Flor and Lily-yo muttered together.
'Do you say that you poor Captives rule the True World?' Lily-yo asked at last.
'We do.'
'Then why are you captives?'
The flyman with ear lobes and thumbs connected, making his perpetual little gesture of protest, spoke for the first time in a rich and strangled voice.
'To rule is to serve, woman. Those who bear power are slaves to it. Only an outcast is free. Because we are Captives, we have the time to talk and think and plan and know. Those who know command the knives of others. We are power, though we rule without power.'
'No hurt will come to you, Lily-yo,' Band Appa Bondi added. 'You will live among us and enjoy your life free from harm.'
'No!' the Chief Captive said with both mouths. 'Before she can enjoy, Lily-yo and her companion Flor – this other man creature is plainly useless – must help our great plan.'
'You mean we should tell them about the invasion?' Bondi asked.
'Why not? Flor and Lily-yo, you arrive here at a good time. Memories of the Heavy World and its savage life are still fresh in you. We need such memories. So we ask you to go back there on a great plan we have.'
'Go back?' gasped Flor.
'Yes. We plan to attack the Heavy World. You must help to lead our force.'
CHAPTER SIX
THE long afternoon of eternity wore on, that long golden road of an afternoon that would somewhen lead to everlasting night.
Motion there was, but motion without event – except for those neglible events that seemed so large to the creatures participating in them.
For Lily-yo, Flor and Haris there were many events. Chief of these was, that they learnt to fly properly.
The pains associated with their wings soon died away as the wonderful new flesh and tendon strengthened. To sail up in the light gravity became an increasing delight – the ugly flopping movements of flymen on the Heavy World had no place here.
They learnt to fly in packs, and then to hunt in packs. In time they were trained to carry out the Captives' plan.
The series of accidents that had first delivered humans to this world in burnurns had been a fortunate one, growing more fortunate as millennia rolled away. For gradually the humans adapted better to the True World. Their survival factor became greater, their power surer. All this: as on the Heavy World conditions grew more and more adverse to anything but vegetation.
Lily-yo at least was quick to see how much easier life was in these new conditions. She sat with Flor and a dozen others eating pulped pluggyrug, before they did the Captives' bidding and left for the Heavy World.
It was hard to express all she felt.
'Here we are safe,' she said, indicating the whole green land that sweltered under the silver network of webs.
'Except from the tigerflies,' Flor agreed.
They rested on a bare peak, where the air was thin and even the giant creepers had not climbed. The turbulent green stretched away below them, almost as if they were on Earth – although here it was continually checked by the circular formations of rock.
'This world is smaller,' Lily-yo said, trying again to make Flor know what was in her head. 'Here we are bigger. We do not need to fight so much.'
'Soon we must fight.'
'Then we can come back here again. This is a good place, with nothing so savage and without so many enemies. Here the groups could live without so much fear. Veggy and Toy and May and Gren and the other little ones would like it here."
"They would miss the trees.'
'We shall soon miss the trees no longer. We have wings instead. Everything is a matter of custom.'
This idle talk took place beneath the unmoving shadow of a rock. Overhead, silver blobs against a purple sky, the traversers drifted, walking their networks, descending only occasionally to celeries far below. As Lily-yo fell to watching these creatures, she thought in her mind of the grand plan the Captives had hatched, she flicked it over in a series of vivid pictures.
Yes, the Captives knew. They could see ahead as she could not. She and those about her had lived like plants, doing what came to hand. The Captives were not plants. From their cells they saw more than those outside.
This, the Captives saw. That the few humans who reached the True World bore few children, because they were old, or because the rays that made their wings grow made their seed die. That it was good here, and would be better still with more humans. That one way to get more humans here was to bring babies and children from the Heavy World.
For countless time, this had been done. Brave flymen had travelled back to that other world and stolen children. The flymen who had once attacked Lily-yo's group on their climb to the Tips had been on that mission. They had taken Bain to bring her to the True World in burnurns – and had not been heard of since.
Many perils and mischances lay in that long double journey. Of those who set out, few returned.
Now the Captives had thought of a better and more daring scheme.
'Here comes a traverser,' Band Appa Bondi said, rousing Lily-yo from her thoughts. 'Let us be ready to move.'
He walked before the pack of twelve flyers who had been chosen for this new attempt. He was the leader of them. Lily-yo, Flor, and Haris were in support of him, together with eight others, three male, five female. Only one of them, Band Appa Bondi himself, had been carried to the True World as a boy; the rest had arrived here in the same manner as Lily-yo.
Slowly the pack stood up, stretching their wings. The moment of their great adventure was here. Yet they felt little fear; they could not look ahead as the Captives did, except perhaps for Band Appa Bondi and Lily-yo. She strengthened her will by saying 'It is the Way'. Then they all spread their arms wide and soared off to meet the traverser.
The traverser had eaten.
It had caught one of its most tasty enemies, a tigerfly, in a web and sucked it till only the shell was left. Now it sank down into a bed of celeries, crushing them under its great bulk. Gently, it began to bud; then it could be heading out for the great black gulfs, where heat and radiance called it. It had been born on this world. Being young, it had never yet made that dreaded and desired journey to the other world.
Its buds burst up from its back, hung over, popped, fell to the ground, and scurried away to bury themselves in the pulp and dirt where they might begin their ten thousand years' growth in peace.
Young though it was, the traverser was sick. It did not know this. The enemy tigerfly had been at it, but it did not know this either. Its vast bulk held little sensation.
The twelve humans glided over and landed on its back, low down on the abdomen in a position hidden from the creature's cluster of eyes. They sank among the tough shoulder-high fibres that served the traverser as hair, and looked about them. A ray-plane swooped overhead and disappeared. A trio of tumbleweeds skittered into the fibres and were seen no more. All was as quiet as if they lay on a small deserted hill.
At length they spread out and moved along in line, heads down, eyes searching, Band Appa Bondi at one end, Lily-yo at the other. The great body was streaked and pitted and scarred, so that progress down the slope was not easy. The fibre grew in patterns of different shades, green, yellow, black, breaking up the traverser's bulk when seen from the air, serving it as natural camouflage. In many places, tough parasitic plants had rooted themselves, drawing their nourishment entirely from their host; most of them would die when the traverser launched itself out between worlds.
The humans worked hard. Once they were thrown flat when the traverser changed position. As the slope down which they moved grew steeper, so progress became more slow.
'Here!' cried Y Coyin, one of the women.