But if it's to be done, we should do it now."
Deyv and Hoozisst didn't want to venture out into the swamp. The plant-man said that he sympathized with their feelings, but logic demanded that they test Vana's theory. They armed themselves and went out to meet the greenish beasts. Sloosh carried a big dead branch, the first time Deyv had seen him bear a weapon. The Yawtl and Vana shot darts with their blowguns; Deyv slashed with his sword. Within a few minutes, the predators were dead or fleeing.
They sloshed through the water and the mud, Vana leading. When they arrived at the tree up which
Aejip had fled, they found some dead or dying beasts at its foot. Aejip was also there, eating one. She was bleeding lightly where claws had raked her, but evidently she'd not been bitten.
When they returned to the forest, Vana said, "If I catch anybody eating that fruit, I'll knock his skull in."
"That would be a rather excessive measure," Sloosh said. "Or are you exaggerating again?"
"You should know by now."
Sloosh buzzed the equivalent of a sigh. "Ah, the hyperbole of humans. Why can't you be exact in your speech?"
18
TWO sleep-times passed. The Dark Beast dragged a heavy twilight behind it. The only light from _the sky was a narrowing band around the horizon. The Yawtl's and Vana's wounds were entirely healed. In the meantime, they all stayed away from the purplish fruit, and their minds became clear.
"We owe the woman an apology," Sloosh said, "even though it was an accident that she didn't succumb, too."
Reluctantly, Deyv and Hoozisst thanked her.
"You two don't have any more gratitude than you have brains," she said. "As for you, plant-man, you might compliment me just once without making some reservation."
None of them replied; they wanted to forget all about the fruit and their foolishness.
"It's time to set out," the Archkerri said.
They strapped the cube to his back and rechecked their supply of poisoned darts. Then with Sloosh leading as before, they went single file across the sandy plain. Though they knew what to expect, they felt terror when the tips of the tentacles writhed within a few inches of their ankles or the sting-poles exploded from the sand. On leaving the trap area, they sighed with relief, though greater danger might be ahead.
Presently, they came to the three ship-creatures, which Hoozisst had told them were not tied but glued together. Also, what they had at first thought was a single cable attached to the central underside was actually three thick vines wound about each other. The Yawtl cautioned them again that the vines would send an alarm up to the tharakorm if they were touched.
"During sleep-time, each vine is sensitized. But only to animal life. If a leaf or an uprooted plant should blow against the cable, it won't register the contact. It would be nice if Feersh's crew had forgotten to draw up the rope-ladder, but they didn't. However, we're very lucky in having Sloosh. He's a plant, so he won't trigger off the alarm."
"Don't be so sure," Sloosh buzzed softly. "I'm half-protein."
Hoozisst grimaced and said, "We'll know in a minute."
Sloosh walked up to the triple cable. Without touching it, he looked up into the darkness. The tharakorm was a vague whitish bulk. Hoozisst had assured him that the hole from which the cable hung was large enough to admit even his giant body. He had wanted to check this out for himself, but he couldn't see in the dim light and at this distance.
He put his hand out without hesitating and grabbed the cable. Deyv expected to hear the alarm. He didn't know what it would be, a loud scream or a roar. The silence continued. His relief was short. Sloosh commented that possibly the alarm was audible only to those sleeping above. If they were all sleeping, that is. It was true they hadn't been visible from the tharakorm when the party crossed the open area. But then a sentinel might have missed them or perhaps have been absent from his post when they passed.
The Archkerri took hold of the thick cable with both huge hands. Deyv climbed onto his back and with his rope tied his waist to Sloosh's upper torso. Sloosh began pulling himself upward, his upper trunk extending straight put from the lower, his legs wrapped around the vines. Up they went, slowly but unceasingly. Deyv hung on to the rope, making sure that no part of him touched the vines.
Halfway up, the Archkerri stopped to get his wind back. Deyv looked down. The ground was a long way off, though he could see it only dimly. The group below wasn't even visible. That assured him that a sentinel wouldn't have been able to see them on the plain.
Now, however, if the sentinel looked down the hole, he might be able to spot Sloosh and Deyv. On the other hand, why should he?
The cable did not rise straight from the surface but was at a slight angle because the wind was pushing the tharakorm. Now and then the wind lessened in strength, and then the cable swayed back and forth.
Deyv had been in situations where he had felt more secure.
"I wonder," the Archkerri buzzed softly, "if it's possible, as the great Sindsindbat maintains, that the oscillation of matter in this universe is caused by psychical means rather than physical ones? Or perhaps
I should say psychophysical."
"By Skreekmishgakl!" Deyv said. "What are you talking about?"
"Sindsindbat says that the matter expelled by the primal fireball explosion doesn't keep expanding outward to infinity but instead eventually falls back toward the center of the matter because of the angry, hence negative, charges radiated by the zillions of sapients on the quadrillions or perhaps quintillions of inhabited planets. These charges cause the stars and indeed all matter to stop when the influence of all this anger and hatred achieves a certain intensity. The negative energy slows the matter down, then causes a reversal in direction. A fall, as it were."
"It sounds interesting, though I don't have the faintest idea what it means," Deyv said. His voice was low but angry. "Do you think this is the place to tell me about Sindsindbat's theory, whoever he is?"
"My grandfather on my mother's side but my great-grandmother on my father's side," Sloosh said.
"Undoubtedly one of the greatest, if perhaps somewhat unstable, minds of the Archkerri. It's his—"
"Shut up!" Deyv said. "Your own mind can't be too stable if you start propounding some irrelevant nonsense about stars falling because people are mad about something. Here we are—"
" 'Irrelevant nonsense' is a redundancy," Sloosh said. "All nonsense is irrelevant."
"That shows what little you know about humans," Deyv said. "Anyway, be quiet! Sound carries upward.
What if somebody is awake up there?"
"True. But my comment was caused by my recently hearing you and Vana quarreling about whether or not women should be taboo, that is, ritually unclean, for a certain period, after childbirth or menstruation. She claimed—"
"Shut up! Shut up! Do you want to get us killed?"
"Well, your argument led me to think about anger, and—"
Deyv managed to stretch himself far enough to place his hand over the plant-man's beak.
"Now, be quiet! Or I swear I'll lop off your buzzer with my sword!"
Sloosh said nothing after that. He resumed climbing; and after what seemed a long time, and may have been, they rose through the shaft in the center of the middle tharakorm. The cable was wound around a huge windlass suspended about ten feet above the top of the shaft. On the edge to their right was a smaller windlass, used to let down or draw up the rope-ladder. Deyv looked around quickly. No one was in sight, though due to the dimness of light, that didn't mean that no one was on the decks of the two tharakorm attached to the central one.