“He went back for the Rembrandts,” a terrified assistant babbled. “He said he couldn't bear to leave them behind."

Bram shook the man into coherence. “How long ago?"

“About two hours ago. He took a walker."

Bram released him. “The fool,” he said. “The idiotic fool.” He pushed his way across the crowded shuttle deck to the raised platform of the control section, where Jao stood conferring in low tones with the pilot.

The pilot turned a worried face toward him. She was a big-boned woman with brown curly hair, a member of Lydis's comet-chasing squadron and, therefore, a crack flyer. “We're ready to go,” she said. “We ought to lift off within the half hour or..."

She trailed off and glanced meaningfully out the arbitrary forward port across the pale ribbon of landscape.

“Is everyone else accounted for?” Bram asked Jao.

“Yar. The curator was accounted for, too, on our preliminary name check. He must have slipped away right afterward."

“He ought to have been back by now. Unless something happened to him."

Jao, without apology, reached past the pilot and punched a telescopic view of the plain into one of the screens. He adjusted the angle of incidence until he got what he was looking for, then refined the focus. Bram saw a thin haze of dust, its forward edge advancing, its rearward margin slowly settling.

“Less than fifty miles away,” he said. “They could be here in an hour."

Bram checked the latches of his helmet before putting it on. “I'd better go look for him."

“Are you crazy?” Jao exploded. “There isn't time. If he doesn't get back in time for lift-off, we'll have to leave without him."

Bram turned to the pilot. “Don't wait for me,” he said. “I'll keep in radio contact, but if I go off the air or if I'm late, lift off without me. Is that understood?"

“I'll wait till the last possible moment, Year-Captain,” the pilot said.

“Don't cut it too fine,” Bram said. He lifted the helmet to his shoulders.

Jao retrieved his own helmet. “I'm going with you. No argument."

They squeezed into the air lock together. “Leave the outside door open.” The pilot's voice rang in his radio. Jao nodded and deployed a rope ladder, but they didn't waste time using the ladder to climb down; they let themselves drop, with a little shove to speed them on their way.

“This way,” Jao said.

He led the way across the field to where a helter-skelter collection of walkers and wheeled machinery had been abandoned. Boxes, bundles, and personal possessions were strewn at random where they had been dropped. Some of the walkers stirred nervously, giving the illusion of life. They had no consciousness, of course—they were just protein machines—but still Bram hated the thought of leaving them here on a dragonfly world. Though, he reflected, if a dragonfly tried to eat one, the walker would poison it.

“This one,” Jao said. “It's Old Speedy, the one that won all the races last summer.” He checked the reselin tendons to make sure they were hard and taut, eyed the diameter of the central ball of muscle to see that it still retained sufficient running time, and climbed inside. Bram followed him through the flap, and Jao put the biomachine in motion with a slap of the reins.

The walker ran flat out toward the digs, Jao urging it on at a gallop. Bram twisted around for a look at the launching pad. The first shuttle was mounting the sky on a tail of fire. There were six more to go, with the approximately one hundred eighty remaining evacuees crowded into them. The life-support facilities would be strained, but they'd survive until they reached Yggdrasil.

A half hour later, the moon ladder came into view, with the stalled car dangling from it. The low, regular rubble mounds of the outskirts of the city lay only a few miles ahead of them.

“We're running late,” Bram said. “Do you see any sign of him?"

“No."

Behind them, another shuttle rose into the sky. It was the fourth. There were only three left to go.

“There's his walker,” Jao said, slowing down.

The derelict walker stood spraddle-legged in a patch of loose gravel, its blunt prow facing the digs, not the landing field. There was no sign of the curator in the vicinity. Bram got out and examined the interior of the driver's bubble.

“Ran out of power,” he announced to Jao. “He must have taken a walker that was already run down. I saw a few footprints. I guess he decided to walk the rest of the way in."

“What was it that he was after, anyway?” Jao said.

“A collection of Rembrandt engravings."

“You'd think they were germ plasm samples. Couldn't he have holoed them or something?"

“He said they were originals from Earth."

Jao looked nervously behind him. “There goes another shuttle."

Their pilot heard him. “I think you'd better start back now,” she said. “Your time's running out."

“How close are they?"

“About thirty miles. They can probably see our shuttles by now. But they're still sticking pretty closely to the inner rim route that their scouts took. So far they've shown no sign of veering inland for a look at us."

“That's because as far as they know, all of the goodies are still waiting for them at the digs,” Jao said gruffly. He turned to Bram. “Where would your Rembrandt lover have been headed?"

“Back to the sports arena, I suppose. That's where he left the things he wasn't able to carry."

“Serve him right if he got left behind himself,” Jao growled, He made no move to start up the walker again.

“Bee butchers,” Bram said softly. “That was one of the names for dragonflies. Bees were another kind of insect. They lived in communal hives. Original Man raised them for a substance called honey that they produced. Some dragonflies learned to hang around bee yards and wait for the workers to return with their loads. They'd dismember the bees on the wing, Harld told me, until the ground was littered with bee fragments."

“Like the way they massacred us in the arena,” Jao said harshly.

“Yes."

Jao reached to the tiller. “You're right, of course, chaos take it. We can't leave the little fellow there."

The walker unlimbered its long legs and in a moment was flying at top speed toward the oval of reflected moonlight that marked the central city.

They came upon the curator a couple of miles farther on. He staggered toward them out of the rubble, carrying a huge portfolio that he seemed unable to lift high enough to keep from dragging, even in the microgravity. Jao came jolting to a halt, and he and Bram climbed down. The curator stared dully at them through his helmet, his face gray. They hustled him into the walker and cracked his helmet, while Bram checked his tanks.

“His air's, almost gone,” Bram said. “He never would have made it back on foot."

Jao tossed the portfolio into the back of the inflated compartment. “I hope these were worth it,” he snarled at the curator. “You risked a shuttleful of lives for them."

Through blue lips, the curator said defiantly, “They're irreplaceable."

“So are we,” Jao snapped.

The walker's long strides ate up the miles. Through the radio, the pilot's strained voice kept them informed. “Year-Captain, the main body of the dragonfly force just passed our position. But several vehicles have separated from it and are crossing the plain toward us. The other remaining shuttle is going to take off now."

Ahead, flame boiled from the landscape and climbed the black sky. Bram looked across at the rim road and saw a line of tiny specks heading toward the city.

“I can see the vehicles,” Bram said. “We should reach your position in about ten minutes."

“I'm warming the engines. Please hurry."

“Oh, oh,” Jao said. “Take a look at that."

The walker's movement had attracted attention. On the rim road, four of the specks left the dragonfly cavalcade and headed inland.

“Trying to cut us off,” Jao said. “But a walker can outrun one of those rolling travel tubes without half trying."

“Don't be too sure,” Bram said. The tilted cylinders were picking up speed, streaking across the surface like gigantic writing pens guided by an invisible hand. Now their speed was too much for the low gravity. They began to jounce into the air, higher and higher, between the brief scrabbling of the wheels at the ground. One of them bounced a good thirty feet and came down upright, still moving. The passengers within must be shifting their weight around to keep it stable. Wingless the nymphs might be, but they still had the instincts of fliers.

