was tired…but not like this! “Someone help me! I can’t see!”

“Rather?”

“Debby? My eyes are on fire and I don’t know why!”

Her hands were cool and rough on his cheeks. “Open them.”

“I can’t…” He got them open, just a slit for just a moment. The light was agony.

“They’re bright red. I’ll get Clave. Don’t loose your tether.”

“No way!”

The pain grew no worse and no better. It was a long time before he heard voices.

“Rather?”

“Clave! What’s wrong with me?”

Long fingers held his head still; thumbs lifted his eyelids. “You’re not blind. You’re not dying either. It’s an allergy attack. Your father used to get this way when Dalton-Quinn Tree was dying of the drought. We were too far in toward Voy. Dry, thin air and not enough sleep.”

“What do I do?”

“Gavving mostly suffered. In half a day he’d be over it. Don’t rub your eyes. Let me think.”

It seemed to hurt less now that he knew it would go away. It hadn’t killed Gavving. And if they both had the same allergy, then — He’s really my father! I should tell him! Mother too…and Mark? But the pain was more urgent. “Clave, if this happens when I don’t sleep, and I can’t sleep because it hurts too much…Clave?”

His line went slack. “I’ve thought of something. Just relax. I’ll tow you.”

“Kendy for the State—”

“Kendy? Treefodder! It’s been a long time.”

“That’s not my fault, Jeffer. Every time our orbits have matched, there has been someone else in the CARM. Where are they now? I don’t find them outside either.”

“They’re asleep. I was too. Everyone but me sleeps on the bark. Kendy, how do I refuel the silver suit?”

Diagrams appeared: CARM and silver suit, side by side. Parts of the schematics blinked blue as Kendy talked. Jeffer saw that tanks along the calves of the silver suit were what made the legs so bulky. “Hydrogen here, oxygen here. There’s hose under these little panels. The spigots are recessed, here and here, under these covers on the hull. You open them from the control panel. Bring up the schematic, then twist above these dots, this way.”

An arrowhead circled.

“Good.”

“Remember. Oxygen line from here to here. Hydrogen from here to here. Getting it wrong may cause an explosion.”

“What keeps the gases cold?”

“In a pressure suit? No, the gases are just under pressure. That’s why the tanks go dry so fast.” Kendy’s face was back in the bow window. “Did you find six metric tons of metal ore?”

“Yes. Thanks. Booce says it makes us rich.”

“Good. I see you’ve been building a steam rocket. Is it finished?”

“Booce still has to build cabins. We’ll go to the out branch for the wood. He still doesn’t know how to hold the pipefire—”

“Here’s the CARM,” a voice said. “Feel the airiock walls? Treefodder!”

Clave was in the airiock with Rather behind him. The display went blank, a breath too late.

Clave got his mouth closed. “First things first. Scientist, Rather’s having an allergy attack. You remember how Gavving was during the drought? Rather, you need thick wet air. So, we’ll close the airiock and turn up the pressure and humi…um, wetness. Do it, Jeffer.”

Jeffer let his fingers dance. Close both doors, humidity up, pressure up. Pressure in his ears. He worked his jaw. He untethered himself and moved aft.

Rather’s eyelids were puffy; the eyes were scarlet. Jeffer said, “It goes away after a while no matter what you do. This might help. Or not. Work your jaw to pop your ears.” He turned to Clave. “Well?”

“How long has the Checker been back?”

“Since the Serjents reached the trunk.”

“Why didn’t you tell someone? Me!”

“Let’s go outside.”

He opened the inner airiock door and gestured Clave in. From the look of him Clave might explode any minute; but he came. They were nose to nose while the inner door closed and the outer opened.

“Keeps the pressure in,” Jeffer said. “That’s why it’s called airiock.” He kicked out into the sky.

Clave followed on mismatched wings. “You’re stalling.”

“No. Kendy can’t reach us except when the sun is dead east, but anything that goes on in the CARM, Kendy hears it later. He can’t hear us now.”

“He wouldn’t have heard us in the Citizens Tree commons!”

“Yeah. Clave, the truth is that I didn’t trust anyone else to talk to Kendy. I don’t trust Kendy, and he’s very persuasive.”

“Am I too fluff-brained to say no?”

“Clave…all right, so I was arrogant and wrongheaded. Now let’s go tell the Serjents.”

“Uh—”

“Hey, citizens!” It wasn’t really a shout, but Clave’s long fingers closed over Jeffer’s face. After a moment the palm lifted to expose an evil grin.

Clave said, “You still should have told me. Rather didn’t see anything. Did you tell Lawri?”

“No.”

“What does Kendy want?”

“He wants the Clump. He wants to know everything about the Clump.”

“This trip was his idea, wasn’t it?”

