"Jeffer, we couldn't get to the helmet. The Navy searched Logbearer. Even after they left they were watching us. Where are you? Are you hidden?"

"Clave, I found something good. Do you remember Booce's description of a fisher jungle? A green puffball a klomter across, with a long coiled root. It reaches out to put the root in a pond, but there's poison on it and it can attack life forms and kill them and draw them in to rot-"

"Right. They're not supposed to live outside the Clump."

"Maybe so. This one's fifty klomters from the Clump fringes, and it's dead. The axis trunk is hollow. There's a Navy ship coming this way. It's not likely they'll want to sniff around a fisher jungle, but I've got the CARM moored inside the hollow anyway. When it goes away I'll tether it above the root so the CARM can get some sunlight. Where are you? I can't see anything."

"I'm in the dark. I'm in that channel we chopped past the Wart. We haven't moved the silver suit yet."

Jeffer remembered extending the work done by the happyfeet. His back and shoulders still ached. "We should have let the happyfeet do more of the carving."

"It was worth it. Booce was right. The Navy knows if you're carrying metal. This Petty Wheeler citizen knew about the Wart, but he didn't look for anything behind it."

"What's the Clump like?"

"Crowded. We'll have the log moored in twenty days. Booce has a way to hide the Wart. He's afraid of thieves, and we can't use the silver suit to win a fight, because-"

"No, of course not."

"-Because they'd recognize it. Jeffer, they've got three silver suits. It's a mark of high rank. Dwarves are in good shape if they join the Navy, and Rather's had an offer."

An offer? "Rather, you there?"

Jeffer heard Clave's distant yell. Presently Rather said, "Here."

"You had an offer to join the Navy? What was said? What did you tell them?"

"I didn't take the Petty seriously. The idea is to learn something about the Admiralty, buy some earthlife seeds, and get back to Citizens Tree!"

"We want to know about the Navy too."

"I learned a little-"

Clave interrupted. "How serious are we? Booce, what has the Navy got that we want to see? I'm not so eager to see the inside of a Navy rocket that I'd feed one of my-"

"The Library! The cassettes! What's on the Admiralty cassettes?"

"All right, Jeffer. What makes you think Rather could get to any of that? Booce might know, but he isn't here to ask."

Jeffer finished the shieldbird meat while he thought. "Ask him when you get the chance. Now, I'm getting terminally bored here. Are you free to move the silver suit into the rocket?"

"'No. It's too easily recognized," Clave said.

"How about just the helmet?"