The pod dropped out and away. Carlot and Debby flapped after it.

The next one didn't explode either. Rather chased the seed pod down, with Booce chasing him. They braced their shoulders against the pod and started back. They were near the CARM when Rather's jets died.

He fiddled with the throttle wheels. Nothing.

"Booce! Don't leave me!"

"What's wrong?"

"The suit won't move!"

Booce laughed. "Are we going to have to put wings on that thing?"

"Can you push me-"

"Can and will. Here comes Debby. I'll push you and the ladies can have the pods." Booce seemed indecently cheerful, and Rather was a long time understanding why. Booce had found a flaw in Citizens Tree's intimidating science.

"You ran out of fuel, that's all," Jeffer told him. "See that little red light below your chin?"

"It was on when I started out. I don't know what it means."

"Means you're out of hydrogen. There must be a way to refuel the suit. I'll search the cassettes. If I can't find anything we'll have to ask Mark, after this is all over. Calm, now! We've got pods and we've got honey. Maybe we won't need the silver suit again."

A forty-klomter-long tree is hard to lose from six hundred klomters away. Jeffer had no trouble bringing them home.

Booce attacked the first pod gingerly, hacking at the stem with the matchet, flinching back at each blow. At the sixth blow the pod suddenly spewed foggy air under terrific pressure. Booce threw himself into the sky. He flapped back, staying well clear.

He opened the other pod in the same cautious fashion. Then he and Carlot sawed it in half. The inside was lined with fist-sized puffballs, each with a dangling tendril. Booce scraped these away.

He sawed the stem off the first pod, leaving a small hole. He shaved the edges until the hole was just smaller than the metal pipe, and quit for dinner.

They resumed work after breakfast. It took four of them to shove the ends of the pipe into the holes in both pods.

Clave asked, "Now how do you get water in there?"

"Punch a little hole in the other end of the tank. Put the pipe in a'pond and suck. You need good lungs to be a logger."

"We're too far in to find many ponds."

"I know. Usually we fuel Logbearer before we go to work on the tree. But, dammit, we've got the CARM, and there'll be a pond somewhere, and Logbearer is whole again! Except for the lines. And cabins. We'll need wood to build cabins."

"We'll go for wood after the next sleep," Jeffer said. "The out branch, I think. The in branch may be about to fall off."

"No. Another thirty days at least."

Carlot said, "Father-"

"Don't trust that," Booce said instantly. "We'll use the out branch."

"You're the logger. What changed your mind?"