Bram could see the shuttle now, a minuscule dome on stilts. A haze of escaping gas covered its skirts. Beyond, a wave of the angled tube vehicles rolled toward it.

“It's going to be close,” Jao said.

“Too close,” Bram said. “We're drawing them toward you,” he told the pilot. “It's no good. You'd better lift off now!"

“No,” the pilot said. “I can see you now. The outside air lock door is open, and everybody's in a suit and helmet just in case. I'll hold for you until the last minute. Jump for the door, hold on to the ladder or a strut—anything—if you have to. I'll use the docking jets to get us space-borne, so you don't have to worry about being cooked."

In the rear of the walker, the curator hugged his portfolio to himself and moaned. Bram wondered about jumping for the air lock one-handed. Perhaps he could throw the curator at the door. No, Jao could jump first, catch the curator and fling him inside, then catch the portfolio.

It would be a shame to leave the etchings behind after they had risked their lives for them.

“We're not going to make it,” Jao said.

Bram gave up the idea. The tube vehicles were fanning out to engulf the base of the lander—fanning out to engulf the walker when it arrived.

“Do as I say,” Bram ordered. “You've got thirty people there to think of."

The pilot's voice was filled with anguish. “We'll wait. We've talked it over together."

Bram's eyes stung. Beside him on the narrow bench, Jao cursed and brought the walker to a rearing halt.

Off to the side, the four dragonfly vehicles that had moved to cut the walker off instantly made a slight course correction to adapt to the new vector.

“Listen,” Jao said roughly, “there's still a pallet out there ready to go. I strapped the rockets to it myself. We're going for it. So forget about waiting for us."

In the rear, the curator sat goggle-eyed. He clutched the portfolio with a death grip.

“When you get back to the tree,” Bram told the pilot, “tell Jun Davd to watch for us. If we miss, Lydis can try for a catch."

“Yar,” Jao said. “It's line of sight all the way. It's not as if I have to compute it to the last decimal place."

With a sob, the pilot said, “Good-bye, Year-Captain,” and cut off.

Jao started the walker up again. Bram peered through the transparent bubble at the lander. At its base, tube vehicles were jolting to a stop. Nymphs popped out of the ends of tubes and swarmed around it. Bram could see the sticklike figures clinging to the landing legs. Two of them were at the air lock door. One of them disappeared inside. It must have blown the inner door and been caught by the gust, because seconds later it came tumbling out. The big, box-shaped helmet made it top-heavy; by the time it hit the ground, it was falling head first. The transparent cage shattered.

“Glass,” Bram said. “Their helmets are made of glass."

“So?” Jao, wrestling with the walker's controls. “They must have a very strange industrial base."

A brilliant puff of flame bloomed underneath the shuttle. She was using the main propulsion unit, after all—using it as a weapon. The flame spilled over the nearer dragonfly machines, swallowed the square-helmeted figures clamoring around the landing legs. Slowly the shuttle lifted, shedding dragonfly forms that twisted in the air and fell helmet-down. A few of them still clung to the air lock ladder and upper structures, to be carried like an infection to the tree. The humans would have to keep them outside somehow. Surely they couldn't carry enough air in their suits to last the whole trip.

That raised another specter. “Jao, are there any spare air bottles loaded on the pallet?"

“No. It wasn't intended to be manned. We'll have to take the walker with us for our life support."

Their four pursuers were closing in fast, along a broad front. Jao wrenched at the controls and spun the walker around. What made it scary was the fact that he was heading toward them at a slant, trying to beat them to the pallet. The other dragonfly vehicles—those which hadn't been seared by the lander's flame—abandoned the site where they had been deprived of their prey and decided to come after the walker.

“They're coming at us from all sides,” Bram grimaced.

“Just hold on,” Jao said. He pulled up at the pallet and scrambled out of the walker. “Help me unload some of this junk!” Bram tumbled out after him, leaving the helmetless curator huddled within, clutching his precious portfolio.

The pallet was dangerously unbalanced. The last-minute effort to load it had been abandoned halfway through. Piles of crates surrounded it, and more crates and sacks were heaped indiscriminately on its edges, waiting to have their weight distributed evenly and to be tied down.

Bram started heaving cargo overboard. He did not care to imagine what priceless human artifacts were being jettisoned. Jao worked beside him with frantic haste.

“That's good enough,” Jao panted. “Just pray that it doesn't tip over when we get off the ground."

Together they lashed a cargo net over the remaining load. The top surface was fairly level; Bram could only hope that the different weights averaged out, too.

He stayed outside while Jao squeezed back into the walker and jumped it to the top of the load. Bram tied down the walker's legs while Jao crawled over obstacles to find the detonator.

Then a dragonfly vehicle skittered up, hitting the edge of the wooden platform with a jolt. The impact swerved it around. Bram looked up and saw the overhanging end of the tubular chassis above him. A hatch popped open, and box-helmeted forms came pouring out. The first of them floated downward—not so high as to make it fall on its head, but just high enough to give it a lazy half turn in midair and enable it to land on all fours.

More of the vehicles were crowding around, more hatches popping open, and then Jao set off the rockets.

He must have given it almost everything he had, because the platform lifted with an abrupt acceleration that batted the overhanging dragonfly transport aside and slammed Bram down.

The edge of the platform caught the helmet of one of the descending nymphs and shattered it. The mass of green jelly inside exploded sickeningly. Another nymph flailed for a clawhold, missed, and fell away under the rocket exhaust.

But two of the nymphs were on the platform, scuttling toward him. Bram had just time enough to note that one of the nymphs was carrying a flanged, open-sided box as big as its helmet, and then they were on him.

A pronged sleeve lashed out at him. He ducked and took it on his helmet. If it had ripped open his suit, he would have been done for.

The flexible abdomen, tipped with claspers, whipped around at him. He caught the pincers and then, with his toes hooked into the cargo net, swung the insect like a sling while the upper body twisted around trying to get at him. The glass helmet smashed against the corner of a crate, and the claspers relaxed just on the point of crushing his gloved hand between them.

But then the other nymph had him by two legs and its claspers and was trying to stuff him into the box. He struggled, but it was lifting him from behind, and he couldn't reach it.

Then he was in the box, staring through its open end into the cleft face of a tomato-eyed monster that was lifting him upward with blurring speed.

He tried to get his legs under him, but crammed into the box as he was, he couldn't untangle himself fast enough. The rockets had stopped firing. The pallet was coasting now, and free-fall turned him into the creature's plaything.

It held him at arm's length for inspection. The blank green eyes loomed through the glass, and the facial legs within the helmet stirred restlessly on their shelf. There was a latch at the bottom of the faceplate, a simple catch meant to be operated from inside, and one of the facial limbs was reaching for it...

And then all of a sudden Jao was there with a wooden stake in his hand.

Jao swung, driving the stake through the glass of the square helmet. The glass showered in fragments. The lobed face burst, and the hinged eating apparatus—unfolding limply from the smooth mask—lolled amid the jellied ruin.

