Directly beneath the moon’s small end was the excavated city they had quit. There was no individual building large enough to be seen, except for a tiny bump that might have been the sports arena—if that wasn’t merely an irregularity in the telescope’s charge-coupled retina. But the crosshatched pattern of the streets could be made out, and the two moon plazas—one on either side of the rim—were a pair of tiny eyelets.
But what really drew the fascinated attention of the people standing around the display was the dragonfly settlement a couple of hundred miles farther along the plain.
It had grown large enough to be seen from space.
At its center, the original dragonfly bubble was a small white bead. A grayish honeycomb was spread around it, like dirty froth. The froth seemed to have crept a little farther toward the buried city than it had in other directions.
Trist drifted over with a drink in his hand. “I hate to think of that wonderful storehouse being overrun by those monsters,” he said, nodding at the telescopic image.
Bram agreed. “All the buildings and underground tunnels need only a little patching to make them habitable—they’ll just be breeding spaces for the creatures. Still, there are other human sites—on that disk and the others, and on all the tethered moons.”
“They’ll get around to them,” Trist said, taking a sip of a pink concoction. “It won’t take long for them to spread through this entire system, the way they spawn.”
Mim, lovely in a gown that left her arms and shoulders bare, shivered. “I’m just glad we’re away from there. And we’ve managed to take away so much in spite of every-thing—from the life work of thousands of tale tellers and composers to the genome of the giraffe.”
She looked at the gray patch of the dragonfly colony and shuddered again. She had been practically in hysterics, Bram knew, when the last shuttle had returned to the tree without him. The tapes of the dragonfly nymphs were something no one could forget.
“And the science, too,” Trist said, brightening. “The latter-day physics of Original Man, when we’re finally able to understand it. The vistas it opens up!”
“Let’s not forget the human diet,” Bram said. “It’s going to be considerably more interesting from now on. What’s that you’re drinking?”
“Marg calls it elderberry wine. Made mostly from tree glucose, of course, but with an infusion of cloned cells added to the fermentation vats. She’s bullied the gardening section into growing the actual plants, though, from cuttings that Oris developed.”
“May I try it?” Mim asked.
Trist held out his glass, and she took a sip. She wrinkled her nose. “Sweet,” she said.
“Yes, isn’t it?” Marg said, appearing at Mim’s elbow with Orris in tow. She eyed Mim’s gown, then relaxed as she decided that hers was more attention-getting. Marg’s opulent figure spilled out of a wisp of a frock that she would not have dared to wear the first time she had been young, but the centuries had taken away a lot of inhibitions. Orris was still the same lanky, self-effacing consort he had always been. She had made him dress for the party in one of the Old-Earth costumes that the archaeological excavations had made briefly popular: great, puffy, striped thigh breeches and skintight leg coverings that showed his knobby knees.
“Too sweet, I think,” Marg went blithely on. “Cloying, actually. I’m going to make wine from grapes, next. That’s what Original Man did, mostly. The secret is to allow most of the glucose to ferment out, evidently. Orris is cloning cells now from the samples we brought back. But it will take two years to grow the rootstocks.”
Orris’s shaggy head bobbed up and down in agreement.
The telescopic display caught Marg’s eye. Even she was sobered by it. She bit her lip. “I wonder what we missed,” she said. “I know it will take tens and tens of years to sort through what we’ve already got, but I can’t help thinking about what we might have missed. Do we have parsley, for example?” She fluttered her long eyelashes at Bram. “Don’t you think it would be a good idea if we went back? The disks are identical, aren’t they? There must be other biological museums we could dig up before those horrid creatures get to them.” She pouted. “I can’t stand the thought of them swarming over it all!”
“We were just talking about that.” Bram floundered uncomfortably.
Mim came to his rescue. “You know what I can’t stand? The idea of the Cuddlies being hunted by those awful things.”
Orris nodded vigorously. “Yes, they may be the last survivors of the mammalian age on earth. They were safe here for eons. And now they’re just fodder for probably the most voracious life form that evolution ever produced.”
“I don’t know,” Trist protested. “They’re tenacious little animals. The rat-people couldn’t exterminate them. They’ve prospered for millions of years in an inimical environment. They’ll learn to keep out of the nymphs’ way. Life may get tougher for them. But I have a hunch they’ll be around for millions of years more.”
“In any case, they won’t become extinct now,” Bram said. “All the pets taken aboard Yggdrasil will see to that.”
That led to a rash of Cuddly stories. Cuddly owners could be terrible bores.
“Our little Mittens is such a scamp!” Marg gushed. “She’s into everything, but I haven’t the heart to scold her.”
“Our Loki, too,” Mim said. “He was determined that he was going to come to the party. We had to lock him up to keep him from following us.”
“I hear from Jao that you’ve adopted another one,” Trist said politely.
“Yes … Methuselah,” Bram said. “He’s pretty spry for an old fellow. Walked right in and took possession of the place. No nonsense about him. Right now, I think he’s in the process of showing Loki who’s the boss.”
“Loki’s an unusual color,” Orris said. “Almost the same shade as Jao’s beard. Say, you wouldn’t consider letting us mate him with Mittens, would you? We’ve always wanted a red—”
He was interrupted by the arrival of Edard. Edard was tired and dusty, still wearing coveralls with a treeguard armband; he hadn’t gone to his quarters first to change for the party.
“Creation, but I could use a drink!” he said. Bram handed him his glass, and he drained it. Marg signaled one of her assistants for refills.
“What happened?” Bram asked.
“We found one,” Edard said. “One of the patrols flushed it out of a tunnel in the sapwood. We lost two men, but we got it.” He looked around for another drink. “It was full of eggs.”
“Do you think there are any more?” Trist asked.
“I don’t know. I hope not. We’ll have to build up the treeguard with more volunteers, step up the patrols. I’m going on duty again tomorrow. We may have to keep this up for years if we want to be sure.”
“How horrible,” Mim said.
“Inside the tree, of course, they’re not at the disadvantage they are in space suits. Spears aren’t the whole answer. We need something smaller that can kill at a distance.”
“A dart of some kind, maybe?” Trist suggested.
“Could be. With something like a spring to hurl it.”
“Interesting idea. Maybe the physics department could come up with something.”
“I’ve thought of one thing,” Edard said. “A sort of bow, like a violin bow. With the string under lots of tension. It could throw a short shaft with a pointed end. Of course, it would take a lot of practice to learn how to aim a thing like that so you could hit something with it.”
“Oh, Edard, you sound so bloodthirsty,” Mim said.
“Sorry, Mother. But if you’d seen two men killed by one of those filthy creatures…”