olders recognized Honath, of that he was sure, but none
came out to follow the party--though the villagers should be beginning
to drop from the hearts of their stitched flowers like ripe seed-pods by
this hour of any normal day.

A Judgment was at hand, and they knew it--and even those who had slept
the night in one of Honath's finest houses would not speak for him now.
Everyone knew, after all, that Honath did not believe in the Giants.

Honath could see the Judgment Seat itself now, a slung chair of woven
cane crowned along the back with a row of gigantic mottled orchids.
These had supposedly been transplanted there when the chair was made,
but no one could remember how old they were; since there were no
seasons, there was no particular reason why they should not have been
there forever. The Seat itself was at the back of the arena and high
above it, but in the gathering light Honath could make out the
white-furred face of the Tribal Spokesman, like a lone silver-and-black
pansy among the huge vivid blooms.

At the center of the arena proper was the Elevator itself. Honath had
seen it often enough, and had himself witnessed Judgments where it was
called into use, but he could still hardly believe that he was almost
surely to be its next passenger. It consisted of nothing more than a
large basket, deep enough so that one would have to leap out of it, and
rimmed with thorns to prevent one from leaping back in. Three hempen
ropes were tied to its rim, and were then cunningly interwound on a
single-drum windlass of wood, which could be turned by two men even when
the basket was loaded.

The procedure was equally simple. The condemned man was forced into the
basket, and the basket lowered out of sight, until the slackening of the
ropes indicated that it had touched the surface. The victim climbed
out--and if he did not, the basket remained below until he starved or
until Hell otherwise took care of its own--and the windlass was rewound.

The sentences were for varying periods of time, according to the
severity of the crime, but in practical terms this formality was empty.
Although the basket was dutifully lowered when the sentence had expired,
no one had ever been known to get back into it. Of course, in a world
without seasons or moons, and hence without any but an arbitrary year,
long periods of time are not easy to count accurately. The basket could
arrive thirty or forty days to one side or the other of the proper