Jao helped him out of the box. “What are those flanges for? It looks like it's made to fit on to something ... it's built sort of like a little air lock, isn't it?"

Bram looked over at the shattered helmet. He could see now that the front plate was made to slide up and down on grooves. His knees were suddenly weak from delayed reaction.

“It's an eating box,” he said.

The tethered moon was far behind them, showing itself as pear-shaped with the wide end up. Even without Jao's crude thumb-and-nose sightings, it was obvious by now that they were way off course. The cargo platform had gone sailing hundreds of miles past the edge of the disk's rim, and they were looking down a ninety-million-mile cliff side.

“Too wide and too high,” Jao said gloomily. “I had to fire all the rockets at once for a quick getaway. That jolt the nymphmobile gave us didn't help any, either."

The three of them had been cooped up together inside the walker's inflated bubble for an hour now, breathing by courtesy of the walker's hydrogen-oxygen submetabolism. The curator had recovered somewhat and was getting snappish.

“Does that mean it's going to take longer?” he complained. “I'm getting hungry. And my eyes and throat are burning from the atmosphere in here."

“Be thankful you're breathing at all,” Jao said. “We're all going to be a little hungry after a while, but at least we won't die of thirst."

“See here,” the little man said. “I insist—"

Bram interrupted. “If we keep on this way much longer, by the time we overtake Yggdrasil, we'll be thousands of miles off the rim. They won't know where to look for us. And our suit radios don't have that kind of range."

“Yah, I guess we better have a little course correction about now,” Jao said.

“With what? I thought you said you shot off all our rockets."

“Oh, there were a couple of spares left over from when I rigged the pallet,” Jao said casually. “They were still in the corner where I stowed them, fortunately. Under a tarpaulin. The stevedores must've thought they were part of the cargo. I lugged them over here while that walking appetite was trying to package you for its dinner."

He gestured negligently at the thousand square feet of lumpy cargo net on which the walker rested. Bram saw the two solid-propellant canisters lying several feet away.

“What good will those do?” he asked. “Two little booster rockets aren't enough to nudge a mass like this after the kick it got."

“Oh, we don't have to push the whole mass,” Jao said.

“Even if we dumped everything—at least as much as we could manage in the next hour, working at top speed—the platform itself has too much mass. We'd never be able to kill enough momentum to come out with the right vector.” He gestured at the receding rimscape and shrugged. “And after another hour of this..."

“We'll ride the walker in!” Jao said impatiently. “Use it as our lifeboat. It weighs practically nothing, and there's just the combined mass of the three of us. There's enough thrust in just one of those boosters to change our vector while conserving the useful momentum toward Yggdrasil!"

“Yes, but—"

“It's all in the angles. I'll retrofire the second rocket to slow us down at the other end enough to compensate for the extra momentum. Or most of it, anyway. We'll hang in Yggdrasil's space for hours—more than enough to zero in on our suit radios. And if we're still out of range, I can rig up a hydrogen flare or something."

They set to work with a will. There was more than enough cordage to lash the two canisters in position on the walker's spindly frame. “Best to secure the retro-rocket now, while we have some footing underneath us,” Jao said. “I can align it precisely with the median axis. When it's time to fire, we'll aim the whole walker by squirting oxygen or something."

“You going to clear the pallet the same way?"

“No ... too many variables. I'm using the pallet as our launch platform. I know how it's tumbling."

Jao had done wonders with a few simple tools—the timer of his neck computer, a couple of wooden stakes marked off with measuring lines, a loop sight made of bent wire. “We can't miss,” he said. “It's a three-hundred-mile-wide target."

Overcoming their distaste, they scavenged the dragonfly air tanks, then discovered that they were unusable. The air was thick with contaminants. One whiff set the curator coughing and wheezing.

“What's the air of their world like if they can breathe that?” Bram wondered aloud.

“Never mind,” Jao said. “Take ’em along. We'll use ’em for attitude jets."

They were about to leave when they saw movement amid the jumbled cargo. “We've got a stowaway,” Jao said.

Bram tensed, but it was only a Cuddly. They coaxed the little fellow closer, then grabbed him. His fur was beginning to lose the trapped air that made it fluffy.

“We'd better take him with us,” Bram said. “He can't last much longer here."

The small creature went willingly with them into the walker's inflated bubble, eagerly sniffing the air. He immediately made a nuisance of himself by attempting to curl up in the lap of the one person there who didn't care for animals—the curator.

“Get him off me,” the curator yelled. “I don't want him messing up these etchings."

“Oh, for Fatherbeing's sake, he's not going to hurt anything,” Jao said. “You've got them in nitrogen envelopes, anyway."

Bram lifted the little beast away. “He's an old one,” he said. “Look at that grizzled fur."

“Yar, he's lived a long time, all right. His string almost ran out here, though. He would have gone spinning through vacuum for eternity. Lucky we saw him in time."

“Smart of him to come out and show himself, you mean."

Jao cocked his head. “Going to bring him home to Mim?"

The Cuddly settled contentedly in Bram's lap. “I guess I've got myself another Cuddly,” he sighed. “I hope he gets along with Loki."

The furry animal responded to Bram's voice by lifting its gray muzzle and blinking at him with big trusting brown eyes.

“What are you going to name him?” Jao asked.

“Who was that character in King James who lived so long? Methuselah. I'll call him Methuselah."

“Hear that, Methuselah? I guess you've got yourself a new home.” Jao spoke absently, his eye on the changing chronograph display of his pendant computer. “Five more seconds, then we'll be pointed just right. Hold on, here we go."

He set off the solid fuel booster with the yank of a wire, and the walker flew like a cork into space. The square bulk of the pallet tumbled away from them and grew smaller against the disk-filled night.

“Hold tight,” the voice of Lydis crackled through the static. “I'm coming to pick you up."

“Did everybody make it?” Bram asked.

“Yes, the last shuttle got here hours ago. Smeth's into his countdown. We blast off within the fivehour."

That explained why Yggdrasil had stopped spinning. The tree's green hemispheres filled the sky ahead of them, a sandwich with the void of space for a filling. The trunk was a stubby bar in the middle, eclipsing stars, seemingly pierced by the long skewer of the probe behind it. They were still too far above the surface to make out any detail of branches or leaf-clothed roots, but scattered here and there across the greener dome were the pinpoint lights of human habitation.

Bram looked for the yellow wink of Lydis's drive and found it to one side. There was a more ominous sight beyond it—the pearly motes of dragonfly bubbles floating among the stars.

“How far from Yggdrasil do you make them?” Bram asked.

“We'll beat them,” she said shortly, and switched off.

The burn was a long one, lasting almost an hour. Bram watched the flame until it winked out. Ten minutes later it flared up again, many times brighter now that it was facing them.

“That daughter of yours doesn't fool around,” Jao said admiringly. “Burn till turnover, and no corrections.” He glanced at the chronograph window of his display. “She'll be here in less than nine decaminutes."

Actually it took a full hour; Jao had forgotten to allow for the fact that Lydis would have to shut off her engine a little early to avoid cooking them and coast the last few miles. Even so, she was still killing momentum with her hydrazine maneuvering jets when she arrived.