“I told you he’s persuasive. Clave, we have to tell Rather about this before he talks to anyone. He already knows too much. Nobody else, right?”

“Right. Then I want to talk to Kendy.”

“He comes in range every four days lately. Four days from now, when the sun is dead east.”

Jeffer found Rather in the Scientist’s seat, hands poised above the controls. “Freeze,” he said. “Now move away.”

Rather obeyed. “I was trying to open the airlock.”

“Use the little lights on the doors. Rather, any citizen knows better than to fiddle with the controls. Once I nearly killed us all with one ill-considered tap of one finger. But I don’t have to explain that to you. I only have to say, Jeffer captains the CARM, keep your tree-feeding hands off the controls. Stet?”

“Stet. Sorry, Jeffer. I’ve seen you open the doors, and I was feeling shut in.”

“How are your eyes?”

“Okay.”

He held still while Jeffer looked. Rather’s eyes were pink and the lids were puffy, but he didn’t blink. “From now on you sleep in the CARM with me. I should have someone here anyway in case we get shaken up when the tuft tears loose.”

Rather had already summoned the blue diagram of the CARM’s cabin. Jeffer opened his fingers over the lines that represented the airlock. The doors opened behind him. He said, “Help me get the hose linked up. Then take it outside.”

Booce met them at the door. “I’ll take that, Rather. We’re filling the rocket. How are you doing?”

“Better.”

Debby, Clave, and Carlot waited at the rocket. Booce and Rather crawled along the bark, dragging the hose after them. Booce spoke quietly. “Did you know that Carlot was a crossyear child?”

“No. What’s it mean? The crossyear is when Voy crosses the sun—”

“Children born at the crossyear are unpredictable. They can go any way at all. Rather, I’m trying to tell you that you and Carlot are not to marry. She’ll marry a logger.”

Rather didn’t answer. Carlot’s expression was unreadable until the moment Booce’s back was turned. Then she winked. Rather felt his face glowing.

To work. Booce forced the hose into the rocket nozzle.

“Jeffer says he can fill it without anyone sucking on the end. Clave, give us a hand here. Now push. Jeffer! Ready?”

The three were braced to hold the hose in place. Clave said, “There’s a signal Jeffer uses that tells the CARM to push what’s in the water tank back out. It gets rid of mud—”

The hose writhed. Water sprayed out around the join. Rather could feel the power of the water trying to tear the hose out of his hands.

They held it, held it…and suddenly the hose bucked loose and thrashed like a live thing. Rather dodged and was flailing in the sky. Booce bellowed, “Enough! Jeffer, it’s full!”

They were soaked before the hose went limp. Jeffer called cheerily from the airlock. “When do we see a test?”

Booce looked embarrassed. “I still don’t know how to substitute for the sikenwire. We’ve got time—”

“Yeah. Well, we’ve used up too much water, one way and another. I want to refuel the CARM. Clave, Rather, come along. We won’t be long, Booce. The rest of you can start dinner.”

The three of them returned to the CARM. Clave asked, “What do we do for a pump?”

Jeffer was smiling. “I’ve thought of something. There’s a pond thirty klomters out and a little east…”

The sun wasn’t much past zenith. A pinpoint diamond blazed next to it, out and a bit west: sunlight focused through a pond. Jeffer set the CARM moving straight out.

The out tuft ran at them and past them. The pond wasn’t far beyond, and not much bigger than the CARM. Jeffer set the forward jets firing when they were close. They came to a stop just in from the water globule.

Jeffer opened the airlock. He told Rather, “Get into your wings and follow us. Bring the silver suit. We’ll refuel the jets.”

Jeffer led them outside and around to the CARM’s dorsal surface. Rather followed, tugging the silver suit by its limp wrist. There Jeffer took the suit from him. He watched as Jeffer produced narrow hoses from under a hatch…

Clave said, “Forget the suit for a while. Let Jeffer do it. Rather, you missed something during the allergy attack. What do you think happened then?”

“All I know is, you caught Jeffer at something.”

Jeffer grunted. He had the hoses hooked to holes in the suit’s legs.

Clave said, “You missed your chance to see Sharls Davis Kendy. You’ll get it again in, what, half a day?”

Jeffer looked at the sun: past two o’clock, a few degrees out from west. “A little more than that. The thing is, this is a secret, Rather.”

“Everybody’s got secrets…Kendy? The Checker?”

“Tell him, Jeffer.”

Jeffer said, “ Kendy’s back. He pointed out the Wart for us. He talked to me the day we rescued the Serjents. We’ve talked since. I gather it costs him something, maybe shortens his life, and he still can’t reach us more than once every two days.”

Rather said, “The tales Mark and Gavving tell, Kendy would have killed you all if he’d known you stole the CARM.”

