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quickly.”
    Born stood thinking on the woody bridge. His intense curiosity—or madness, if one believed many of his fellows—pulled him toward the source of the sounds, however threatening they had been. For a change, reason overcame. Ruumahum and he had been through much in the killing and carrying of the grazer. To risk losing it now for no good reason was unsound thinking.
    “Okay, Ruumahum.” He hopped back onto the bigger branch and started toward the village again. A last look over his shoulder still showed only speckled greenery and no unnatural movement. “But as soon as the meat’s disposed of, I’m coming back to find out what that was, whether or not you or anyone else comes with me.”
    “Doubt it not,” Ruumahum replied knowingly.

III
    THEY REACHED THE BARRIER well before darkness. In front of them, the hylaea seemed to become a single tree—the Hometree. Only the Pillars themselves were bigger, and the Home-tree was a monstrously big tree for certain. Broad twisting branches and vines-of-own shot out in all directions. Air-trees and cubbies and lianas grew in and about the tree’s own growth. Born noted with satisfaction that only plants which were innocuous or helpful to the Home-tree grew on it. His people kept the Home-tree well and, in turn, the Hometree kept them.
    The vines-of-own were lined with flowers of bright pink, with pollen pods which sat globelike within them. These pods were akin to the yellow tank seeds that made the snufflers such deadly weapons, but far more sensitive. A single touch on the sensitive pink surface would cause the paper-thin skin to rupture, sending a cloud of dust into the air that would kill any animal inhaling it, whether through nostril, pore, or other air exchanger. The vines entangled and crossed the tree in the middle of the Third Level—the village level— forming a protective net of deadly ropes around it.
    Born approached the nearest, leaned over and spat directly into the center of one of the blossoms, avoiding the pod. The blossom quivered, but the pod did not burst. The pink petals closed in on themselves. A pause, then the vines began to curl and tighten like climbing vines hunting for a better purchase. As they retracted, a clear path was formed through which Born and Ruumahum strode easily. Even as Ruumahum was through, the outermost vines were already relaxing once again, expanding, coming together and shutting off the pathway. The bloom into which Born had spat opened its petals once more to drink the faint evening light.
    A casual observer would note that Born’s saliva had disappeared. A chemist would be able to tell that it had been absorbed. A brilliant scientist might be able to discover that it had been more than absorbed—it had been analyzed and identified. Born knew only that carefully spitting into the bloom seemed to tell the Home-tree who he was.
    As he walked toward the village proper he tried to whistle happily. The song died aborning. His mind was occupied with the mysterious blue thing that had come crashing down into the forest. Rarely, one of the greater air-trees would overreach its rootings, or overgrow its perch, and fall, bringing down creepers and lesser growths with it. But never had Born heard such a smashing and shattering of wood. This thing had been far heavier than any air-tree. He knew that by the speed with which it had fallen. And there was that half familiar, metallic gleam.
    His thoughts were not on his expected triumph as he entered the village center. Here, the enormous trunk of the Home-tree split into a webbing of lesser boles, forming an interlocking net of wood around a central open space, before joining and growing together high above to form once more a single tapering trunk that rose skyward for another sixty meters. With vines and plant fibers and animal skins the villagers had closed off sections of the interweaving trunklets to form homes and rooms impervious to casual rain and wind. For food, the