They watched through the clear bubble as the rhombohedral bulk bore down on them. Lydis was flying a heavy-duty space tug—a comet chaser—instead of one of the lightweight interbranch shuttles.

“Come on, let's go,” Jao said.

He picked up one of the scavenged dragonfly air tanks—a ribbed ovoid with a stopcock in the form of two levers meant to be squeezed together—and slipped one arm through its webbing. Bram screwed the curator's helmet back on while the man fussed at him. After a moment's thought, he replaced the curator's depleted air bottle with his own half-full one; actually, any of them could breathe for about nine minutes on the cubic foot or so of oxygen-rich walker air trapped in their suits, but the curator wouldn't know that, and Bram didn't want the little man getting panicky and thrashing around.

Together, he and Jao grabbed the curator by the arms and hauled him bodily through the air flap. The Cuddly came tumbling out on the blast of released air and, making an agile recovery, landed on Bram's shoulder.

The tug hovered a few hundred feet away, its nets spread like wings. Bram could see the mists of the hydrazine jets as Lydis nudged the behemoth toward them.

While the curator squirmed in their grasp, Jao aimed the nozzle of the dragonfly tank at a spot ahead of the tug and squirted polluted air into space. Lydis saw what he was doing and compensated her vector for lateral motion.

They sailed across the gap, with Methuselah riding happily on Bram's shoulder, and slammed into a net with rather more force than was elegant. The curator's mouth popped open as the breath was driven out of him. Methuselah went head over heels, caught a strand in his tiny paws, and scrambled back to Bram's shoulder.

They hauled themselves and the curator's wriggling form toward the open air lock door while Lydis positioned the tug for the return journey. She hardly looked up as they came squeezing through into the cabin.

“Strap yourselves down,” she said. “We're going back in a hurry."

The tug skimmed bare miles above Yggdrasil's branches as Lydis followed the curve of the crown. Close—too close to the tree's edges—was the vanguard of the dragonfly force. Bram saw the lead bubble, a whitish orb a half mile in diameter, floating to a landing in the treetop.

“Lydis,” came Jun Davd's strained voice through the radio. “We're about to start fusion. Smeth's evacuated the probe, and all his technicians are aboard Yggdrasil. What are you doing?"

“Go ahead and start up,” she said through clenched jaws. “Don't worry about us."

“Get in to the trunk,” he said. “A docking crew's waiting for you."

“I can set down anywhere, even if we lose the tug. With no spin on the branches, I don't need to rendezvous with the trunk. That's the problem. Neither do those dragonfly hatcheries out there. How close is the first of them?"

Jun Davd hesitated. “We'll be under way before it makes contact,” he admitted reluctantly, “but not by much of a fraction of a g."

Lydis gave Bram an inquiring glance. He nodded.

“That's not good enough,” she said. “If any of those ... things ... get inside Yggdrasil and start to breed..."

She shuddered, and Bram shuddered with her. The thought of a bubble alighting in the branches and disgorging thousands of voracious nymphs was too horrible to contemplate.

“Yes, the same thought had occurred to me,” Jun Davd admitted. “We have a number of armed groups waiting outside around the likeliest points of contact. But we're no match for them."

Bram leaned over Lydis's shoulder and told Jun Davd about the glass helmets.

“Thank you, Bram,” Jun Davd said. “That ought to help. We can throw missiles. Humans are good at playing ball, at least. But we're spread too thinly through the branches. We'll be vastly outnumbered at any given attack site, until we can rush reinforcements—and that's going to take too long under acceleration, using the internal transport system."

“That's why I'm doing this,” Lydis said.

“Good luck,” Jun Davd said simply.

“What's going on?” the frightened curator asked. “Why aren't we landing?"

Bram tried to calm him down. The little man drew himself up. “You don't understand,” he said with mustered dignity. “I'm not concerned for myself. But nothing must be allowed to happen to these Rembrandts."

“If the dragonflies get into the tree, they'll use them for napkins,” Jao said. “So shut up."

The curator assumed an aggrieved expression. “If I can help..."

“I'll let you know,” Bram said. “In the meantime, hang on to that portfolio."

The tug rounded the curve of the treetop with a virtuoso application of lateral jets by Lydis. Ahead, the dragonfly bubble rose into view. Its pilot was applying the brakes with a skill that matched Lydis's. It hovered a bare quarter mile above the crown of leaves, its chemical jets scorching the branches. The other bubbles were some tens of miles away, not yet a threat.

The opalescent sphere crowded the viewport. With sickening clarity, Bram saw hundreds of space-suited nymphs crawling over its surface, ready to swarm over the branches at the instant of touchdown.

The tug hit it broadside with its cushioned nets. The work vehicle was a mere speck next to the sphere, but its powerful engines had moved comets larger than this.

Bram saw a shower of nymphs wriggling against the void, shaken loose by the impact. The pilot of the bubble frantically tried to bring his own maneuvering jets into play—either to try to burn the tug or to slip out of its clutches. He and Lydis dueled, two masters of the pilot's art. But Lydis anticipated every parry. Slowly she drove the hovering bubble off its landing pattern, moving it farther and farther along a tangent away from Yggdrasil.

The bubble's main thruster was pointed down toward the tree, still spouting fire and helping Lydis. There was only one way the pilot could hope to break away from the mite that was pushing so hard at his ship. He turned the braking blast on full force, driving himself away from the tree so that he could start over again—and incidentally char the tug to a cinder.

Lydis was ready for him. The instant she felt herself losing contact, she spun the tug one hundred eighty degrees on its steering jets. By the time a haft mile of globe had slipped past her, she was zooming away at full acceleration. It was the dragonfly bubble that was licked by her flame.

Bram could see the cloudy orb fighting for control. They were still alive in there, but they were in trouble. The nymph pilot was trying to spin the globe around so that he could kill his outward momentum and dive toward the tree again, but his key maneuvering jets must have been damaged because he could achieve only an erratic wobble.

Again, he did the only thing he could. He cut the main jet to stop his headlong outward flight and began, slowly and painfully, to spin the sphere around by some internal means.

“Either they've got a whopping big flywheel in there,” Jao said, “or there're thousands of nymphs running around an inside track."

The globe receded into the distance. But the rest of them were drifting toward the giant tree like a clot of foam.

But by this time, Yggdrasil itself was moving beneath them. Bram saw the bright ball of the fusion sun in its cage, shining through the polarized disk that had appeared on the viewport to eclipse it. A brilliant pathway of hadronic photons reached thousands of miles into space, like a sword with the probe as its haft.

“Now to get down there before they build up to a g,” Lydis said through clenched jaws.

Her fingers flew over the console, and the tug began its downward descent.

An incoherent choking sound came from the curator. “L-look, they're all over us!"

Bram whipped his head around. All of the viewports were filled with dragonfly faces, boxed in glass. Armored claspers hammered at the hull.

“We're covered with them,” Lydis said. “They must have swarmed over us when we jolted them loose."

“How many?"

“I don't know. Tens of them, maybe."

Jao assumed a noble pose. “We can't take them back with us. We'll have to—

“Too late,” Bram said. “Some of them are already breaking free. They can drift down to Yggdrasil on their own."