“I don’t think he could have done that,” Jeffer said, “but he might have wanted to. We stole the CARM to get away from London Tree. We had Lawri tied to her seat, and Mark the Silver Man too. Kendy might have called it mutiny. You know some of this.”

Rather said, “You were copsiks. They owned you. I never understood how you could live with Lawri and Mark after that.”

Clave said, “What were we supposed to do, throw them into the sky? They earned their citizenship. Rather. When the air was leaking out of the CARM, Lawri found the way to plug the leak. When Kendy was asking questions, Mark covered for us. We could have told Kendy we were escaped copsiks, but I’m not sure how he would have felt about that. Maybe Kendy’s people kept copsiks.”

“Kendy.”

“Yeah. He — Scientist, you understand this better than I do.”

Jeffer said, “Give me a minute.” He was moving the hoses. “Need to refuel the legs one at a time…”

“Stet. Now, Sharls Davis Kendy claims to be the recording of a man. I don’t understand that. Neither does Lawri. We don’t even know how cassettes work, really. I wondered if he was just some madman who reached the old starship, like we almost did, and was living aboard. But it’s been fourteen years, and he doesn’t sound any older. He wanted to know all about us. Whether we were mutineers. Well, treefodder, we did steal the CARM, we were mutineers, much as I hate the word.”

“That’s all in the past,” Clave said.

“Yeah. Now he wants to see the Clump. Clave, remember how he talked fourteen years ago? I think he still wants everyone in the Smoke Ring to be one big happy tribe taking orders from Sharls Davis Kendy.”

The dark pond blazed at its eastern edge. Rather wondered if there would be time for a swim. He was not comfortable in this maze of secrets. “Kendy isn’t the Chairman. We don’t have to do what he says.”

“No.”

“Well, we want to see the Clump too. And if he can’t touch us — Why not tell the Serjents?”

“Boy’s got a point,” Clave said.

“You didn’t tell them either.”

“Maybe that was just reflex.”

“Just talk to Kendy, Chairman, and then I’ll point out something.”

Clave merely nodded. To Rather, he said, “One more thing. Kendy hears everything anyone says aboard the CARM.”

Rather laughed.

Jeffer asked, “Anything else to discuss? I think I’m finished here. Now let’s refuel the CARM. Go back in and strap down.”

“We still don’t have a pump.”

The Scientist’s answering grin was a little mad. Clave sighed.

Jets grumbled, then died. Rather watched a wind-riffled wall of water move toward the bow window.

Clave asked, “Shouldn’t you close the doors?”

Jeffer grinned and shook his head.

Clave said, “I wish to point out. Captain, that we’re going to hit that pond.”

“Yeah.”

The pondlet struck. Rather sagged in his straps. Clave grunted. He asked, “Do you honestly know what you’re doing?”

“I honestly do.”

Through the great window the interior of the pondlet was open to view. A flock of tiny silver torpedoes sped away through the murk and disappeared through the shivering silver surface.

“The CARM’s hundreds of years old and nothing’s hurt it yet. Now I reduce the interior pressure.” Jeffer’s fingers moved; the air system hissed; water entered the airlock in an expanding silver bubble.

The doors closed. Water remained inside, flowing over the aft walls, the curve of it becoming more and more concave. Waves curled and sloshed as Jeffer turned the CARM away from the pond.

He grinned at them. “Now I set the pressure back to normal and turn down the humidity. That tells the CARM to make the air dry by taking water out of it. The water goes to the tank. See? We can’t run out of fuel now. It’s something Lawri never thought of.”

“It’s treefeeding wet in here, Scientist!”

“But you don’t have to pump. Next on the agenda is Kendy. Checker, when you hear this, please introduce yourself.”

Clave asked, “What if he’s not there?”

“He’ll hear it when he runs the record—”

There was a face in the bow window.

Kendy was a dwarf. Rather had expected that, but he was still taken aback. Deepset eyes examined him, judged him, within a face like carved rock. A giant’s gravelly voice said, “Kendy for the State. Hello, Chairman Clave. Hello, Rather the Silver Man. Scientist, your manner of refueling the CARM is likely to destroy it. If the impact had torn away the solar cell arrays, how would you break up water? A CARM doesn’t fly on water.”

Jeffer looked nettled. Clave said, “Welcome back, Kendy.”

“Thank you, Chairman.”

“Why did you hide from me?”

“I felt that Jeffer was better equipped to judge his political situation than I.”

Clave bridled. “And I’m not?”

“If Jeffer had told you, he would surely have had to tell his wife. Do you trust Lawri’s judgment?”

“I give up. Between you, you…stet.”

“I watched your nonmutiny with some interest. You’re a natural leader, Clave. You should be ruling many more than your thirteen citizens.”

“Thank you, Checker. Where do you propose I find another thousand citizens, all of whom are inclined to trust a tree-living outsider?”

