Wuu’s considerable resources enabled them to have the luxury of a private long-travel unit, about a third the size of a normal eight-passenger module, with two sleeping lounges and extensive hygienic facilities. The comparatively lush method of travel was something of a risk to their carefully cultivated anonymity, but one that Ryo was glad they’d decided to chance. It was a long way to Sed-Clee.

Though the module was equipped with automated food service, from time to time they varied their diet by pulling out of line to sample the distinctive regional cuisines of hives scattered along the route. Meal concluded, they would slip back to the main track and link up with the next cluster north.

Gradually the stack clusters marking the locations of subterranean industrial complexes gave way to taller, thinner pipes belching treated gases, each above a well-developed mine. Hives became smaller, were set farther apart, and the jungle began to thin out. In clumps and on shady hillsides grew vegetation Ryo did not recognize.

“It makes one appreciate Willow-wane all the more,” Wuu observed one day as they sat watching scenery fly past their module’s right-side port, “when you realize that the mother world itself is a harsher place.”

“I’ve thought that many times these past several days.” Ryo didn’t take his eyes from the passing landscape.

Days later found them climbing through a rugged mountain pass. Jungle assaulted the lower elevations, but higher up the rocky slopes they could just discern tall, symmetrical growths. Scrapers, Wuu said they were called. Trees that had thin, sharp excuses for leaves instead of the broad, flat variety they were familiar with. The exteriors of such plants were hard and rough, not like the smooth skin of normal vegetation. The covering was tougher and thicker than the bark enclosing the toughest jungle hardwoods. Vines and creepers turned thin and sickly, though lichens and mosses seemed to thrive. It was very strange.

Three days before endmonth, they came downslope out of the mountains. On their northern flanks the jungle had vanished completely. Plants were still cultivated, but sparsely. Only a few vegetables flourished on the frigid northern plain. Hardship made locally grown vegetables terribly costly, but the price was high enough to encourage their planting.

On endmonth, twenty-two days after leaving Daret, they reached Ghew, the northern hive city. But Ryo and Wuu did not pause; as soon as the transport computer switched them through they were hurrying north toward the first of the six hives that were links in an irregular chain leading to distant Sed-Clee.

It was when they were traveling between Ublack and Erl-o-Iwwex, ascending through a stretch of open hilly country at just forty kilometers an hour, that Ryo woke to the nightmare. He was lying on his right side, preferred for sleeping, near the rear of the module. Only two units traveled in tandem with them now, both ahead of their own. He’d once studied the nightmare he now lived, but the shock of seeing it just outside the window was enough to make him cower on his lounge and pull the cocoon wrap practically over his antennae. “Wuu!” The poet raised himself sleepily and stared across the module at his companion. “What’s the trouble? What is? …” Then he noticed the direction of Ryo’s motionless gaze and turned to stare at the same window.