"I see you've caught up with the first group," the pilot said. "The forward group has stopped. The middle group has joined them. Maybe you should quit."

"I sent Toby back with two copsilcs. The third had a broken leg, so we left him. We're almost at full strength. Let's just see what happens."

"Patty, is there something unusual about your mission?"

Classfled. . . oh, what did it matter? "Catch some copsiks. Shoot some meatbirds. Collect some spices. Pick up anything scientific." That last wasn't usual. Maybe the First Officer wanted the Scientist to owe him a favor. Patty didn't comment, not with the Scientist's Apprentice listening.

"Fine. You've got copsiks. How many do you need? You don't really expect to find science here, do you?"

"There's a big group ahead. I'm going to at least look at the situation." Patty turned the volume down. Pilots tended to argue a point to death, and Patry wanted silence.

Gavving hadn't burrowed far before Jayan's line led them to a tunnel carved through the foliage. They moved faster then.

Despite its alien smell, Gavving was hungry enough to try the foliage.

The taste was alien too; but it was sweet and went down well. He ate more.

In fact, he felt almost at home here. His toes thrust into branchlets and pushed him down the tunnel in remembered rhythm. Cheeping and croaking rose from thousands of unseen throats. They wouldn't be birds, this deep in the thicket; but they chirped, and if need came they could probably fly. The sound was the sound of Gavving's childhood, before the drought killed the small life throughout the tuft.

It was an effort to remember that this wasn't Quinn Tuft; that he followed enemies who knew this thicket as Gavving knew his tree.

Minya, it seemed, didn't have that problem. She was snatching handfuls of foliage, but the hand she used clutched an arrow, and her bow was in the other.

They were moving faster than the line that slithered ahead of them. Merril wound it up as they went. The coil trailed from a thumb; she used both hands to move herself. When Gavving noticed, he said, "Let me do that for a while. Eat."

"Keep your hands free!" A little later, perhaps regretting her sharpness, she said, "I need my hands to move. You can fight with your hands. Where's your harpoon?"

"On my back. We're all right as long as Jayan is still pulling on the line," he said and immediately noticed that the line had gone slack. Gavving reached for his harpoon before he moved again.

A disembodied white arm thrust out of the tunnel wall and beckoned. Jayan looked out through a screen of branchiets. Her voice was a hoarse and frightened whisper. "They're ahead of us."

"Where?"

"Not far. Don't take the tunnel. There's a long, straight part, then it swells out. They'd see you. Go where I go, or they'll hear branchiets breaking."

They followed her into the thicket.