Hurriedly, the women burrowed their way through the platform of leaves. The last rites for Clat had been carried out; it was time to return to the group.

Before they climbed down again to the green world of middle layers, Lily-yo looked back over her shoulder.

The traverser was descending slowly, a great bladder with legs and jaws, fibery hair covering most of its bulk. To her it was like a god with the powers of a god. It came down a cable. It floated nimbly down a cable which trailed up into the sky.

Other cables could be seen, stretching up from the jungle close by or distantly. All slanted up, pointing like slender drooping fingers into heaven. Where the sun caught them, they shone. It could be seen that they trailed up in a certain direction. In that direction, a silver half globe floated, remote and cool, but visible even in the sunshine.

Unmoving, steady, the half moon remained always in that sector of the sky.

Throughout the eons, the pull of this moon had gradually slowed the axial revolution of its parent planet to a standstill, until day and night slowed, becoming fixed forever: one on one side of the planet, one on the other. At the same time, a reciprocal braking effect had checked the moon's apparent flight. Drifting farther from Earth, it had shed its role as satellite and rode along in a Trojan position, an independent planet in its own right hugging one angle of a vast equilateral triangle which held the Earth and the sun at its other angles. Now Earth and Moon, for what was left of the afternoon of eternity, faced each other in the same relative position. They were locked face to face, and so would be, until the sands of time ceased to run, or the sun ceased to shine.

And the multitudinous strands of cable floated across the gap between them, uniting the worlds. Back and forth the traversers could shuttle at will, vegetable astronauts huge and insensible, with Earth and Luna both enmeshed in their indifferent net.

With surprising suitability, the old age of the Earth was snared about with cobwebs.

THE journey back to the group was fairly uneventful. Lily-yo and Flor travelled at an easy pace, sliding down again into the middle layers of the tree. Lily-yo did not press forward as hard as usual, for she was reluctant to face the break-up of the group that had to come.

She could not express her thoughts. In this green millenary, there were few thoughts and fewer words.

'Soon we must Go Up like Clat's soul,' she said to Flor, as they climbed down.

'It is the way,' Flor answered, and Lily-yo knew she would get no deeper a word on the matter than that. Nor could she frame deeper words herself; human understandings trickled shallow these days. It was the way.

The group greeted them soberly when they returned. Being weary, Lily-yo offered them a brief salutation and retired to her nuthut. Jury and Ivin soon brought her food, setting not so much as a finger inside her home, that being tabu. When she had eaten and slept, she climbed again on to the home strip of branch and summoned the others.

'Hurry!' she called, staring fixedly at Haris, who was not hurrying. How he could vex her, when he knew she favoured him most! Why should a difficult thing be so precious – or a precious thing so difficult?

At that moment, while her attention was diverted, a long green tongue licked out from behind the tree trunk. Uncurling, it hovered daintily for a second. It took Lily-yo round the waist, pinning her arms to her side, lifting her off the branch, while she kicked and cried in a fury at having been less than alert.

Haris pulled a knife from his belt, leapt forward with eyes slitted, and hurled the blade. Singing, it pierced the tongue and pinned it to the rough trunk of the tree.

Haris did not pause after throwing. As he ran towards the pinioned tongue. Daphe and Jury ran behind him, while Flor scuttled the children to safety. In its agony, the tongue eased its grip on Lily-yo.

Now a terrific thrashing had set in on the other side of the tree trunk: the forest seemed full of its vibrations. Lily-yo whistled up two dumblers, fought her way out of the green coils round her, and got safely back on the branch. The tongue, writhing in pain, flicked about meaninglessly. Weapons out, the four humans moved forward to deal with it.

The tree itself shook with the wrath of the creature trapped by its tongue. Edging cautiously round the trunk they saw it. Its great vegetable mouth distorted, a wiltmilt stared back at them with the hideous palmate pupil of its single eye. Furiously it hammered itself against the tree, foaming and mouthing. Though they had faced wiltmilts before, yet the humans trembled at the sight.

The wiltmilt was many times the girth of the tree trunk at its present extension. If necessary, it could have extended itself up almost to the Tips, stretching and becoming thinner as it did so. Like an obscene jack-in-the-box, it sprang up from the Ground in search of food, armless, brainless, gouging its slow way over the forest floor on wide and rooty legs.

'Pin it!' Lily-yo cried. 'Don't let the monster break away!'

Concealed all along the branch were sharp stakes that the group kept for emergencies. With these they stabbed the tongue still cracking like a whip about their heads. At last they had a good length of it secured, staked down to the tree. However much the wiltmilt writhed, it could never get free now.

'Now we must leave and Go Up,' Lily-yo said.

No human could ever kill a wiltmilt, for its vital parts were inaccessible. But already its struggles were attracting predators, the thinpins – those mindless sharks of the middle layers – rayplanes, trappersnappers, gargoyles, and smaller vegetable vermin. They would tear the wiltmilt to living pieces until nothing of it remained – and if they happened on a human at the same time... well, it was the way. So the group melted quickly away into the curtains of green.

Lily-yo was angry. She had brought on this trouble. She had been caught off guard. Alert, she would never have been trapped by a slow-moving wiltmilt. Her mind had been tied with thought of her own bad leadership. For she had caused two dangerous trips to be made to the Tips where one would have done. If she had taken all the group with her when Clat's soul was disposed of, she would have saved the second ascent that now lay before them. What ailed her brain that she -did not see this beforehand?

She clapped her hands. Standing for shelter under a giant leaf, she made the group come about her. Sixteen pairs of eyes stared trustingly at her, awaiting her words. She was angry to see how they trusted her.

'We adults grow old,' she told them. 'We grow stupid. I grow stupid – I let a slow wiltmilt catch me. I am not fit to lead you any more. The time is come for the adults to Go Up and return to the gods who made us. Then the children will be on their own. They will be the new group. Toy will lead the group. By the time you are sure of your group, Gren and soon Veggy will be old enough to give you children. Take care of the man children. Let them not fall to the green, or the group dies. Better to die yourself than let the group die.'

Lily-yo had never made, the others had never heard, so long a speech. Some of them did not understand it all. What of this talk about falling to the green? One did or one did not: it needed no talk. Whatever happened was the way, and talk could not touch it.

May, a girl child, said cheekily, 'On our own we can enjoy many things.'

Reaching out, Flor clapped her on an ear.

'First you make the hard climb to the Tips,' she said.

'Yes, move,' Lily-yo said. She gave the order for climbing, who should lead, who follow. There was no further discussion between them, no curiosity; only Gren said wonderingly, 'Lily-yo would punish us all for her mistake.'