The language was cold and stiff. Jeffer and Clave did not trust Kendy, and Kendy clearly knew it. He said, “You need not turn a compliment into a policy statement, Clave. I can’t force you to obey my orders. You can’t stop me from observing through the CARM’s instruments. You know that I know things you do not. Can’t we work together?”

“Maybe. Thanks for showing us the Wart.”

“You’re welcome. Has Booce found a way to confine the pipefire?”

“Not yet.”

“Even with sikenwire, the pipefire is dangerous. You do have a source of metal. You can make a firebox from the Wart.”

Clave grinned. “What a good idea.”

“You probably don’t have the facilities to make a smelter—”

“What?”

“A smelter refines metal. It melts metal ore and bums away impurities. You shape the metal by pouring the liquid into forms. Gravity is needed, or tide, or spin. The Admiralty may have such technology, but I gather you do not.”

“We do not. You’d set the tree on fire for sure!”

“But you do have a saw. It was moored in the cargo section. Use it to cut slices from the Wart.”

“Kendy, you’d ruin the teeth.”

“No. That saw was taken from Discipline. Most of the tools aboard Discipline were made to last. Even with trivial items, the major cost was transportation. The chicken wire must have been made in the Admiralty, but your hose is reinforced with hullmetal alloy. The pipe is hullmetal. So is the saw. You won’t damage it by sawing slices from a mass of soft iron. Here—”

Kendy’s angular visage was replaced by a line drawing of the steam rocket, then another line drawing: a rectangle with tabs at its edges. “Cut three of these. Use the first as a template—”

“How do we hold the parts together? Tethers would bum.”

“Set the plates in place and pound on the tabs until they bend down. They’ll fold over each other.” Three rectangular plates formed a triangular prism. The tabs along the edges blinked green, then bent themselves over to interlock. Logbearer reappeared, and the three-sided box now enclosed the pipe and pipefire.

Clave said, “I’ll ask Booce. You won’t get much air flow to the coals.”

“Mount the rocket two or three kilometers in or out from the center of mass. The wind will keep the coals alight. You couldn’t make a completely closed box anyway. It will leak.”

“Mmm…yeah. You’ve been thinking hard about this.”

“I can solve simple mechanical problems. What will you do with the CARM when you reach the Clump?”

Clave was still studying the diagram. “We’ll hide it before we get there. Take the log in with the steam rocket. Take our time selling it.”

“You’ll want to keep the CARM safe, but near enough for rescue if something goes wrong. Now, the Clump is more crowded than the Smoke Ring in general, but one may still think of it as mostly empty space. Two thousand people won’t crowd a region the volume of the Earth’s Moon! You’ll find plenty of hiding space.”

“Kendy, we can’t steer the CARM into the Clump and just look around! We’d be seen!”

“I have a better view of the Clump than you do, even if it’s not a good view. If you approached from north or south of the Clump—”

“What we’ll do is take the log in, then look around while we’re selling the wood. If we find a safe way in, we’ll take it.”

“Another thing you might consider,” Kendy said. “The CARM is power. There may come a time when we’ll want to use that power…” Kendy’s voice and picture faded.

“Well, that’s that.” Jeffer left his seat. He stretched elaborately. “Let’s go out. Take some spears. We’ll get us some waterbirds before we turn back.”

They moved out. Clave said, “Well?”

“Now do you see what I mean? He wants the CARM inside the Clump. He wants it bad. If he can get some Admiralty citizens into the CARM, he could look them over and question them.”

“He didn’t say anything unreasonable,” Clave said.

“Persuasive, isn’t he? All right, think about this. There occurred an accident that allowed Chairman Clave to see the Checker talking to the Scientist. That happened after Kendy was sure he couldn’t talk me into this.”

Clave smiled. “An interesting coincidence. The CARM has outside cameras, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah. And Booce would like to be rich so that he can give up logging. Do you think Kendy could persuade Booce to trade the CARM to the Navy for metal?”

The smile slipped. “We’ll do it your way. Rather, this stops with us. All of it. Now shall we get us some waterbirds?”

“I said that to get us outside,” Jeffer said.

“Let’s do it anyway.”

Chapter Eleven Happyfeet

from the Admiralty Library, year 131 SM, day 160:

BRILLIANT AS IT WAS, THE NEUTRON STAR WAS TOO small to give much illumination. Yet the sky was never dark, even at crossyear, when the sun at nadir had to shine through the full thickness of the Smoke Ring’s farther arc.

One must seek darkness in a cloud or a jungle or a tree tuft, or in the unoccupied depths of the Clump.

Now the sun was dead east, somewhere behind the slowly roiling blotch that was their destination. It was gloomy in the shadow of the Clump. Masses near the white-fringed black mass seemed to blaze in contrast.

