you know what we'd find here? And why didn't you tell me, so I could
keep Richard at home?"

She saw Ted start, scalded by the splash of her self-directed anger, saw
him try to convert his wince into a shrug.

"You insisted on coming," he reminded her gently. "I couldn't have kept
you home without--without saying too much, worrying you--with the
Earth-ship still a year away. Besides, I didn't know for sure, till we
saw the tree-things around the cabin."

The tree-things. The trees-that-were-not. Gnarled blue trunks,
half-hidden by yellow leaf-needles stretching twenty feet into the sky.
Something like the hoary mountain hemlocks she and Ted had been forever
photographing on their Sierra honeymoon, seven life-long years ago.

Three of those tree-things had swayed over Cappy's spring for a far
longer time than Man had occupied this dreadful planet. Until just
now ...

The three of them had topped the rise that hid Cappy's farm from their
own. Richard was running ahead like a happily inquisitive puppy.
Suddenly he'd stopped, pointing with a finger she distinctly recalled as
needing thorough soapy scrubbing.

"Look, Mommie!" he'd said. "Cappy's trees have moved. They're around the
cabin, now."

He'd been interested, not surprised. In the past year, Mazda had become
Richard's home; only Earth could surprise him.

But, Ted, come to think of it, had seemed withdrawn, his face a careful
blank. And she?

"Very pretty," she'd said, and stuffed the tag-end of fear back into the
jammed, untidy mental pigeon-hole she used for all unpleasant thoughts.
"Don't run too far ahead, dear."

But now she had to know what Ted knew.

"Tell me!" she said.

"These tree-things--"

"There've been _other_ deaths! How many?"

"Sixteen. But I didn't want to tell you. Orders were to leave women and
children home when we had that last Meeting, remember."

"What did they say at the Meeting? Out with it, Ted!"

"That--that the tree-things think!"

"But that's ridiculous!"

"Well, unfortunately, no. Look, I'm not trying to tell you that
terrestrial trees think, too, nor even that they have a nervous system.
They don't. But--well, on Earth, if you've ever touched a lighted match
to the leaf of a sensitive plant like the mimosa, say--and I
have--you've been struck by the speed with which _other_ leaves close up
and droop. I mean, sure, we know that the leaves droop because certain
cells exude water and nearby leaves feel the heat of