ke a pine-cone to the sandy ground and lay
paralyzed under the nearest cover, until the brindle-feathered,
fan-tailed screamers tired of flying in such tight circles and headed
for clearer air. Even after the lizard-birds had given up, they crouched
quietly for a long time, waiting to see what greater demons might have
been attracted by the commotion.

Luckily, on the higher ground there was much more cover from low-growing
shrubs and trees--palmetto, sassafras, several kinds of laurel,
magnolia, and a great many sedges. Up here, too, the endless jungle
began to break around the bases of the great pink cliffs. Overhead were
welcome vistas of open sky, sketchily crossed by woven bridges leading
from the vine-world to the cliffs themselves. In the intervening columns
of blue air a whole hierarchy of flying creatures ranked themselves,
layer by layer. First, the low-flying beetles, bees and two-winged
insects. Next were the dragonflies which hunted them, some with
wingspreads as wide as two feet. Then the lizard-birds, hunting the
dragonflies and anything else that could he nipped without fighting
back. And at last, far above, the great gliding reptiles coasting along
the brows of the cliffs, riding the rising currents of air, their
long-jawed hunger stalking anything that flew--as they sometimes stalked
the birds of the attic world, and the flying fish along the breast of
the distant sea.

The party halted in an especially thick clump of sedges. Though the rain
continued to fall, harder than ever, they were all desperately thirsty.
They had yet to find a single bromelaid: evidently the tank-plants did
not grow in Hell. Cupping their hands to the weeping sky accumulated
surprisingly little water; and no puddles large enough to drink from
accumulated on the sand. But at least, here under the open sky, there
was too much fierce struggle in the air to allow the lizard-birds to
congregate and squall about their hiding place.

The white sun had already set and the red sun's vast arc still bulged
above the horizon. In the lurid glow the rain looked like blood, and the
seamed faces of the pink cliffs had all but vanished. Honath peered
dubiously out from under the sedges at the still distant escarpments.

"I don't see how we can hope to climb those," he said, in a low voice.
"That kind of limestone crumbles as soon as you touch it, otherwise we'd
have had better luck with our war against the cliff tribe."

"We could go aroun