“There's only one thing to do, then,” Lydis said. “Deliver them to one spot."

She conferred by radio with Jun Davd. The outside defenders were alerted. They were all keeping their eye on the approaching tug. A flare went up to indicate where Lydis should try to land.

It was tricky. Fortunately, they were headed toward the leading edge of the tree crown, so there was no danger of sliding down the effective side of an accelerating object and falling into the photon stream. But Lydis had to contend with a rough landing field whose surface was rising toward her at an increasing but unknown rate and whose counterfeit gravity was mounting by the second.

Jao tried to help her with the variables and derivatives until she told him to shut up and let her concentrate.

Below, where the flare had been, Bram could see a ring of bobbing lights—men and women with torches. The ring expanded, dispersed, as the defenders scrambled outward, away from the touchdown point.

From all directions, other lights converged on the target ring as other defenders abandoned their positions and came to help.

Bram waited out the descent, sweating. A nymph scrabbled at the viewport opposite him and seemed to be making progress in creating a loose place for prying away the frame.

Then the nymphs were hurling themselves away from the hull, abandoning the tug before it touched down and spreading outward to get away from the rocket blast.

“Hold on!” Lydis cried.

She cut the drive twenty feet up, motionless in respect to Yggdrasil. But Yggdrasil continued to accelerate, and when it met the undercarriage of the tug, there was a respectable jolt. The tug settled into a nest of charred leaves, broke through smaller twigs, and came to rest at a crazy angle.

Bram hoped the landing had been as hard for the nymphs that had jumped ship before the impact. He saw one snatch at a twig, miss it, and smash its glass helmet against a projecting branch. But other nymphs were managing to land right side up or to grab branchlets with their four legs and abdominal claspers and swing themselves around.

“Let's go!” Jao roared, and he headed for the air lock with a grappling hook in his hand.

“Stay inside!” Bram said sharply.

Jao turned slowly around, an incredulous expression on his face.

“We'd only get in their way,” Bram said. “We're inside the circle with the nymphs."

The curator sat with his teeth chattering, hugging his portfolio to his knees. It would have been an injustice to say he looked relieved.

Bram went with Lydis and Jao to look out the main port. Methuselah leaped off his shoulder and scampered ahead of him, taking a lively interest in the proceedings. “That's right, old fellow,” Bram said, patting his head. “We've got lots of friends out there."

The circle of torches converged inward, making a pool of light as big as a teamball field. Bram saw the flickering nymph figures darting back and forth amidst the shadows of leaves.

One of them made a run at the perimeter of the circle. It was met by a hail of small thrown objects. It scuttled back and forth, trying to escape, but several missiles found their target. The glass helmet flew apart in fragments. There was a brief greenish snowstorm within the square frame, and the long tubular body curled up in the agony of death.

The circle of lights moved inward. Bram could see more lights rising above the sharp curve of the branch's horizon and approaching in ragged lines from the longitudinal directions.

Another dragonfly made a rush and was driven back by brickbats. The circle of lights contracted again.

“Throwing things,” Bram said. “That's what Ame says our treetop ancestors were good at. It gives us a longer reach than creatures like these. They don't understand throwing."

“They're learning,” Jao said. “Any minute now it's going to occur to them to rush in a group, and then some of them will break through."

Bram glanced at the approaching lights. Reinforcements. He wished they would hurry up.

“We'd better get out of this system fast,” Jao went on. “Because the next time we meet these things in space, they're going to be wearing wire mesh over their helmets."

Two dragonflies charged the line of defenders, one behind the other. The first one went down, but the second reached the perimeter. Bram saw a man go down, then there was a flurry of activity as a dozen humans swung at the insect with bats and pikes until it stopped moving.

By now the contracting circumference of men and women had closed up the gaps in the line, and more people were arriving every moment. A hard rain of missiles filled the circle. Bram heard metal ring off the hull of the tug, and something sharp and fast made a small star in the plastic of the viewport.

“What a pitch,” Jao said. “There must be a lot of team-ball players out there."

“The gravity keeps changing,” Lydis said. “It must be hard to judge."

“The human brain's a marvelous computer, Lydis,” Bram said. “You ought to know that."

The pelting shower of hard objects grew thicker as more people joined in. The nymphs, with their wraparound eyes and their superb ability to detect motion, were good at dodging. But it did them no good when they were bracketed on all sides.

The flat trajectories of the missiles became shallow arcs as gravity increased. But by the same token, the rain of brickbats from above grew harder and harder.

The pitchers were learning to act in unison—picking out one or two targets at a time and concentrating fire on them. By the time the nymphs made the concerted rush that Jao had predicted, there were too few of them left.

These, too, went down under the concentrated stoning. The fact that they were bunched together even helped the humans. Bram tuned into the common wavelength and heard a cheer go up. The defenders swarmed all over the battlefield, making a muddle of light. When Lydis opened the air lock door, quite a crowd was waiting outside.

The elongated figure in the old-fashioned accordion-jointed space suit was Jun Davd. A transparent sack that still held a few unused lumps of metal and ceramic dangled from his hand. He grinned at Bram.

“Did you get them all?” Bram said.

“Yes."

“There were some that jumped free early. And there are clouds of nymphs out there that the bubble ship shed when we bumped it. They had a net vector toward the tree at the time. I doubt that any of them could survive impact at what the relative velocity was at the time, but..."

“We'll search the tree. We'll hunt them down. We won't rest until we know for sure."

The curator came swiftly out, clutching the big floppy portfolio he had risked his life for. He refused to let anyone take it from him. Friendly hands led him away toward the nearest entrance to the branch.

“Another iota of the human heritage.” Jun Davd sighed. “We've got more of it than we ever bargained for. But we're leaving so much more behind. After coming all this way, through black holes and exploding galaxies, it doesn't seem fair to have to run away like thieves."

Lydis came over and joined them. She had plenty of willing helpers pitching in to secure the tug to the big branch. It would not be sacrificed, after all; somewhere between stars, before Yggdrasil spun again, it could be flown or towed under no-g conditions to an airdock in the trunk.

She pointed at the clot of bubbles that was sinking below Yggdrasil's horizon. “We ought to be safe from them now,” she said. “There's no way they can match velocities with us anymore."

“Let's be sure,” Jun Davd said.

Five minutes later he had a patch in to Smeth in probe control central, in the trunk. An assistant had hurried over with portable equipment. Bram hadn't realized the extent of the communication coordination effort that had gone into repelling the dragonfly invaders. There was even a small videoscreen in color—though it was flat, not holo.

They sat outside on the branch to watch; there would not have been time to go inside. Smeth's voice came in, clear as a bell, from one hundred fifty miles away.

“The bubbles are rising over the horizon now,” Smeth said. “They're very low—not more than a hundred miles from the treetop. Can you see them?"

In the little portable screen, flecks of spume emerged from behind the curve of the aft horizon. Some remote camera on the other side of Yggdrasil was taking the pictures—probably one of Smeth's probe monitors. Bram was horrified to see the fiery sprays of exhausts coming from the bubbles, pointing outward; the dragonflies were still trying to land on the tree.

