Booce said, "The bugs follow the honey down. They eat the honey above the tuft. Then they're stuck, because they've eaten all the honey. There's nothing left to eat but wood. After a few sleeps the tuft drops off." There were sounds of dismay. "We don't use occupied trees, you know," Booce said gently. "The tree would die anyway when it gets near the Clump. Integral trees want a straightforward tidal pull, straight through Voy."

The pudgy girl asked a little coldly, "How many trees have you killed?" Booce saw that she was almost an adult. Her height had fooled him: the tide had stunted her growth.

"Ten."

The dwarf (an adult too, with beard beginning to sprout) asked, "Why do you cut off the tuft?"

"To move. You know the rule? West takes you in, in takes you east. I want the tree to move east, back to the Clump. So I cut the in tuft. Now I've got a west wind blowing on the out tuft, and nothing at the in stump to catch the wind. The tree accelerates west. It drops toward Voy. Things move faster when their orbits are closer to Voy, so the tree moves east. After a while I'm in from the Clump and still moving. That's when I need the rocket. I have to cut off the other tuft, then fire the rocket to move the tree into the Clump."

The dwarf boy asked, "What then?"

"Then I sell the log for what I can get, and hope nobody else brought a log in at the same time. If there are two of us competing, we might not get enough to pay us for the work."

Most of the children looked puzzled. The dwarf asked, "What went wrong this time?"

Booce's throat closed up. His decision! With some relief he heard Ryllin say, "We were in a hurry. We thought we could get more water for the rocket. So we set the rocket going before the tuft dropped off. That started a fire. Wend was trying to get out of the huts when the water tank-well, it got too hot and-"

Booce jumped in, hastily. "The water tank split open. Wend got caught. Cariot and I were burned pulling her out of the steam. We were steering the log for that pond out there, and your tree moved in front of it, so it was the closest. So we made for it. And you found six of us clinging to the trunk like toes in hair, and-and Wend was dead, and the rest of us were ready to die, I think."

The adults had all been served. The children drifted toward the cookpot. Booce ate. He'd let his stew get cold.