Jeffer chased it down. The CARM arced over the top of the out tuft, moved in along the east side of the trunk. The dock came into view: a rectangle of bare wood, ragged around the edges. Rather felt the pull of the forward jets and heard pondwater slosh toward him. Water had spread along the CARM's walls and was creeping forward.

He wasn't actually getting used to this, was he?

"Where's the rocket?" Clave sounded merely puzzled.

Where they had built the rocket, there was nothing.

Wait . . . there, drifting loose, a pale-brown bell shape: the nozzle. There, some distance away, a brown ellipsoid trailing lines. Where was Carlot? Where was anyone?

"What happened here?" Clave demanded. "An explosion?"

Had there been a fire? Rather found only the small black scar of the cookfire. The arrangements around it were undisturbed.

Jeffer said, "We can't search the whole tree. Where's the sun?'' Straight east.”We won't get Kendy for another day."

"Take us in," Rather said.

Jeffer looked at him. "Why?"

"Just a guess." Carlot had gone in, last sleep.

Jeffer swung the CARM toward Voy and fired the jets. They skimmed above the bark. The fog was around them now.

Jeffer played with the controls. "There," he said suddenly. "Five men." But what showed in the window was an abstraction, orange blobs on red-and-black.

"We're seeing by heat," Jeffer said. For an instant the normal view returned: fog sliding along black bark. Then the red-and-black was back. "Didn't Booce say something about happyfeet?"

"Find our people," said Clave.

"Mmm . . . there." Three orange blobs in a line. By normal light they became three human shapes lined along a crack. "And the rocket pipe, I think. Rather?"

Rather quickly disengaged his seat belt and moved aft. He pulled the silver suit out of the water and slid his legs inside. Clave said, "Good. Get the rest of it on and go join the others. Take some harpoons. They won't have weapons. Jeffer, how did they get here?"

"Good question. I don't see anything that could have brought them. Something could be around the other side of the bark."

Rather waited while Clave bound six harpoons against the silver suit's chest. Air on; voice on. "Can you hear me?"

His voice blurted from the control panel, and Jeffer jumped. "I hear you fine."

"Let me out."

The bark was half a klomter distant. Rather used his jets. He thrilled to the pull of thrust along his body: blood leaving his head, abdomen settling toward his feet. Not quite a comfortable sensation, but one few others could share.

Behind him, the CARM accelerated south around the curve of the trunk and was gone.

Carlot and the others had seen the CARM; they waved.