“They don't realize...” someone murmured. Bram recognized Ame's voice; she must have gone to probe central to be with Smeth when he returned from the ramjet with his black gang.

“I don't think they use instruments,” Smeth said in a strained voice. “I think they do everything by vision and instinct."

“Are you running a parallax on them?” Jun Davd asked.

“Of course,” Smeth snapped. “I'm doing a continuous prediction."

Bram put the question that was on everyone's lips. “Are they going to make it?"

“I don't think so. They think they are. But it's going to be very close."

The remote camera tracked the bubbles across Yggdrasil's sky, gave it up, and another camera—evidently on the trailing branches—picked them up.

“There—they've seen their error,” Smeth said.

The bubbles must have rotated all at once; the exhaust plumes now faced Yggdrasil, trying to push the colony vehicles away. But they'd been picking up momentum too long; they continued to fall inward toward a tree that was slipping inexorably past them. They fell past the edge and into the blinding stream of the hadronic photon drive.

They simply vanished. The energy that had instantly vaporized them was such an infinitesimal fraction of the energy flowing around them that they didn't even make a brief flare.

Bram heard all the sighs of relief through his suit radio. He did a little sighing himself.

A million miles out, they allowed themselves to feel safe. Yggdrasil was hitting almost its full one-gravity acceleration by then—far beyond anything dragonfly technology was able to approach. In a few Tendays, they would be out of the system.

Bram had time enough to clean up, eat something, and grab a few hours’ sleep before he and Mim had to attend the impromptu celebration that was being held in the observation lounge. Marg had decided to cater it at short notice. Word was out that it would feature wines fermented with the help of terrestrial yeasts that had been retrieved from storage on the diskworld.

When he and Mim entered the great curved gallery arm in arm, a couple of thousand people were already milling around. The atmosphere seemed a little subdued for a party. People's eyes kept stealing to the sweeping expanse of clear plastic that showed the rearward view.

There was no sky behind them—just a solid wall against the firmament. It was blank-faced, featureless, lit only by the receding inferno of Yggdrasil's artificial sun. Even at a million miles, the top of the wall showed almost no curvature.

Bram got drinks for himself and Mim at one of the bars, then steered her over to the big holo display at the end of the lounge. That had its share of spectators, too. Jun Davd was keeping his telescopes trained on the hairbreadth of rim where what was left of the human race had spent a year digging up its past, and was piping the images to the public displays throughout the tree. Though the images used the holo apparatus, they were flat, showing only what the telescope saw.

Somehow, that made the sight more immediate.

At extreme magnification, the tethered moon was a child's top poised just above the knife edge of the rim. Its waistline harness and the grid of its engineering structures could be seen fuzzily.

Directly beneath the moon's small end was the excavated city they had quit. There was no individual building large enough to be seen, except for a tiny bump that might have been the sports arena—if that wasn't merely an irregularity in the telescope's charge-coupled retina. But the crosshatched pattern of the streets could be made out, and the two moon plazas—one on either side of the rim—were a pair of tiny eyelets.

But what really drew the fascinated attention of the people standing around the display was the dragonfly settlement a couple of hundred miles farther along the plain.

It had grown large enough to be seen from space.

At its center, the original dragonfly bubble was a small white bead. A grayish honeycomb was spread around it, like dirty froth. The froth seemed to have crept a little farther toward the buried city than it had in other directions.

Trist drifted over with a drink in his hand. “I hate to think of that wonderful storehouse being overrun by those monsters,” he said, nodding at the telescopic image.

Bram agreed. “All the buildings and underground tunnels need only a little patching to make them habitable—they'll just be breeding spaces for the creatures. Still, there are other human sites—on that disk and the others, and on all the tethered moons."

“They'll get around to them,” Trist said, taking a sip of a pink concoction. “It won't take long for them to spread through this entire system, the way they spawn."

Mim, lovely in a gown that left her arms and shoulders bare, shivered. “I'm just glad we're away from there. And we've managed to take away so much in spite of every-thing—from the life work of thousands of tale tellers and composers to the genome of the giraffe."

She looked at the gray patch of the dragonfly colony and shuddered again. She had been practically in hysterics, Bram knew, when the last shuttle had returned to the tree without him. The tapes of the dragonfly nymphs were something no one could forget.

“And the science, too,” Trist said, brightening. “The latter-day physics of Original Man, when we're finally able to understand it. The vistas it opens up!"

“Let's not forget the human diet,” Bram said. “It's going to be considerably more interesting from now on. What's that you're drinking?"

“Marg calls it elderberry wine. Made mostly from tree glucose, of course, but with an infusion of cloned cells added to the fermentation vats. She's bullied the gardening section into growing the actual plants, though, from cuttings that Oris developed."

“May I try it?” Mim asked.

Trist held out his glass, and she took a sip. She wrinkled her nose. “Sweet,” she said.

“Yes, isn't it?” Marg said, appearing at Mim's elbow with Orris in tow. She eyed Mim's gown, then relaxed as she decided that hers was more attention-getting. Marg's opulent figure spilled out of a wisp of a frock that she would not have dared to wear the first time she had been young, but the centuries had taken away a lot of inhibitions. Orris was still the same lanky, self-effacing consort he had always been. She had made him dress for the party in one of the Old-Earth costumes that the archaeological excavations had made briefly popular: great, puffy, striped thigh breeches and skintight leg coverings that showed his knobby knees.

“Too sweet, I think,” Marg went blithely on. “Cloying, actually. I'm going to make wine from grapes, next. That's what Original Man did, mostly. The secret is to allow most of the glucose to ferment out, evidently. Orris is cloning cells now from the samples we brought back. But it will take two years to grow the rootstocks."

Orris's shaggy head bobbed up and down in agreement.

The telescopic display caught Marg's eye. Even she was sobered by it. She bit her lip. “I wonder what we missed,” she said. “I know it will take tens and tens of years to sort through what we've already got, but I can't help thinking about what we might have missed. Do we have parsley, for example?” She fluttered her long eyelashes at Bram. “Don't you think it would be a good idea if we went back? The disks are identical, aren't they? There must be other biological museums we could dig up before those horrid creatures get to them.” She pouted. “I can't stand the thought of them swarming over it all!"

“We were just talking about that.” Bram floundered uncomfortably.

Mim came to his rescue. “You know what I can't stand? The idea of the Cuddlies being hunted by those awful things."

Orris nodded vigorously. “Yes, they may be the last survivors of the mammalian age on earth. They were safe here for eons. And now they're just fodder for probably the most voracious life form that evolution ever produced."

“I don't know,” Trist protested. “They're tenacious little animals. The rat-people couldn't exterminate them. They've prospered for millions of years in an inimical environment. They'll learn to keep out of the nymphs’ way. Life may get tougher for them. But I have a hunch they'll be around for millions of years more."

“In any case, they won't become extinct now,” Bram said. “All the pets taken aboard Yggdrasil will see to that."

That led to a rash of Cuddly stories. Cuddly owners could be terrible bores.

“Our little Mittens is such a scamp!” Marg gushed. “She's into everything, but I haven't the heart to scold her."

