"Day. Who were you talking to, yourself?"

"Yes." He scrubbed at his arms ferociously, then hurled the wads of bloody foliage away from him. "Martal's dead. A drillbit burrowed into her. I probably killed her myself digging it out, but she'd have died anyway . . . you can't leave drillbit eggs. Have you heard about the expedition?"

"Yes. Barely. I can't get anyone to tell me anything."

The Scientist pulled a handful of foliage from the wall and tried to

scrub the scalpel clean. He hadn't looked at the Grad. "What do you think?"

The Grad had come in a fury and grown yet angrier while waiting in an empty hut. He tried to keep that out of his voice. "I think the Chairman's trying to get rid of some citizens he doesn't like. What I want to know is, why me?"

"The Chairman's a fool. He thinks science could have stopped the drought."

"Then you're in trouble too?" The Grad got it then. "You blamed it on me."

The Scientist looked at him at last. The Grad thought he saw guilt there, but the eyes were steady. "I let him think you were to blame, yes. Now, there are some things I want you to have-"

Incredulous laughter was his answer. "What, more gear to carry up a hundred klomters of trunk?"

"Grad . . . Jeffer. What have I told you about the tree? We've studied the universe together, but the most important thing in it is the tree. Didn't I teach you that everything that lives has a way of staying near the Smoke Ring median, where there's air and water and soil?"

"Everything but trees and men."

"Integral trees have a way. I taught you."

"I . . . had the idea you were only guessing . . . Oh, I see. You're willing to bet my life."

The Scientist's eyes dropped. "I suppose I am. But if I'm right, there won't be anything left but you and the people who go with you. Jeffer, this could be nothing. You could all come back with . . . whatever we need: breeding turkeys, some kind of meat animal living on the trunk, I don't know-"

"But you don't think so."

"No. That's why I'm giving you these."

He pulled treasures from the spine-branch walls: a glassy rectangle a quarter meter by half a meter, flat enough to fit into a pack four boxes each the size of a child's hand. The Grad's response was a musical "O-ooh."

"You'll decide for yourself whether to tell any of the others what you're carrying. Now let's do one last drill session." The Scientist plugged a cassette into the reader screen. "You won't have much chance to study on the trunk."

PLANTS

LIFE PERVADES THE SMOKE RING BUT IS NEITHER

DENSE NOR MASSIVE. IN THE FREE-FALL ENVIRONMENT

PLANTS CAN SPREAD THEIR GREENERY WIDELY TO CATCH

MAXIMUM SUNLIGHT AND PASSING WATER AND SOIL,

WITHOUT BOTHERING ABOUT STRUCTURAL STRENGTH. WE

FIND AT LEAST ONE EXCEPTION...

THESE INTEGRAL TREES GROW TO TREMENDOUS SIZE.