“We’re better than halfway home,” Booce said. “Debby, I’ve been looking for more pod plants. The last thing I ever wanted was to come home with a pod for my cabin, but we don’t have time to build real cabins.”

“The rocket’s finished otherwise?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” Debby had been working hard. Her tunic was off and her pale skin glistened with sweat. “Now, how do we make it work?”

“Trade secret.”

Debby regarded Booce angrily. “We built the treefeeding thing. You won’t tell us how to make it go?”

“Classified, Debby.”

“Will you tell us how to make it stop? In an emergency, if you and Carlot aren’t in reach, how do I stop it from just burning up?”

“We’ll get an extra pod and fill it with water to pour on the pipefire—”

“Very good! Now, suppose you and Carlot both fall off the tree and lose your wings and we’ve got to come after you. Suppose you left the rocket going. What do I want to do?”

Booce found her persistence disturbing. “Use the CARM, I suppose—”

“The CARM is gone.”

“They’re only refueling it.”

“It could be gone again!”

“Then use your wings. Don’t try to use the rocket. That’s dangerous.”

Debby glared and was silent. She was Booce’s height and almost Booce’s age, marked by a dangerous and exotic beauty. Pale-brown skin, pale straight hair, fiery blue eyes; a face all planes and angles, with a nose like an axe head. She was the type of woman who would remake a man, who would run his life for him. As Ryllin was. And Ryllin was far away…and ifBooce carried that thought further, Ryllin would know somehow, and Booce would regret it greatly. Booce looked at the sky to escape Debby’s eyes.

He’d been watching the sky for days now. They were closing on the Clump. Matter would be thicker here, even this far in: more ponds, plant life, animals, predators, perhaps Navy craft or wandering happyfeet.

West of out, almost behind the log’s remaining tuft, he found paired bright and dark dots: the pond and the CARM. No sign of pod plants. Would they have to cut wood from the out branch after all? Branchwood was better…but it was hard work, and the cabins would be crude.

Debby was still fuming. “You know, arguing isn’t the thing I do best. But Clave is going to have this out of you, because it’s stupid not to tell us how to use the basic logger’s tool. Won’t the Admiralty expect us to know — ?”

“No. You’re hired labor.”

“Right. I forgot.”

The days went fast this close to Voy: nine days between waking and waking. North and west, the reddish fringe of the Clump’s shadow was sliding rapidly down a tremendous wall of cloud. Storm and lightning inside, and ponds forming…The line of sunlight picked out a green dot, a drifting jungle emerging from the fringes of the storm.

Carlot suddenly asked, “Debby, should we know how to use the CARM?”

“Yes. Yes, we should know how to run the CARM! Treefeeding fools they are, Lawri and Jeffer both.”

Booce was jolted. “Debby? You can’t fly the CARM?”

“Nobody knows but the Scientists. Classified. Lawri I can understand. But Jeffer, he stole the thing himself, and now he acts just like her! Fifteen years, almost!”

“Dad? She’s right. We should all of us know all of that, and we have to start somewhere.”

Booce sighed. Crossyear child! Playing around with a dwarf tree dweller…but the women always won the arguments. “Debby, as far as any Admiralty citizen is concerned, you know nothing about how a rocket works. Understand?”

“Yes, Logger Booce. Now, what is it you loggers have been concealing from us laborers?”

“Go ahead, Carlot.”

Carlot considered before she spoke. “All right. Just the way you taught me. Debby, you’ll have to imagine the sikenwire in a tube around the pipe. I stuff firebark inside and light it.”

Debby nodded.

“The coals are just along the middle of the pipe, not too close to the ends. I wait. I want the metal to get hot. It should glow red. Hotter than that, the nozzle starts to char. That’s bad. So I run water through the pipe. The metal stays dark red, and steam comes out the nozzle. You can’t see it where it comes out, but it can flay the flesh from your bones, so stay clear.”

Her father smiled, nodding approval. He’d taught her well.

“Now, how do I move the water into the pipe?”

Debby mulled it. “No tide—”

“How do I keep outsiders from watching me do it?”

Debby brightened. She kicked herself to the fore end of the water tank. “I’m here, right? There’s a cabin, and I’m in it. And here’s the plug…”

“Just so!” Carlot joined her. “You pull the plug. You blow in it. When the water spurts back at you, you slam the plug in quick.”

“I could get a lungful of water that way.”

“Sure you could. We’ve all done our share of choking. Father taught us this so he wouldn’t have to do it himself.”

“Why does it blow back?”

“I…Dad?”

Booce said, “The steam pushes both ways. Out the nozzle, and backward too. That churns the water so more water comes down the pipe. After the rocket settles down, it’s thrust that pulls the water through. The back-pressure holds it from going in too fast. You can let the rocket run till the water’s almost gone.”