“Our Loki, too,” Mim said. “He was determined that he was going to come to the party. We had to lock him up to keep him from following us."

“I hear from Jao that you've adopted another one,” Trist said politely.

“Yes ... Methuselah,” Bram said. “He's pretty spry for an old fellow. Walked right in and took possession of the place. No nonsense about him. Right now, I think he's in the process of showing Loki who's the boss."

“Loki's an unusual color,” Orris said. “Almost the same shade as Jao's beard. Say, you wouldn't consider letting us mate him with Mittens, would you? We've always wanted a red—"

He was interrupted by the arrival of Edard. Edard was tired and dusty, still wearing coveralls with a treeguard armband; he hadn't gone to his quarters first to change for the party.

“Creation, but I could use a drink!” he said. Bram handed him his glass, and he drained it. Marg signaled one of her assistants for refills.

“What happened?” Bram asked.

“We found one,” Edard said. “One of the patrols flushed it out of a tunnel in the sapwood. We lost two men, but we got it.” He looked around for another drink. “It was full of eggs."

“Do you think there are any more?” Trist asked.

“I don't know. I hope not. We'll have to build up the treeguard with more volunteers, step up the patrols. I'm going on duty again tomorrow. We may have to keep this up for years if we want to be sure."

“How horrible,” Mim said.

“Inside the tree, of course, they're not at the disadvantage they are in space suits. Spears aren't the whole answer. We need something smaller that can kill at a distance."

“A dart of some kind, maybe?” Trist suggested.

“Could be. With something like a spring to hurl it."

“Interesting idea. Maybe the physics department could come up with something."

“I've thought of one thing,” Edard said. “A sort of bow, like a violin bow. With the string under lots of tension. It could throw a short shaft with a pointed end. Of course, it would take a lot of practice to learn how to aim a thing like that so you could hit something with it."

“Oh, Edard, you sound so bloodthirsty,” Mim said.

“Sorry, Mother. But if you'd seen two men killed by one of those filthy creatures..."

“It's only for self-defense, Mim,” Bram said. “When we're sure this crisis is over ... why, we'll just disinvent this bow thing."

Everybody's eyes were drawn to the telescopic image hanging in the bolo backplate. “We should have burned them with the photon drive instead of being so finicky about where we aimed it,” Trist said.

“Now who's being bloodthirsty?” Bram said. “It wouldn't have made any difference. Their father ship's dropped bubbles all around the rim, and even if we'd spent a year in orbit around the disk, there'd be other ships, now that they've found the way."

“That's not what I mean,” Trist said. “The dragonflies are now in possession of the diskworld transmission apparatus. What if some day it occurs to them to use it?"

It was a horrifying thought. “It would take thousands of years to get the disks into operating condition,” Bram said.

“The universe has got thousands of years,” Trist said.

“Before the dragonflies could seed the universe with their kind,” Mim said, “their transmissions would have to reach a race advanced enough to synthesize their DNA. And what race would be that naive?"

“The Nar created us, Mim,” Trist said. “And we gave them Penser."

“You may be overlooking one thing, Trist,” Bram said. “Before you can induce another species to unriddle your genetic code, you've got to be able to communicate with them. And the dragonflies aren't very good at that. In fact, they may be inherently incapable of it."

“They won't need to broadcast their genetic code,” Trist said grimly. “They'll just spread from star to star. And when their ships are good enough they'll reach other galaxies the way we did."

“Don't be so gloomy, Trist,’ Marg said. “You'll spoil the party."

“Sorry, Marg.” He swallowed the last of his elderberry wine. “I think I'll get myself another drink. Who'll join me?"

Before he could carry out his intention, Jun Davd came hurrying into the lounge, followed by an assistant. He spoke briefly to. the assistant, who nodded and went to the holo to make some kind of adjustment; then Jun Davd came through the crowd to Bram and his group.

“You'll want to see this,” he said. “We've been tracking the dragonfly father ship for the past few hours. They've finished seeding the rim with their spawning bubbles, evidently, and they're ready to go on to the next diskworld. They've been following the rim around, using their fusion engine to build up velocity."

“Oh, no!” Mim exclaimed.

“They've sterilized a swath over ten million miles long so far."

“Why ... they'll burn their own colonies,” Orris said.

“No, they shut down when they drop one,” Jun Davd said. “They're not mindless, you know."

“Not when it involves their own species,” Trist said tightly.

“They're flying low,” Jun Davd went on, as if he were discussing an abstract problem in ballistics. “The interesting thing is that they haven't passed under a moon yet. It's over twenty-two million miles between moons. Ah, here we are. We're picking them up now."

The telescopic display at the end of the lounge jiggled and blurred, then centered on a brilliant spark skimming the top of the fantastic wall that stretched across the stars. People stopped their conversation to look.

“They're awfully close to the rim edge, aren't they?” Trist observed, his face suddenly alight with interest.

“Yes, aren't they?” Jun Davd said.

The spark died without warning. Bram could see the ship itself, a tiny splinter that he knew was twenty miles long from end to end. The cluster of bubbles at one end didn't seem appreciably smaller. It was hard to tell. The few dozen that might have been expended on this world still left hundreds with which to seed the rest of the system.

“They're not cutting it too fine,” Jun Davd drawled. “They're about a half million miles from their first colony next to our digs. They're closing at a hundred miles per second. It won't be many minutes longer now."

The ellipsoidal moon hovered, waiting. The dragonfly ship was going to pass under its pointed end. Even at the scale of distance involved, the progress of the bubble-ended splinter seemed swift.

“They're going to—” Mim said, and bit her lip.

The splinter hurtled onward, its axis aimed obliquely in preparation for the escape orbit that would take it to the next big disk of the outer trio. The angle gave it a wider cross section along its line of flight. That would make matters worse, Bram thought.

At the last moment, a dragonfly eye must have seen a hairline flicker of movement and a dragonfly brain must have made an instantaneous connection. The fusion flame flared in a desperate attempt to push the ship out of the plane of the disk.

“That was a mistake,” Jun Davd said.

The splinter sheared in half, peeling back along its entire length. Hundreds of tiny glistening beads spilled into space. Bram thought that a collision at a hundred miles per second would have smeared the occupants to paste, but—incredibly—he could see chemical jets starting up in some of them as the pilots tried uselessly to save themselves.

Then the primitive deuterium-helium three reactor—smashed, flooded, and compressed all at once—blew.

A ball of terrible fire appeared in an instant, engulfing the spilled bubbles, spreading outward in growing circles across the diskscape, lighting up the underside of the pointed moon.

The moon gave a jerk.

It joggled for a moment, like a balloon being yanked by a child, and then the second set of moonropes on the other side of the rim, weakened by heat and impossibly stressed, parted.

Like a stone released from a sling, the moon flew into space.

Mim gasped. She clutched at Bram's arm, her fingers digging into his biceps.

“It can't hit us, Mim,” Bram said softly, watching the moon sail upward, blunt end first. “It left the disk's orbit on a different tangent than we did."

Jun Davd heard him. “No, there's nothing left in the outer system that it can hit. It will probably take up a tilted orbit somewhere between here and the cometary halo."

