The Grad chose the biggest, without asking. He hovered on the forward jets at the western reach of the in tuft.

It was a wilderness. A stream ran down the trunk and directly into

the treemouth. He looked for the rounded shapes of distorted old huts, and they weren't there. The foliage around the treemouth had never been cut; there were no paths for burial ceremonies or moving of garbage. No earthlife showed, not even as weeds.

It was daunting. He said cheerily, "It seems we're the first here.

Lawn, have you thought of a way to land this thing?"

"You have the helm."

He'd thought it through in detail. "I'm afraid our best move is to moor at the trunk and go down."

"Climb?"

"We did it before. Clave could lead most of us down while, say, Gavving and I wait. We'd have the carm for rescue operations. After the rest of you get down, Gavving and I can follow. We've climbed before-"

"Hold it," Clave said. "This is taking too treefeeding long. Grad, quit fooling around and just land in the treemouth."

"We might set it on fire!"

"Then we try again with another tree!"

Lawn had gone berserk at the suggestion of landing in the treemouth of London Tree. Now she just rubbed her eyes. Tired .

They were all too tired. They'd had enough of shocks and strangeness. dave was right, delay would be torment, and there were trees to waste.

There was no kind of landing site in that wilderness. Everything he saw was green; there was no drought here. Would it burn?

Go for GoIS

He went in over the treemouth and rammed the carm into the foliage hard enough to stick. Still shaken by the impact, they forced their way through the doors, fast, and flailed with ponchos at the smoldering fires until they went out.

Then, finally, they had time to look around.

Minya stood panting, grinning, her black hair wild and wet, the blackened poncho trailing from hen hand. She snatched at his hand and cried, "Copter plants!"

Gavving laughed. "I didn't know you liked copter plants."

"I didn't either. But in London Tree they weeded out the copter plants and flowers and anything else they couldn't use." She tapped at one, two, three ripe plants, and the seed pods buzzed upward. Suddenly she was looking into his eyes, close. "We did it. Just like we planned, we found an unoccupied tree and it's ours."

"Six of us. Six out of Quinn Tuft . . . sorry."

"Twelve of us. More to come."

She had fought the fire with a predatory grace unhampered by the thickening around her hips. Mlne~ Gavving thought. Whether it looks like me or some copsik runner. . . or Harp, or Merrill Mine,~ ours.

He'd tell her when the mood was right. But that was too serious for

now. "Okay, everything you see is ours. What shall we call it?"