duskiness. There were branches overhead that were just as big or larger, and these were covered by vegetation, including big trees. Moreover, at places between the branches, on horizontal and vertical planes, lianas and vines grew in an intertwining complex that looked solid enough to hold a herd of elephants.
There was a curtain of solid lianas and flowers that held strange seashell-shaped structures in which lived little shrew-like animals. These apparently made their nests with saliva which dried out to become hard as cardboard. Ghlikh advised against approaching the tiny beasts, because they had a painfully poisonous bite.
There were other dangers, all of which he described to Ulysses. Or at least he claimed to have covered everything.
Ulysses tried not to look appalled. But Awina and some others who had heard Ghlikh seemed depressed. They were a quiet bunch that night as they cooked their meat over small 'smokeless' fires. Ulysses did not try to cheer them up; silence was to be desired. If they continued to be gloomy, however, he would have to do something to raise their morale.
He put together a fishing pole and, using a piece of deer meat as bait, went fishing. He caught a shell-less turtle and was going to throw it back when he decided he would try it for breakfast. His second cast got him a small fish which he did throw back. After about five minutes, he hooked a fish a foot and a half long. It had sturdy forefins and little feelers along the side of its body. It finally came in and then he discovered that it could also breathe air. It made a croaking noise and tried to scratch him with the tiny claws on the edge of its fins. He put it in a basket, where it continued to croak so loudly that he released it. He would catch it or its brother in the morning for his breakfast.
The problem of sleeping was solved easily enough, although not to his satisfaction. There were enough smaller fissures so that the entire party could be hidden, but, on the other hand, they could not sleep close enough together. An enemy could approach them and knock them off one by one without a guard even seeing him.
There was nothing he could do about it except to double the guards he would normally have stationed. He took second watch himself, and then lay down in a fissure near Awina. He closed his eyes but soon opened them. The hooting, screaming, moaning, croaking, booming, strumming and whooping made sleep impossible and plucked at his nerves. He sat up, then lay down, sat up again, rolled over and whispered to Awina. When he was tapped on the shoulder to take his turn, he had not slept at all.
The moon had come up then, but its light would not penetrate into this vegetable cavern. Its rays shone brightly several miles away on the plains, where Ulysses wished he were at that moment.
The morning saw all of them as red-eyed as the rising sun. Ulysses drank some water from the stream and then determinedly went fishing. He caught five of the amphibians, three trout-like fish, two frogs and another turtle. He gave these to Awina and she and several of the Wufea cooked them.
Ulysses talked cheerily, though not loudly, and after everybody had eaten the fish (they loved fish) they all felt better. Nevertheless, when they shouldered their packs, they were still tired. The shadows fell on them as they passed from the few spots where the sun penetrated to the lengthy stretches beneath the canopies of branch and liana and they fell silent. There were places where the vegetation was so thick that the bat-people could not fly, and then they had to be carried on the backs of two warriors.
The second day, they were in better condition. The noises of the night were more familiar, and they had gotten more sleep. They were eating well. The fish were still being caught. A Wagarondit shot a big scarlet boar with triple sets of curved tusks, and they roasted and ate it. Also, there were many trees and bushes with berries and fruits and nuts. Ghlikh said that none was poisonous, and so Ulysses ordered him or his wife to sample each before the others ate. Ghlikh did not like the order, but he smiled grimly, and he obeyed.
The third day, at Ghlikh's recommendation, they went up a trunk. He said that if they climbed to the upper terraces, they would find the going easier. Ulysses thought that flying creatures, such as other bat-men, might also spot them far easier, but he decided to go along with the bat-man for a while.
The party had been forced to travel on trunks before, of course. To get from one branch to another was quite easily done if the branches happened to be linked with a complex of lianas and other vegetation. Usually, this was the condition. But now and then they had to travel around a trunk to get to another branch. This was slow but reasonably safe, if one did not look down. The bark was like a very rough cliffside, and climbing up was as easy as going up a chimney with one open side. Ulysses managed the ascent well enough, though his hands and back were torn and bloody. Here the lesser weight, the wiriness and the fur of the nonhumans were to their advantage.
Breathing heavily, Ulysses finally pulled up over the last ledge and was on a branch. He had started climbing early that morning, and it was almost dusk. Below, it was already nightfall; the depths looked cavernously gloomy. The yowl of a leopard-like cat rose past them, sounding far away. A monkey pack whooped about a thousand feet down. He estimated that they were at least eight thousand feet above the ground. Yet they were not at the top of The Tree. The trunk rose at least another two thousand feet, and there were a dozen great branches between the one on which they stood and the tip of this trunk.
It got cold up here after dusk. Twigs, branches and logs from dead trees were collected and piled at the bottom of those fissures which were not filled with dirt. Up here, the dust was not as thick as below and there was more naked bark. The sun went down, and then clouds moved around them. Shivering and damp, they moved in closer to the fires.
Ulysses spoke to Ghlikh, who was sitting near him by the flames.
'I am not so sure that your idea was a good one. It is true that there is less vegetation here, and so we can move more swiftly. But the cold and the wet may make us sick.'
The bat-man and his wife were pale demon figures in the fog and the flickering light of the fire. They were enfolded in blankets out of which their naked heads and the leathery wings projected. Ghlikh's teeth chattered as he said, 'Tomorrow, my Lord, we will build a raft and go sailing down a stream. Then you will see the wisdom of my advice. We will cover so much more territory so much more swiftly. You will see then that the discomfort of the nights are more than offset by the ease of travel of the days.'
'We shall see,' Ulysses said, and he got into his sleeping bag.
The cloud moved over his face like a wet breath and covered it with droplets of water. But the rest of him was warm. He closed his eyes, then opened them to check on Awina. She was in her bag, but sitting up with her back against the wall of the grey fissure. Her large eyes were fixed on him. He shut his eyes then but still saw hers, and when he slept he dreamed of them.
He woke with a shock, his heart hammering, his breath coming hard. The scream was still ringing in his ears.
For a minute, he thought he had dreamed. Then he heard the exclamations of the others and the noise as they fought to get out of their bags. The fire had gotten low, and the figures scrambling around in the dark looked like monkeys at the bottom of a pit.
He stood up, an assegai held ready. Ready for what? His question got a volley of babble; everybody was as uncertain as he. The party was separated into three groups, each of which was around a fire at the bottom of a canyon-like fissure, the top of which was several feet above even Ulysses' head. Then a round object appeared in the fog near him, and a voice said, 'My Lord! Two of our people are dead!'
It was Edjauwando, a Wagarondit from another group. Ulysses hoisted himself out of the fissure and others followed him. Edjauwando said, 'Two have been killed with spears.'
Ulysses examined the dead by the light of the fire, which had been increased with a pile of branches and twigs. The throat wounds could have been made with spears, but Edjauwando was just guessing about the weapons used.
The guards said that they had seen nothing. They had been stationed outside the fissures but had sat at their posts half in their bags and half-wrapped in blankets. They said that the screams had come from out there — pointing into the cloud — and not from the victims.
Ulysses increased the guards and then returned to his fissure. He said, 'Ghlikh, what kind of sentients are in this area?'
Ghlikh blinked at him and then said, 'Two, Lord. There are the Wuggrud, the giants, and there are the Khrauszmiddum, a people like the Wufea but taller and spotted like the leopard. But neither live this high up. Or, at least, very few do.'
'Whoever they are,' Ulysses said, 'they can't be many. Otherwise, they would have rushed the whole group.'
'That is likely,' Ghlikh said. 'On the other hand, the Khrauszmiddum like to play with their enemies as a
