"You'll find .a few hornets still in there," he told Rather. "They try to sting through the sack if you give them a few days to get restless, and then they die. But don't count on it. Don't let one get at you. Now you paint dabs a couple of meters apart. Closer, you waste honey. Farther apart, the bugs lose their way."

Rather had thought he was a climber, but this was different. He had problems keeping up. He was almost lost among the sacks he was carrying. Booce and Carlot climbed head down; they would have left him behind if Booce had not been stopping to paint the trunk.

They took a breather when the sun was at nadir and the shadows had become confusing. The sun was passing closer to Voy as the year waned.

A day later they took a longer rest. "This is the part I like best," Booce said. "We're usually in too much of a hurry. This time your CARM is already pushing us home. We can take our time, do what we like!"

"Like what?"

"I'll show you as we go." Booce began tearing up sheets of bark greater than a man, mooring them edgewise against the bare wood. When he had them arrayed he set them alight.

The smoke tended to stay where it formed. Booce moored a four-kigram slab of shellbird meat in the cloud. They broiled smaller steaks on their matchets, closer to the fire, and ate them still hot.

"The smoked meat will keep till we're down," Booce said. "But there are other things on the trunk. You've never climbed?"

"When we were children we did a little climbing, but just on the lower trunk. We weren't supposed to go more than a klomter up. If you fell, the foliage would catch you. Any higher, we rode the elevator."

They slept carefully tethered in cracks in the bark. Sometimes, for moments, the roar of the CARM could be heard above the wind. A dark cloud had formed above them and was gradually drifting down.

The bugs of the tree had found the honey.

They breakfasted on smoked bird. Then Carlot did the painting while Booce carried the food.

The sun circled them, once and again. Always they stopped when the shadows were pointing straight out. Water was beginning to flow sluggishly in alongside their path. "Bugs like it damp," Booce said. "The bark's wet enough for them around the midpoint, but not lower down. You have to paint down the east side, alongside the waterfall, or they won't come. Also the trunk blocks the wind. You don't want the bugs blown away."

There was fan fungus like so many pallid hands reaching from the bark. Carlot showed Rather how to tear the red fringe off before eating the white interior. It was bland, almost tasteless, but went well enough with the strongly flavored smoked meat.