Carlot said, “You’ve got to let the pipefire die before the tank’s empty. Otherwise you’ll char the nozzle and the tank both. It’s a mess if you have to throw water on a pipefire.”

The storm was definitely reaching out to enfold the tree …and the jungle was closer too. Booce pointed. “Carlot—”

Carlot looked. “Happyfeet?”

“Maybe. Debby, what have we got for weapons?”

“Harpoons. The rocket, I guess.”

“Not enough. All right, ladies. Maybe it’s just a loose jungle, and even if it’s happyfeet they may not have noticed anything, but I think we should hide.”

“Hide?” Debby was outraged. “Booce, that’s not much of a jungle. Carther States was twenty times that size.”

The jungle was closer now, a fuzzy green ellipsoid with a shadowy slit in it, as if foliage had been shorn away to form a window into the interior. Booce said, “A jungle that size can hold a family of twenty or thirty. Debby, a tree is big. We can vanish into cracks in the bark and never be seen. I…think we’ve got time. Help me take the rocket apart.”

“Booce, it was tough enough putting it together!”

“You think I like this?” But Booce and Carlot were already tugging at pipe and nozzle, and Debby perforce joined them.

“The pipe is…priceless. We…can’t let happyfeet…get it.” Booce gasped in the thin air. The nozzle jerked loose and tumbled along the bark with Booce wrapped around it. His voice drifted back. “The rest they can have. We’ll hide the pipe in some crack and guard it. Now we really won’t have time to make cabins.”

They pulled loose the pipe and water tank. The green puffball was closer yet, and a line of vapor trailed behind it. The vapor trail became a curve…

Debby said, “It’s dropped five men. Winged. Now it’s going away.”

Nozzle and tank floated, slowly rotating. Now Booce was free to look. “They’re making for the Wart.”

“We can’t let them have it!” Debby cried.

“Well, the truth is, we can,” Booce said. He was pushing the pipe ahead of him, kicking hard. Carlot and Debby flew to help. “Maybe the CARM can take it back for us. If not…we don’t need the Wart to reach the Clump. Those five that were dropped are after us.”

The log was far east, drifting in the fringe of a storm complex. Rather found it before Jeffer did: shadow backlit by the sun.

Jeffer chased it down. The CARM arced over the top of the out tuft, moved in along the east side of the trunk. The dock came into view: a rectangle of bare wood, ragged around the edges. Rather felt the pull of the forward jets and heard pondwater slosh toward him. Water had spread along the CARM’s walls and was creeping forward.

He wasn’t actually getting used to this, was he?

“Where’s the rocket?” Clave sounded merely puzzled.

Where they had built the rocket, there was nothing. Wait…there, drifting loose, a pale-brown bell shape: the nozzle. There, some distance away, a brown ellipsoid trailing lines. Where was Carlot? Where was anyone?

“What happened here?” Clave demanded. “An explosion?”

Had there been a fire? Rather found only the small black scar of the cookfire. The arrangements around it were undisturbed.

Jeffer said, “We can’t search the whole tree. Where’s the sun?’’ Straight east. “We won’t get Kendy for another day.”

“Take us in,” Rather said.

Jeffer looked at him. “Why?”

“Just a guess.” Carlot had gone in, last sleep.

Jeffer swung the CARM toward Voy and fired the jets.

They skimmed above the bark. The fog was around them now.

Jeffer played with the controls. “There,” he said suddenly. “Five men.” But what showed in the window was an abstraction, orange blobs on red-and-black.

“We’re seeing by heat,” Jeffer said. For an instant the normal view returned: fog sliding along black bark. Then the red-and-black was back. “Didn’t Booce say something about happyfeet?”

“Find our people,” said Clave.

“Mmm…there.” Three orange blobs in a line. By normal light they became three human shapes lined along a crack. “And the rocket pipe, I think. Rather?”

Rather quickly disengaged his seat belt and moved aft.

He pulled the silver suit out of the water and slid his legs inside. Clave said, “Good. Get the rest of it on and go join the others. Take some harpoons. They won’t have weapons. Jeffer, how did they get here?”

“Good question. I don’t see anything that could have brought them. Something could be around the other side of the bark.”

Rather waited while Clave bound six harpoons against the silver suit’s chest. Air on; voice on. “Can you hear me?”

His voice blurted from the control panel, and Jeffer jumped. “I hear you fine.”

“Let me out.”

The bark was half a klomter distant. Rather used his jets. He thrilled to the pull of thrust along his body: blood leaving his head, abdomen settling toward his feet. Not quite a comfortable sensation, but one few others could share.

Behind him, the CARM accelerated south around the curve of the trunk and was gone.

Carlot and the others had seen the CARM; they waved.

