The moby hadn't moved for some time. The spike that tethered the harpoon was working itself loose. Clave pounded another into the wood and wrapped the slack line around it. But the cloud bank was spreading itself across the sky.

Details emerged: streamlines, knots of stormy darkness. Lightning flashed deep within.

Jayan and Jinny took off their shirts. Alfin, enjoying the sight without questions, suddenly said, "They're right. Get our shirts off. Try to catch some of that wet."

Darkness brightened as the sun emerged below the edge of the cloud.

It continued to sink. They watched the first tenuous edge of mist envelop them and began flapping their shirts. Gavving asked, "Do you feel damp?"

Merril snarled, "I feel it, I smell it, I can't drink it! But it's coming!"

Lightning flashed, off to the west. Gavving felt the mist now. He tried to squeeze water out of his shirt. No? Keep swinging it. Now? He wrung the shirt tight and tried to suck it, and got sweaty water.

They were all doing it now. They could barely see each other. Gay

ving had never in his life seen such darkness. The moby was invisibly far, but they felt the tugging of the tether. They swung their shirts and sucked the water and laughed.

There were big fat drops around them. It was getting hard to breathe.

Gavving breathed through his shirt and swallowed the water that came through.

Light was gaining. Were they emerging from the cloud? "Clave? Maybe you want to cut that tether. Do we want to stay in here?"

"Anybody still thirsty?" Silence. "Drink your fill, but we can't live in here, breathing through our shirts. Let's trust the moby a while longer."

The pale green light was getting stronger. Through thinning fog Gayving thought he could see sky . . . green-tinged sky, with a texture to it. Green? Was this some effect in his eyes, due to the long, abnormal darkness?

Clave bellowed, "Treefodder!" and swung his knife. The harpoon tether sang a deep note, cut short as Clave slashed again. The line whipped free; the bark sheet shuddered.

Then they were out of the mist, in a layer of clear air. Gavving glimpsed the moby flapping away, free at last, and spared it only a glance. He was looking at square klomters of textured green, expanding, growing solid. It was a jungle, and they were going to ram.

Chapter Eleven – The Cotton-Candy Jungle

THE CARM WAS LIKE NOTHING ELSE IN THE UNIVERSE. IT WAS

all right angles, inside and out; all plastic and metals, unliving starstuff.

The white light that glowed from the dorsal wall was neither Voylight nor sunlight. Weirder lights crawled across the control panel and the bow window itself The carm was mobile, where London Tree moved only with the help of the carm. If London Tree was a living thing inhabited by other living things, then Lawn saw the cam' as a different form of life.