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pact without really understanding why, knowing only that in the relationship there was something worthwhile and good.
    Keeping hearts of pium in mind enabled Ruumahum to arrange the grazer carcass on his back without falling asleep more than once in the process. So Born lost little of his precious time.
    Either no scavenger had blundered into their camp, or else they had elected not to risk those deadly interlocking thorns. Born recovered all the vine-entwined jacaris, reset the poison darts in the bottom of his quiver, looped the vine around his belt, and started off again.
    “Close Home,” Ruumahum muttered that evening, pausing to send a thick curving tongue out to groom the back of a forepaw.
    Born had been recognizing familiar landmarks and tree blazes for over an hour. There was the stormtreader tree that had killed old Hannah in an unwary moment. They gave the black and silver bole a wide berth. Once they had to pause as a Buna floater drifted by, trailing long stinging tentacles. As they waited, the floater let out a long sibilant whistle and dropped lower, perhaps to try its luck on the Fourth Level where scampering bushackers were more common.
    Born had stepped out from behind a trunk and was about to remove his cloak when above them sounded a shriek sufficient to shatter a pfeffermall, more violent than the howl of chollakee hunting. So sudden, so overpowering was the scream that the normally imperturbable Ruumahum was shocked into a defensive posture, backing up against the nearest bole despite the restrictive mass of the grazer, fore-paws upraised and claws extended.
    The scream dropped to a moan that was abruptly subsumed by an overpowering, frightening roar of crackings and snappings. Even the branch of the nearby Pillar tree shook. Then the branch they stood on rocked fiercely. With his great strength, Ruumahum was able to maintain his perch, but Born was not so secure. He fell several meters, smashing through a couple of helpless succulents before he hit an unyielding protrusion. He started to bounce off it before he got both arms locked around the stiff fom. The vibrating stopped, and he was able to get his legs around it, too.
    Shaking, he pulled himself up. Nothing felt broken, and everything seemed to work. But his snuffler was gone; its restraining tie had snapped, sending it bouncing and spinning into the depths. That was a severe loss.
    The crashing and breaking sounds faded, finally stopped. As he had fallen, Born thought he had seen in the distance through the green an impossibly wide mass of something blue and metallic. It had passed as swiftly as he had fallen. As he stared that way now there was nothing to be seen but the forest.
    Peepers and orbioles came out of hiding, called hesitantly into the silence. Then bushackers and flowerkits and their relatives joined in. In minutes the hylaea sounded and resounded normally again.
    “Something has happened,”
    Ruumahum ventured softly.
    “I think I saw it.” Born stared harder, still saw only what belonged. “Did you? Something big and blue and shining.”
    Ruumahum eyed him steadily. “Saw nothing. Saw self falling to Hell and gone. Concentrated on staying here with grazer weight pulling there. No time for curiouslooking.”
    “You did better than I, old friend,” Born admitted, as he climbed up toward the furcot. He tested a liana, found it firm, and started off in the direction of the murderous sounds. “I think we’d better—”
    “No.” A glance over his shoulder showed the furcot with his great head lowered and moving slowly from side to side in imitation of the human gesture of negation. Three eyes rolled toward the path they had been following.
    “So far, lucky be we, person Born. Soon though, others grazer to smell will begin. We will fight have to every step to Home. To Home go first. This other”—and he nodded in the direction of the breaking and crashing—“I would talk of first with the brethren, who know such things