Two klomters toward the blue blur of Voy, a hundred meters out from the tree, green-clad men emerged from the fog. They flew along the bark, peering into cracks as they passed. At this distance Rather could see only that they were five jungle giants, and armed.

They saw him. Their legs stopped moving, though their motion continued. Closer now. One was a woman…

Then they were kicking again, turning back toward the storm that was reaching to engulf the tree.

He could catch them. They couldn’t know about the silver suit. His tanks were full. Rather fired his boot jets; his course became an arc.

He could catch them. Then what? Kill them? Rather’s parents had both killed. They didn’t like talking about it. When they did, old anger distorted their faces. Yet this was the Silver Man’s duty: from time to time, he killed.

One of the intruders looked back, and then all five were kicking madly, doubling their speed.

His arms were full of harpoons, hampered, while Debby and Carlot and Booce had no weapons at all. Rather swung back toward his crew.

He thumped into the bark not far from Booce. Carlot was looking at him oddly. He opened his helmet and said, “It’s me. Five of them almost found you. What happened?”

“Happyfeet,” Booce said. “A small jungle, steampowered. Lupoff family, from the look of them. They want the Wart.”

Rather thumbed his personal Voice on. “Silver Man calling the Scientist. Jeffer, they want the Wart. Go for that.”

Nothing.

“They can’t hear me. Booce, I’ll guard you on the surface, but I don’t think they’ll be back. They looked like they were running.”

Booce grinned. “They thought you were Navy.”

“What?”

“Skip it.”

Rather settled himself on the bark above their heads. Helmet closed. The invulnerable warrior (and Carlot had looked at him as at some alien bird). But the happyfeet warriors were gone from sight.

The storm enclosed the tree. The fringe of it was a fine mist, just beginning to obscure vision. I wish I could use those other kinds of light Kendy sees by. And the ventral camera’s almost blind…hydrogen low, oxygen low, water volume low but increasing. We should have built a pump by now. Hey — “What’s that?”

Clave looked. “Jungle. Small. Just opposite the Wart.”

Now Jeffer spotted green dots around the puckered bark. Men, and one was pointing toward the CARM.

The voice of Kendy startled him. “I’m scanning in infrared. I can’t see anything human outside of the Wart area. Take the CARM closer. Give me a view.”

Jeffer accelerated in. He asked, “Did you just come into range?”

“Yes. I’m running the record of your approach. You should have killed the invaders on the east side. They could attack your people.”

As the CARM approached, the jungle jetted away on a trail of steam: north into the storm, then around the trunk, steam spraying in a wide curve. It was hidden before the CARM arrived.

Jeffer brought the CARM to rest a quarter klomter from the wooden crater. The happyfeet had been digging around one side of the Wart. Elongated men hovered around the block of black metal.

“Ten,” said Kendy. Rings of red light blinked scientifically on the bark, haloing men Jeffer had already spotted, pointing out others. Three interlocked rings circled bare wood. “Four in the open, three between the bark and the Wart, three more in a crack outside the crater.”

“We’d better follow the jungle,” Clave said. “They could find the rest of us while we’re busy here.”

Jeffer turned in his seat, but Kendy spoke first. “There’s time.”

“They’re too many to fight anyway,” Clave said.

“Nonsense. Spray them with rocket exhaust. Jeffer, have you been shown the throttle for the main drive?”

“Yes.” Jeffer didn’t know the word throttle, but Lawri had shown him how to control the push of the rockets. His fingers danced.

The CARM moved toward the Wart. The happyfeet waited, blurred by fog, spears ready. “Brace yourself, Clave.” The CARM swung around, still approaching the puckered bark, but stern foremost.

Men left the Wart, swimming hard. Others appeared from the bark beyond. Spears flew. The dorsal camera watched a bulbous-headed spear strike the hull and explode in a puff of smoky flame. Authoritative thumps could be heard through the hull.

Jeffer tapped the main drive on…

It felt like suicide. He’d nearly died the last time he did that. The CARM surged forward. Jeffer felt his chest sag, his cheeks pull backward in a dead man’s grin. But his arm was rigid above his face, fingers almost touching the control panel.

It worked! Moving his fingertip down along the green bar reduced the main drive’s thrust to something he could handle. Throttle.

A nearly invisible blue washed across ten happyfeet warriors. The invaders burst into vivid yellow flame. They were comets, the flame streaming back from them.

Explosions sent bits of men flying—

Clave cried, “Treefodder, Jeffer! Stop!”

Jeffer tapped the drive off. (Hydrogen, oxygen: both quite low. The Wart receded.) “Clave, they attacked us. They’ve got exploding harpoons.”

“They couldn’t have moved the Wart with us on their tails! We only had to take it away from them!”

“All right. Chairman.” Jeffer turned to look at Clave. “Now tell me what they’re doing to Booce and Debby and Carlot.”

