That strange sunless smell enveloped him.
It was nerve-wracking in the tower when the entrance closed above them. After the sun-flooded brilliance outside, everything here was pitch dark.
Descending the tower was easy for one as agile as Gren, since it was much like climbing down a natural chimney, with plenty of protrusions on all sides to cling on to. He swarmed down hand over fist with growing confidence.
As his eyes accustomed themselves to the dark, Gren saw that a faint luminescence clung to the bodies of the termights, giving them ghostly shape. Many of them were present in the tower, utterly silent. Like phantoms they seemed to move on every side, noiseless rows of them trundling up into the dark, noiseless rows of them trundling down. He could not guess what they were busy at.
Eventually he and his guides reached the bottom of the castle and stood on level ground. According to Gren's estimation, they must now be below the level of the sea. The atmosphere was moist and heavy.
Only the termight with the growth accompanied Gren now; the others moved off in military order without looking back. Gren noted a curious green light composed as much of shadow as of illumination; at first he could not detect its source. He was hard put to it to follow his guide. The corridor they traversed was uneven and full of traffic. Termights were everywhere, moving purposefully: there were also other small creatures about, herded along by the hosts, sometimes singly, sometimes in flocks.
'Not so fast,' Gren cried, but his guide kept to its steady pace, paying him no attention.
The green light was stronger now. It lay mistily on either side of their route. Gren saw it filtered through irregular mica sheets evidently there by the creative genius of the tunnelling insects. These mica sheets formed windows looking out into the sea, through which the activities of the menacing seaweed could be viewed.
The industry of this underground place amazed him. At least the denizens were so busy that they kept to themselves; not one paused to inspect him, until one of the creatures belonging to the termights approached. Four-legged and furry, it possessed a tail and luminous yellow eyes and stood almost as high as Gren. Eyeing him through its glowing pupils, the creature cried 'Miaow!' and tried to rub against him. Its whiskers brushed his arm. Shuddering, he dodged it and pressed on.
The furry creature looked back at him almost with a quality of regret. Then it turned to follow some termights, the species that now tolerated and fed it. A moment later Gren saw several more of these mewing things! some of them were infected with and almost covered by the fungus growth.
Gren and his guide came at last to where the broad tunnel divided into several lesser ones. Unhesitatingly, the guide chose a fork that sloped upwards into darkness. The darkness was broken suddenly as the termight pushed up a flat stone that covered the tunnel mouth and crawled into daylight.
'You've been very kind,' Gren said as he crawled out too. He kept as much distance as possible between himself and the brown growth.
The termight scurried back into the hole, pulling the stone into place with never a backward glance.
Nobody needed to tell Gren that he was now in Nomansland.
He could smell the smell of the sullen sea. He could hear the sound of the battle between the seaweeds and the land plants, though the noise was intermittent now, as both sides tired. He could sense a tension round him that never existed in the gentle middle layers of the forest where the human group had been born. Above all, he could see the sun glaring through the matted leaves over his head.
Underfoot, the ground was sour and pasty, a mixture of clay and sand with rocks frequently outcropping. It was infertile stuff, and the trees growing from it showed their sickness. Their trunks were distorted, their foliage meagre. Many of them had intertwined in an attempt to support each other; and where this attempt had failed, they lay spilled over the ground in horrible distortions. Moreover, some of them through the long centuries had evolved such curious ways of defending themselves that they hardly resembled tree forms at all.
Gren decided that his best policy was to creep to the land end of the peninsula and try and pick up the tracks of Toy and the others from there. Once he got to the sea's edge, it should not be hard to see the peninsula; it would make a prominent landmark.
He had no doubt in which direction the sea lay, for he was able to look through the distorted trees and see the landward border of Nomansland. That was clearly designated.
Along a line that marked the end of good soil, the great banyan had established its outer perimeter. It stood unshakeably, though its boughs were scarred by innumerable assaults from bramble and claw. And to assist it, to help it repel the banished species of Nomansland, the creatures that used its shelter had gathered: trappersnappers, wiltmilts, berrywishes, pluggyrugs, and others, stood ready to scourge the slightest movement along its perimeter.
Keeping this formidable barrier at his back, Gren moved cautiously forward.
His progress was slow. Every sound made him jump. At one point he flung himself flat as a cloud of long deadly needles was launched at him from a thicket. Lifting his head, he saw a cactus shaking itself and rearranging its defences. He had never seen a cactus before; his stomach was like water to think of all the unknown perils about him.
A little later he met something stranger.
He stepped through a tree whose trunk had contorted itself into a loop. As he did so, the loop snapped together. Gren escaped constriction by the skin of his teeth and lost the skin of his legs. As he lay panting, an animal slid past almost near enough to touch.
It was a reptile, long and armoured, with a mirthless grin that revealed many teeth. Once (in the vanished days when humans had a name for everything) it had been called an alligator. It peered through goat's eyes at Gren, then scuttled under a log.
Almost all animals had died out millennia ago. The sheer weight of vegetable growth, as the sun favoured green things, had crushed and extinguished them. Yet as the last of the old trees were beaten back to the swamps and the fringes of the ocean, a few animals had retreated with them. Here they protracted their existence in Nomansland, enjoying the heat and the savour of life while life lasted.
Going more cautiously now, Gren moved forward again.
By now, the hubbub from the sea had abated and he travelled in dead quiet. Everything was silent, as if waiting, as if under a curse.
The ground began to shelve gradually towards the water. Shingle rasped underfoot. The trees which had grown more sparsely clustered together again to withstand possible attacks from the sea.
Gren halted. Anxiety still moved in his heart. He longed to be back with the others. Yet his feeling was not that he had behaved stubbornly in remaining behind on the termight castle, but that they had behaved foolishly in not offering to accept his lead.
Looking round him cautiously, he let out a whistle. No answer came. A sudden stillness settled, as if even those things that had no ears were listening.
Panic seized Gren.
'Toy!' he cried. 'Veggy! Poyly! Where are you?'
As he was calling, a cage descended from the foliage above him and pinned him to the ground.
When Toy led her six fellows to the shore, they flung themselves into long grass and hid their eyes to recover from their fright.Their bodies were foam-drenched from the vegetable battle.
At last they sat up and discussed Gren's absence. Since he was a man child, he was valuable; though they could not go back for him, they could wait for him. It remained only to find a place where they could wait in comparative safety.
'We will not wait long,' Veggy said. 'Gren had no need to stay behind. Let us leave him and forget him.'