He turned his eyes up to the impenetrable canopy above. In the flattened upper reaches of the banyan... a nest?
Tinnerman stood, moving silently away from the bodies of his companions. Locating his pack a second time he dug out cleats and hand spikes, fitting them to his body by feel. He found his trunk, shaping its firm curvature with both hands; then he began the ascent.
He climbed, digging the spikes into the heavy bark and gaining altitude in the blackness. The surface gradually became softer, more even, but remained firm; if it were to pull away from the inner wood the fall would kill him. He felt the curvature increase and knew that the diameter of the trunk was shrinking; but still there was no light at all.
His muscles tensed as his body seemed to become heavier, more precariously exposed. Something was pulling him away from the trunk, weakening his purchase; but he could not yet circle any major portion of the column with his arms. Something was wrong; he would have to descend before being torn loose.
Relief washed over him as he realized the nature of the problem. He was near the top; the stem was bending in to join the main body of the tree, and he was on the underside. He worked his way to the outside and the strain eased; now gravity was pulling him into the trunk, helping him instead of leaving him hanging. Quickly he completed the ascent and stood at last against the massive nexus where limb melded into bole.
Here there was light, a dim glow from overhead. He mounted the vast gnarled bulk, a globular shape thirty feet in diameter covered with swellings and scars. It was difficult to picture it as it was, a hundred feet above the ground, for nothing at all could be seen beyond its damp mound. Although it was part of a living or once-living thing, there was no evidence of foliage. There was no nest.
The center of the crude sphere rose onto another trunk or stalk, a column about ten feet in diameter, pointing straight up as far as he could see. He was not at the top at all. The bark here was smooth and not very thick; it would be difficult to scale, even with the cleats.
Tinnerman rested for about ten minutes, lying down and putting his ear to the wood. Again the melody of the interior came to him, gentle yet deep. It brought a vision of many layers, pulsing and interweaving; of tumescence and flow, rich sap in the fibers. There was life of a sort going on within, either of the tree or in it.
He stood and mounted the central stalk. Quickly he climbed, spikes penetrating at fingers, knees and toes, bearing him antlike up the sheer column without hesitation. The light above became brighter, though it was only the lesser gloom of a starless night on a moonless planet. Ahead the straight trunk went on and on, narrowing but never branching. Huge limbs from neighboring trees crossed nearby, bare and eerie, residual moisture shining dully; but his climb ignored them. Fifty feet; seventy-five; and now he was as high above the bole as it was above the ground. The stem to which he clung had diminished to a bare five foot diameter, but rose on toward the green upper forest.
Tinnerman's muscles bunched once more with strain. A wind came up; or perhaps he had come up to it. At this height, even the slightest tug and sway was alarming. He reached his arms around the shaft and hung on. Below, the spokes of other trees were a forest of their own, a fairyland of brush and blackness, crossing and recrossing, concealing everything except the slender reed he held. Above, the first leaves appeared, fiat and heavy in the night. He climbed.
Suddenly it ended. The trunk, barely three feet through, expanded into a second bole shaped like an upsidedown pear with a five foot thickness, and stopped. Tinnerman clambered onto the top and stood there, letting his weary arms relax, balancing against the sway. There was nothing else—just a vegetable knob two hundred feet above the ground. All around, the dark verdure rustled in the breeze, and the gloom below was a quiet sea.
No branches approached within twenty feet of the knob, though the leaves closed in above, diffusing the glow of the sky. Tinnerman studied the hollow around him, wondering what kept the growth away. Was this a takeoff point for the hidden quarry?
Then it came to him, unnerving him completely. Fear hammered inside him like a bottled demon; he dared not let it out. Shaking, he began the descent.
Morning came, dim and unwilling; but it was not the wan light filtering down like sediment that woke the explorers. Nor was it the warmth of day, soaking into the tops and running down the trunks in the fashion of the night water.
They woke to sound: a distant din, as of a large animal tearing branches and crunching leaves. It was the first purposeful noise they had heard since entering the forest; as such, it was unnatural, and brought all three to their feet in alarm.
The evening deluge had eradicated all trace of the prints leading up to the giant structure under which they had taken shelter. Beneath it the spoor remained, as deep and fresh as before; one print near the edge was half gone.
Slaker sized up the situation immediately. "Guarantees the trail was fresh," he said. "We don't know whether it was coming or going, but it was made between rains. Let's get over and spot that noise." He suited action to word and set off, pack dangling from one hand, half eaten space-ration in the other.
Abel was not so confident. "Fresh, yes—but we still don't know where the thing went. You don't look as though you got much sleep, Tinny."
Tinnerman didn't answer. They picked up their packs and followed Slaker, who was already almost out of sight.
They came up to him as he stood at the edge of an open space in the forest. Several mighty trees had fallen, and around their massive corpses myriad little shoots were reaching up. The sunlight streamed down here, intolerably bright after the obscurity underneath. The noise had stopped.
There was a motion in the bush ahead. A large body was moving through the thicket, just out of sight, coming toward them. A serpentine neck poked out of the copse, bearing a cactuslike head a foot in diameter. The head swung toward them, circularly machairodont, a ring of six-inch eye-stalks extended.
The men froze, watching the creature. The head moved away, apparently losing its orientation in the silence. The neck was smooth and flexible, about ten feet in length; the body remained out of sight.
"Look at those teeth!" Slaker whispered fiercely. "That's our monster."
Immediately the head reacted, demonstrating acute hearing. It came forward rapidly, twenty feet above the ground; and in a moment the rest of the creature came into sight. The body was a globular mass about four feet across, mounted on a number of spindly legs. The creature walked with a peculiar caterpillar ripple, one ten-foot leg swinging around the body in a clockwise direction while the others were stationary, reminding Tinnerman of the problems of a wounded daddy-long-legs. The body spun, rotating with the legs; but the feet managed to make a kind of precessional progress. The spin did not appear to interfere with balance or orientation; the ring of eye-stalks kept all horizons covered.
Slaker whipped out his sidearm. "No!" Tinnerman cried, too late. Slaker's shot smacked into the central body, making a small but visible puncture.
The creature halted as if nonplussed, legs rising and falling rhythmically in place. It did not fall. Slaker's second bullet tore into it, and his third, before Tinnerman wrested away the gun. "It wasn't attacking," he said, not knowing how to explain what he knew.
They watched while the monster's motion gradually slowed, huge drops of ichor welling from its wounds. It shuddered; then the legs began pounding the ground in short, violent steps, several at a time. Coordination was gone; slowly the body overbalanced and toppled. The great mouth opened like a flower, like a horn, and emitted an earshattering blast of sound, a tormented cry of pain and confusion; then the body fell heavily on its side.