Slowly, like ocean billows, the surface of the diskworld collapsed under the place where the moon had hung. A great scalloped depression spread out on either side. Eventually, when that wave of collapse ceased, there would be a forty-five-million-mile bite taken out of the disk between moons.

Throughout the lounge, sobs were heard as stunned people realized that the city of man had tumbled into that abyss.

“It's all gone, isn't it?” Mim asked. “Everything we found. Buried, crushed under an earthquake that could have swallowed worlds."

Bram found her hand. "They're gone too, Mim. The dragonflies."

“They'll be back, though,” Trist said, staring out the curving view wall as the universe outside came tumbling down. “There are billions of them, less than twenty light-years away."

Bram's holo, fifty feet tall, stood on the rostrum and looked out across a sea of faces. It always made him feel self-conscious to be magnified this way—you didn't even dare to scratch your nose—but it was the only way for a crowd this size to have any connection with the speakers. He thanked his stars that the year-captain election was only a few Tendays away. He had resolved not to let his name be entered this time. It was someone else's turn.

The hall of the tree had been enlarged over the years with the increase in population, until now it could seat more than twenty thousand people. But that still wasn't enough to handle the crowd that had shown up tonight; the overflow had been consigned to the small adjacent amphitheater, watching the same holos, but without the reinforcing sight of the distant minikin figures whose shadows they were.

Over two hundred ushers with ballot boxes on poles were stationed at the ends of the aisles, each responsible for ten rows. This was a vote that nobody was going to miss.

“All right, I guess we've heard from everyone who said they wanted to speak—and a few who said they didn't,” he said, while the simulacrum of himself that towered over him boomed out the words through the sound system. “And I guess the experts have answered all our questions. So I'm going to call on Jun Davd to sum it up, and then we can get on with the vote."

He left the podium to sit with Mim and the others, mopping his brow a little too soon, so that a departing slice of the holo image made a swipe with a bedsheet-size handkerchief before he was completely offstage.

Jun Davd nodded as he squeezed past, then got up and took his place on the podium. His holo image, lithe with the common youth of the human race, leaned toward the crowd and said mildly, “We're still on the previously set course that will take us to the star we believe to be Sol. If we want to change that course, we should do so now. We've reached approximately one-fortieth of the speed of light, and within a few more days we'll be beyond the effective limits of this system."

A vast troubled murmuring went through the audience, and voices were raised in different parts of the hall.

Jun Davd's holo raised a billboard palm. “Please, we've been through it all before. We believe that all the nearby stars, to a distance of about twenty light-years from Sol, are—or soon will be—inhabited by our dragonfly successors on earth. If that's the case, we have no home here. There is a sizable faction among us who want to flee this sector of space without further ado and search for a home elsewhere in the galaxy. And I can't say I blame them, after what we've seen here."

There were shouts of agreement from the crowd. A man near the front rose, shaking his fist, and was shushed by his neighbors.

“But there is another faction,” Jun Davd went on, “who believe we should have a look at Sol anyway. We've heard from some of them tonight. They argue that we can't know for sure that our recent adversaries come from Earth, though all the biological studies indicate that they do. What if we're mistaken? What if Earth is not denied to us? What if the dragonfly ship came from elsewhere or was a lone survivor fleeing some planetary disaster? In that case, it would be a shame to have journeyed so far without even getting a glimpse of our goal."

There were more angry shouts from the audience. Jun Davd's looming holo waited them out, hands on its hips.

“There's one more thing to consider,” he said when the noise subsided. “Even if the worst is true, oughtn't we to know more about these terrifying creatures? How far have they advanced since they launched their colony ship? How fast are they likely to spread? How far ought we to flee before we're safe? A thousand light-years? Ten thousand? To the opposite side of the galaxy? And when we get there, will we find them waiting for us—having arrived in ships that set out centuries after we did but were a few decimal places faster?"

That got to everybody. A subdued silence fell over the massed rows as Jun Davd went on.

“We believe that we can fly through the Sol system without danger and make a survey from space. With our engine off, we're unlikely to be spotted. And even if we were, we ought to be safe from being boarded unless we went into the close planetary orbit, as we did here. I doubt that they would be able to match velocities with us on a hyperbolic orbit through the system.” He paused. “And if they tried—why, we'd see them coming from a long way off, and we'd turn on our engine and outrun them."

A flurry of voices went through the audience as people turned to their neighbors to comment. Jun Davd let the commotion run on for a bit, then raised a flat palm again.

“Of course, after the terrible events that we're all familiar with, it would be perfectly understandable if we voted not to take that chance. On that subject, perhaps we ought to hear from a member of the patrol, who I believe has something to tell us."

Edard got up. He evidently had just come off duty and still had his treeguard armband on. His voice was tense as he spoke.

“We just found two more and killed them. No casualties this time. We have a new weapon that doesn't let them get close to us—provided we outnumber them by a fair margin, of course. We believe that was the last of them. Except..."

He looked troubled. He pushed back a mop of dark hair and continued. “Except that one of them evidently bored holes in the cambium of a passage and laid eggs—several tens of them. We came upon one of the hatchlings. They're about as long as your thumb and they look exactly like the adults, except that perhaps they're stubbier. And they bite."

His holo held up a bandaged hand.

“We destroyed all the eggs we could find—and we had some help. When our Cuddlies saw what we were doing, they took a hand, too. They're good at getting into small places ... and they're wild about eggs! We saw them chase down hatchlings, as well. Let me tell you that Cuddlies can bite, too."

A subdued sound of nervous laughter went through the chamber.

Edard smiled in response. “At the moment, there are several hundred Cuddlies prowling through the passageways, looking for eggs and hatchlings. They're very imitative beasts, as we all know. Pickings were slim after the first few hours—but we've all seen how persistent a Cuddly can be. I don't think that after a few Tendays we'll have to worry about nymphs being aboard the tree.” He sobered. “But of course, we intend to keep the treeguard patrols going indefinitely.” His holo gave a grin. “And on that subject, we'd be pleased to have more volunteers."

He sat down next to Bram and Mim. Jao leaned across and said, “Nice going."

Jun Davd was smiling to himself. Bram said, “Why are you so pleased with yourself, you old reprobate?” Bram asked. You undermined your own case when you let Edard remind everybody how dangerous the nymphs are."

“We'll see,” Jun Davd said.

The ushers moved swiftly down the aisles. A ballot box was shoved at Bram on its long pole, and he pushed the yes button. The box slid past him to pause at Mim and Edard. Jao tried to vote twice and looked unabashed when the usher caught him at it and said, “None of that, brother."

The voting was over in twenty minutes. Yes and no votes went much faster than multiple-choice votes, as when there was a slate of candidates. The ushers brought their boxes to the clerk, who plugged them one at a time into a tabulator.

The tally figures floated in holographic projection, huge, glowing, and changing so rapidly that the final digits were a blur. But the trend was clear.

“It's going to be almost unanimous,” Jao said. “I don't believe it."

The last few figures clicked into place. The crowd waited a moment to take it in, then a great cheer went up.

“That's it,” Jun Davd said. “We're going to Sol."