The Integral Trees

Jiovan and the Grad returned. They had found a rQ mark overgrown with fungus like a field of gray hair. "Infected. We'll have to burn it out," the Grad said.

"Suppose it keeps on burning? We don't have any water," Clave said. "Never mind. Let's have a look. Jayan, Ji

They examined the fungus patch dubiously. Scraping out all that gray hair would be a dull job. Clave pulled up a wad and set fire to it. It burned slowly, sullenly.

"Let's try it. But get some of our packs emptied in case we have to beat it out."

The fungus patch burned slowly. The west wind wasn't strong at this height, and the smoke tended to sit within the fungus "hairs," smothering the fire. It kept putting itself out. Yet it crept around in glowing fringes, restarting itself. They had to back away as foul-smelling smoke built up in the vicinity.

The smoke was dissipating. Gavving moved in and found most of the fungus gone, the rest left as black char. The Q was two meters deep.

Clave made a torch from a chunk of bark and burned out some remaining patches. "Scrape that out and I think we can all sleep in it. Gavving, Ji

When they started to move her, Merril woke instantly, happy and active and bubbling with plans. They coaxed her across the bark, ready for anything, and presently moored her in the scraped-out bottom of the Q.

Then there was nothing for it but to settle into the Q for early sleep.

Merril slept like a baby, but others shifted restlessly. Desultory conversations started and stopped. Presently Clave asked, "Jiovan, how are you doing?"

"How do you mean?"

"I mean the whole trip. How are you doing?"

Jiovan snorted. "I'm hungry. I hurt a lot, but I'm used to that. I can climb. Do you mean how are we doing? We won't know that till we get home. Merril's out of her head right now, but she could be right too."

Clave was startled. "You mean, live here?"

"No, that's crazy. I mean go back now. Kill something and smoke it and collect more fan fungus and go home. We'd be heroes, as much as any hunt party that comes home with meat, and I don't mind telling you, I'm ready. I'm treefeeding sick of being one of the-the lames. I used tobethe one whofedthe tribe…and if thefan fungus will grow in the tuft—"

By now the whole troop was listening. Clave knew he was talking for an audience. He said, "Merril could be pretty sick, you know."

"She feels great."

"Oh, let's see how she feels when it wears off. I might want to try it myself," Clave chuckled. He was hoping it would drop there.

No chance, not with A.Ifin listening. "What about going home? We've got what we came for."

"I don't think so. We sure haven't scraped out all the tribemarks, have we, Grad?"

"They're supposed to run all along the trunk."

"Then let's go at least as far as the middle. We already know we can feed ourselves. Who knows what else we'll find? The nose-arm was good eating, but we've only found one, and we couldn't feed him in the tuft. We can pick up some fan fungus on the way back. What else? Are the flashers good to eat? Could we transplant those shelled things?"

The Grad was catching fire. "Get them growing just above the tuft. It might work. Sure I'd like to go on. I want to see what it's like when there isn't any tidal force at all."

"We already know what Merril would say. Anyone else?"

Alfin grunted. Nobody else spoke.

"We go on," Clave said.

Chapter Five

Memories

IT WAS THERE AGAIN. THERE WAS A SPECIAL FREQUENCY OF light that Sharis Davis Kendy had sought for five hundred years. He had found it fifty-two years ago, and forty-eight, and twenty, and six certain sightings and another ten probable. The locus moved about. This time it was west of his position, barely filtering through the soup of dust and gas and dirt and plant life: the light of hydrogen burning with oxygen.

Kendy held his attention on a wavering point within the Smoke Ring.

Rarely did the CARM even acknowledge that his signal had penetrated the maelstrom but he never considered not trying. "Kendy for the State. Kendy for the State."

The CARJvI's main motor would run for hours now. It would accelerate slowly, too slowly: pushing something massive. What were they doing in there?

Had they entirely forgotten Discipline and Sharls Davis Kendy?

Kendy had forgotten much, but what remained to him was as vivid as the moment it had happened. These futile attempts at contact needed little of his attention. Kendy took refuge in memory.

The target star was yellow-white, with a spectrum very like Sol's, circling an unseen companon. At 1.2 solar masses, T3 was minutely brighter and bluer than Sol: about GO or 01. The companion, at half a solar mass, would be a star, not a planet. It should at least have been visible.

The State bad telescopic data from earlier missions to other stars. There was at least a third, planet-sized body in this system. There might be a planet resembling the primordial Earth; in which case Discipline would fulfill its primary mission by seeding its atmosphere with oxygenproducing algaes. On a distant day the State.would return to find a world ripe for colonization.

But someone would have come anyway, to probe the strangeness of this place.

Discipline was a seeder ramship, targeted for a ring of yellow stars that might host worlds like the primordial Earth. Its secondary mission was a secret known only to Kendy; but exploration was a definite third on the list; Discipline would not stop here. Kendy would skim past T3, take pictures and records, and vanish into the void. He might slow enough to drop a missile with a warhead of tailored algae, if a target world could be found.

Four of the crew were in the control module. They had the telescope array going and a watery picture of a yellow-white star on the big screen, with a pinpoint of fierce blue-white light at its edge. Sam Goldblatt had a spectrum of T3 displayed on a smaller screen.

Sharon Levoy was lecturing for the record, nobody else was listening. "That solves that. Levoy's Star is an old neutron star, half a billion to a billion years beyond its pulsar stage. It's still hotter than hell, but it's only twenty kilometers across. The radiating surface is almost negligible. It must have been losing its spin and its residual heat for all of that time. We didn't see it because it isn't putting out enough light.

"The yellow dwarf star might have planets, but we can expect that their atmospheres were boiled away by the supernova event of which Levoy's Star is the ashes—"

Goldblatt snarled, "We're supposed to be the first expedition here! Prikazyvat Kendy!"

The crew were not supposed to be aware that the ship's computer and its recorded personality could eavesdrop on them. Therefore Kendy said, "Hello, Sam. What's up?"

Sam Goldblatt was a large, round man with a bushy, carefully tended moustache. He'd been chewing it ever since Levoy found and named the neutron star. Now his frustration had a target. "Kendy, do you have records of a previous expedition?"

"Well, check me out. Those are absorption lines for oxygen and water, here, aren't they? Which means there's green life somewhere in that system, doesn't it? And that means the State sent a seeder here!"

"I noticed the spectrum. After all, Sam, why shouldn't plant life develop somewhere on its own? Earth's did. Besides, those lines can't represent an Earthlike world. They're too sharp. There's too much oxygen, too much water."

"Kendy, if it isn't a planet, what is it?"

"We'll learn that when we're closer."