Underfoot was only the moss. There was no underbrush. Those incredible trees seemed to have sucked all the nutriment out of the ground, leaving so little that only moss could flourish. That gave a logical explanation for the tree-parasites.
Where else could they live, except in a closely integrated society, where hunger made an automatic check-and-balance? Even the trees were part of that inexorable system, for they had drained the earth of life. And in return, they were hosts to other species.
Species had reached dead end in this land. They would never evolve to dominance, as the cat people had evolved, Raft surmised. They had found their balance.
And, meanwhile, he had to find Craddock.
Keeping a wary eye out for possible pursuit, he followed the river. Never at any time could he see more than a half-mile ahead. The trees made a maze. But the river itself was a guide. Raft plunged on doggedly, until at last exhaustion forced him to rest.
There might be shelter on one of the encrusted tree-trunks, but life was too teeming there. None of the things seemed to venture to the ground, however, and Raft finally lay down on the river bank, in lieu of better shelter. He might be attacked while he slept, but there was no way of guarding against that. He laid the revolver ready and slept, hoping for the best.
When he awoke, he went on again. Nor had he far to travel now. An hour's walk, as he estimated time, brought him to a wall which blocked further progress. It was only twenty feet high, dwarfed by the trees, but it was of some age-resistant plastic or alloy, and had eroded scarcely at all.
To left and to right it stretched away and was lost amid the trees. But it was broken at one spot by an archway, through which the river poured. Sediment had built up a narrow ledge bordering the water, a precarious path that led beneath the arch.
Unhesitatingly Raft stepped out on that muddy trail. He could see faint outlines that might have been footprints, and, further along, his suspicion was confirmed when he observed a track that was unmistakably that of Craddock's heavy boots. He was very nearly at the end of the trail.
Ahead he could make out irregular vegetation darkening that hemispherical opening, blocking his vision. He went on, more carefully now. There were bushes, he noted with surprise.
He began to push through their tangled mass, and abruptly drew back, contact with the things startling him. Their texture had been unlike the rough, bristly texture of plants. They were warm.
They were not plants.
Lacy filigrees, arabesque nets of interwoven mesh, made a curtain on each side of the river. They were grayish-pink, reminding Raft unmistakably of the neutral structure of a living body, networks of nerves, raw and unpleasant. Nor were they rooted like plants.
They quivered, vibrated. They drew back to let him pass.
As he stepped forward, they drew into themselves like contracting anemones touched by an intrusive finger. A dozen grayish, irregular little balls hugged the ground, blending with it in protective camouflage.
Beyond them lay the Garden of Kharn, a sickly, yellowish tangle of vegetation blocking Raft's view. He could see the guarding wall marching to left and right, curving in to form what must be an enclosure. There were none of the giant trees within the wall, though their columns loomed above and beyond it.
Raft moved on, keeping to the river bank. The bushes were strange to him, though he was no botanist. They seemed a rather impossible hybrid of fungus and true plant. They were fern and mushroom in one.
Oddly he thought of them as vampires, draining life from the very ground.
That forest was not normal—no. The cyclopean trees outside were friendly by comparison. They, at least, were as immense and aloof as gods.
But these plants, these sickly hybrids, grew with a rank luxuriance that was in itself unhealthy. Movement crawled through the yellow jungle, not the wave-motion of wind, but secretive, stealthy movements which made Raft's scalp prickle.
Very faintly, scarcely noticeable, he felt a presence in the Garden. And he knew, then, why Janissa had not wanted to speak of Kharn.
For that intangibly sensed presence was not malignant. It was worse. It was cold and distant and alien.
And, intrinsically, it was very evil.
Raft moved even more cautiously now. There was menace here, the more ominous because he could not define it. It was a brooding, enigmatic presence which was sensed by the cat-people as well as by himself. This added up to significance.
Felines and simians react in different ways to the same stimulus. Cats are notorious for their acceptance of the supernatural, which meant simply the supernormal, vibrations and radiations too subtle to be sensed fully by mankind. Psychic menaces that would give a man cold chills would rouse a cat to purring ecstasy.
Similarly, cats react violently to a canine menace—a wolf—whereas a man simply reaches for the nearest weapon.
This malignancy, therefore, was a presence alien to both feline and simian.
Perhaps, it was alien chiefly because of the altered evolutionary standard in this hothouse valley of forced growth. There was an old sort of familiarity about that unseen presence. Raft felt certain that he had encountered something of the sort before, and often. Yet never had his living flesh shrunk from the mere nearness of any creature as it did now. Whatever dwelt in the Garden of Kharn, it was nothing remotely normal or healthy.
He stepped beneath the broad leaves and mushroom-caps of the forest. A sulphurous yellow light filtered through from above, lacking in the cool clarity of the atmosphere outside the Garden.
The ground underfoot was spongy, a moist, slippery muck into which his sandals sank mushily, with an unpleasant sucking sound. It was not silent here. There were furtive, quick movements all about him, hidden in that yellow jungle.
He was an intruder and felt it. A fleshy stem bent slowly toward him, sticky juice exuding from its surface. The sweetish odor of the liquor was sickening. Raft stepped away, and the branch rose slowly toward the perpendicular, as though it was dragging itself painfully upright against the fetters of gravity.
Yes, the forest was conscious of him. But there were no cannibal trees here, no gigantic Venus fly-traps that could swallow him whole. There was something horrible about the straining, awkward motion of those heavy leaves and stems.
The place was alive with insects. The forest crawled with them, flies, moths, butterflies, a myriad varieties crept and buzzed and fed on the ichor the trees sweated.
Some of the fungi had hollow caps like huge bowls, and the stench that rose from those liquid-filled basins was overpowering. Yet it was not entirely unpleasant.
Attar of roses is sickening in quantity, but the merest suggestion of attar has the opposite effect. Had the forest not sweated their perfume till the very air was saturated with it, Raft might not have objected. As it was, his clothes were moist and stinking with the stuff before he had traveled more than a few yards.
The trail of Parror and Craddock was well marked. There were other tracks in the soil, ambiguous prints Raft did not recognize. But he ignored these to follow his quarry. Parror had headed directly toward the center of the Garden.
One of the pink webwork creatures crept slowly into view. A filament of raw nerves, it crawled up the stem of a fungus and pulled itself into the liquid-filled cap. It immersed itself, floating motionless, its tendrils spreading out like the hair of a drowned woman.
A little creature, plated like an armadillo, rolled into view. Raft watched it warily. All over the armored body sharp spines struck out.
It rolled toward Raft, but he avoided it easily. The spines looked dangerous. They might be toxic. Luckily the creature could not move fast.
It rolled into the jungle and was gone.