The cookflre had nearly burned out, and the cookpot-an ancient

thing, a tall, transparent cylinder with a lid of the same material- retained no more than a double handful of stew.

The Chairman's chest was still half-covered in flufl but the patch had contracted and turned mostly brown. He was a square-jawed, brawny man in middle age, and he looked unhappy, irritable. Hungry. Harp and Gavving went to him, handed him their catch. "Food for the tribe," Harp said.

Their catch looked like a fleshy mushroom, with a stalk half a meter long and sense organs and a coiled tentacle under the edge of the cap. A lung ran down the center of the stalk/body to give the thing jet propulsion. Part of the cap had been ripped away, perhaps by some predator; the scar was half-healed. It looked far from appetizing, but society's law bound the Chairman too.

He took it. "Tomorrow's breakfast," he said courteously. "Where's Laython?"

"Lost," Harp said, before Gavving could say, "Dead."

The Chairman looked stricken. "How?" Then, "Wait, Eat first."

That was common courtesy for returning hunters; but for Gavving the waiting was torture. They were given scooped-out seedpods containing a few mouthfuls of greens and turkey meat in broth. They ate with hungry eyes on them, and they handed the gourds back as soon as possible.

"Now talk," the Chairman said.

Gavving was glad when Harp took up the tale. "We left with the other hunters and climbed along the trunk. Presently we could raise our heads into the sky and see the bare trunk stretching out to infinity-"

"My son is lost and you give me poetry?"

Harp jumped. "Your pardon. There was nothing on our side of the trunk, neither of danger nor salvation. We started around the trunk. Then Laython saw a swordbird, far west and borne toward us on the wind."

The Chairman's voice was only half-controlled. "You went after a swordbird?"

"There is famine in Quinn Tuft. We've fallen too far in, too far toward Voy, the Scientist says so himself. No beasts fly near, no water trickles down the trunk-"

"Am I not hungry enough to know this myself? Every baby knows better than to hunt a swordbird. Well, go on."

Harp told it all, keeping his language lean, passing lightly over Laython's disobedience, letting him show as the doomed hero. "We saw

Laython and the swordbird pulled east by the wind,, along a klomter of naked branch, then beyond. There was nothing we could do."

"But he has his line?"

"He does."

"He may find rest somewhere," the Chairman said. "A forest somewhere. Another tree . . . he could anchor at the median and go down

well. He's lost to Quinn Tribe at least."