right about this being a
feeding-ground, Alaskon. I hear something moving around in the ferns.
And if this rain lasts long, the water will rise here, too. I've seen
silver flashes from down here many a time after heavy rains."

"That's right," Mathild said, her voice subdued. "The base of the
fan-palm grove always floods. That's why the treetops are lower there."

The wind seemed to have let up a little, though the rain was still
falling. Alaskon stood up tentatively and looked around.

"Then let's move on," he said. "If we try to keep under cover until we
get to higher ground--"

A faint crackling sound, high above his head, interrupted him. It got
louder. Feeling a sudden spasm of pure fear, Honath looked up.

Nothing could be seen for an instant but the far-away curtain of
branches and fern fronds. Then, with shocking suddenness, something
plummeted through the blue-green roof and came tumbling toward them. It
was a man, twisting and tumbling through the air with grotesque
slowness, like a child turning in its sleep. They scattered.

The body hit the ground with a sodden thump, but there were sharp
overtones to the sound, like the bursting of a gourd. For a moment
nobody moved. Then Honath crept forward.

It had been Seth, as Honath had realized the moment the figurine had
burst through the branches far above. But it had not been the fall that
had killed him. He had been run through by at least a dozen
needles--some of them, beyond doubt, tools from his own shop, their
points edged hair-fine by his own precious strops of leatherwood-bark.

There would be no reprieve from above. The sentence was one thousand
days. This burst and broken huddle of fur was the only alternative.

And the first day had barely begun.

* * * * *

They toiled all the rest of the day to reach higher ground. As they
stole cautiously closer to the foothills of the Great Range and the
ground became firmer, they were able to take to the air for short
stretches, but they were no sooner aloft among the willows than the
lizard-birds came squalling down on them by the dozens, fighting among
each other for the privilege of nipping these plump and incredibly
slow-moving monkeys.

No man, no matter how confirmed a free-thinker, could have stood up
under such an onslaught by the creatures he had been taught as a child
to think of as his ancestors. The first time it happened, every member
of the party dropped li