“It’s time to learn that,” Kendy said. “Time to move, Jeffer. I’ve lost sight of the jungle from Discipline’s position. It circled half around the trunk and was approaching the point where you dropped Rather. We’ll have to get there fast, before I’m out of range. The invaders here are harmless enough now.”

They were. Some were still writhing, some were motionless, but all were burned black. Jeffer set the CARM moving. It was too early to feel guilt.

They were in the cloud now: a thick, swirling fog, growing thicker. Jeffer could see the tree only as a wall of shadow. Kendy said, “Turn starboard. You need not steer so wide of the trunk, Jeffer. I have infrared.”

The CARM moved around the trunk in a great curve.

Lightning flared suddenly aft.

“I have the jungle in view, straight out by five point six kilometers. Straight out, Jeffer.”

“I can’t see.”

“Ventral. Two degrees more. Good. Accelerate. Cut! Rather has the jungle in view. Silver Man, come in.”

Rather’s tinny voice spoke from the control board. “I see a big shadow, but no detail. They can’t see us either.”

“They’ve found you somehow,” Jeffer said.

“You’re near,” said Kendy. “Swing one-eighty degrees.”

“I won’t—”

“Citizen, I don’t know where the men are! What else can we do but attack the jungle itself? Swing around.” There was something strange in Kendy’s voice.

Jeffer turned the CARM. He half hoped Clave would countermand the order, but Clave said nothing.

“Main drive.” Kendy should have sounded excited. He only sounded loud.

Jeffer tapped the button. The CARM surged. His face tried to crawl around to the back of his head. A yellow light bloomed in the mist behind him, and he heard Rather’s gasp. He killed the drive, but the yellow light remained.

The harsh bass said, “Done. I’m losing range—”

Clave said, “You kill too easily, Kendy.”

Kendy’s voice was becoming blurry. “Citizens, you’re missing the point. This was a mobile jungle. These happyfeet may have contacts in the Admiralty. They’ve seen the CARM and the silver suit.”

“Men aren’t honey hornets, Kendy!”

There was no answer.

Rain drifted across the CARM’s main window in drops the size of fists, carried by eddies in the wind. The wood outside was black with water. Inside the cabin it was soggy enough. Jeffer’s segment of pond had spread a film of water across all the walls and the cradles.

Warm, dry air blew from vents fore and aft, thrusting the water away from it. The citizens clustered around the aft jet.

Next time I’ll pump the water, Jeffer thought. Got to build a pump.

Carlot said, “We saw that huge shadow come out of the fog. It was scary enough. Then five…well, they could have been birds for all I could see, except that they were flying toward the jungle and thrashing at both ends. Waving their arms, I guess. It was the bandits who ran away from Rather. The jungle stopped to pick them up.”

“They were Lupoffs,” Booce said. “I know their clothing. I’ve met them in the Market. A big family, three jungles, and they’d colonize if they could buy another firepipe. They’re crowded.”

Clave said, “So?”

“If the Lupoffs find out what happened here, you’ll have two jungles hunting you.”

“They won’t find out.” There was no triumph in Clave’s voice. Jeffer shuddered.

They were warm enough, dry enough, if they stayed in the air jet. But the storm splashed rain across the bow window, and through the rain came the yellow glow of the burning jungle.

“I wouldn’t mind killing a bandit or two,” Booce said.

“I’ve been robbed once or twice. It’s the scale of the thing that bothers me. There must have been forty citizens in that jungle, not counting children.”

Clave jumped toward the fore end of the cabin. After a moment, Jeffer followed. The fore air jet was as dry as the aft.

Clave said, “I’d had enough of that.”

“Forty people,” Jeffer said. “There just isn’t any way to make them stop talking about it.”

Clave’s voice was’a hoarse whisper. “Persuasive, is he? Nobody but you can be trusted to talk to Kendy, right? You burned them while they were trying to rescue their citizens!”

“They attacked us.”

“With spears. So?”

“What was I supposed to do? They were threatening our citizens!”

Clave sighed. “I’m not blaming you. And if I am, I shouldn’t be. But Kendy—” By the flick of his eyes, Clave had remembered that Kendy would hear this. He began pronouncing his words with more care. “Treefeeding Kendy killed them like a hive of honey hornets, because they were in his way. Because they might talk to the wrong people!”

Silence and discomfort. Debby came to join them. “Wet,” she said. “What did you do to get it so wet?”

Jeffer didn’t answer. To Clave he said, “I felt much worse when I killed Klance the Scientist to steal the CARM. He wasn’t expecting it. These citizens were. They were making war.”

“Right!” Debby said enthusiastically. “When London Tree raided us, I used to wish we could capture this thing and set their whole tree burning. The bandits aren’t the same, but by the State, we finally did it!”

“Don’t do it again,” Clave said. Jeffer nodded.