She stopped thinking of it as a pineapple and substituted "prickly pear." As they came in above the lime-green crown at one end of the "pear" a wave passed across it. The sudden flash made her blink and shield her eyes. Her iris corrected swiftly to let her see through the glare. The wave had stopped neatly halfway across the cap, one side still green, the other a chrome-bright sheen. The piercing shine reminded her of how hard sunlight was, unfiltered by air.

             "It swims," Seeker said.

             "Where?"

             "Or better to say, it paces its cage."

             "I . . ." Cley began, then remembered Seeker's remark about words robbing mystery. She saw that the shiny half would reflect sunlight, giving the prickly pear a small push from that side. As it rotated, the wave of color-change swept around the dome, keeping the thrust always in the same direction.

             "Hold to the wall," Seeker said.

             "Who, what's—oh."

             The spectacle had distracted her from their approach. She had unconsciously expected the trees to slow. Now the fibrous wealth of stalks sticking out from the axis grew alarmingly fast. They were headed into a clotted region of interlaced strands.

             In the absolute clarity of space she saw smaller and smaller features, many not attached to the prickly pear at all, but hovering like feasting insects. She realized only then the true scale of the complexity they sped toward. The prickly pear was as large as a mountain. Their tree was a matchstick plunging headlong into it.

             The lead tree struck a broad tan web. It struck this membrane and then rebounded—but did not bounce out. Instead, the huge catcher's mitt damped the bounce into rippling waves. Then a second tree struck near the web's edge, sending more circular waves racing away. A third, a fourth—and then it was their turn.

             Seeker said nothing. A sudden, sickening tug reminded her of acceleration's liabilities, then reversed, sending her stomach aflutter. The lurching lasted a long moment and then they were at rest. Out the window she could see other trees embed themselves in the web, felt their impacts make the net bob erratically.

             When the tossing had damped away she said shakily, "Rough . . . landing."

             "The price of passage. The Pinwheel pays its momentum debt this way," Seeker said, detaching itself from the stick-pad.

             "Debt? For what?"

             "For the momentum it in turn receives back, as it takes on passengers."

             Cley blinked. "People go down in the Pinwheel, too?"

             "It runs both ways."

             "Well, sure, but—" She had simply not imagined that anyone would brave the descent through the atmosphere, ending up hanging by the tail of the great space-tree as it hesitated, straining, above the ground. How did they jump off? Cley felt herself getting overwhelmed by complexities. She focused on the present. "Look, who's this momentum debt paid to?''

             "Our host."

             "What is this?"

             "A Jonah."

             "What's that mean?"

             "A truly ancient term. Your friend Alvin could no doubt tell you its origin."

             "He's not my friend—we're cousins, a billion years removed." Cley smiled ironically, then frowned as she felt long, slow pulses surge through the walls of their tree. "Say, what's a Jonah do?"

             "It desires to swallow us."

28

             Creatures were already busy in the compartments. Many-legged, scarcely more than anthologies of ebony sticks and ropy muscle strung together by gray gristle, they poked and shoved the cargo adroitly into long processions.

             Though they were quick and able, Cley sensed that these were in a true sense not single individuals; they no more had lives of their own than did a cast-off cell marooned from her own skin.

             She and Seeker followed the flow of cargo out the main port, the entrance they had used in the forest only two hours before. They floated out into a confusing melange of spiderlike workers, oblong packages, and forking tubular passages that led away into green profusion.

             Cley was surprised at how quickly she had adjusted to the strangeness of zero gravity. Like many abilities which seemed natural once they are learned, like the complex trick of walking itself, weightlessness reflexes had been "hard-wired" into her kind. Had she paused a moment to reflect, this would have been yet another reminder that she could not possibly represent the planet-bound earliest humans.

             But she did not reflect. She launched herself through the moist air of the great shafts, rebounding with eager zest from the rubbery walls. The spiders ignored her. Several jostled her in their mechanical haste to carry away what appeared to be a kind of inverted tree. Its outside was hard bark, forming a hollow, thick-walled container open at top and bottom. Inside sprouted fine gray branches, meeting at the center in large, pendulous blue fruit.

             She hungrily reached for one, only to have a spider slap her away with a vicious kick. Seeker, though, lazily picked two of them and the spiders back-pedaled in air to avoid it. She wondered what musk or gestures Seeker had used; the beast seemed scarcely awake, much less concerned.

             They ate, juice hanging in droplets in the humid air. Canyons of light beckoned in all directions. Cley tugged on a nearby transparent tube as big as she was, through which an amber fluid gurgled. From this anchorage she could orient herself in the confusing welter of brown spokes, green foliage, gray shafts and knobby protrusions. Their tree-ship hung in the embrace of filmy leaves. From the hard vacuum of space the tree had apparently been propelled through a translucent passage which Cley could see, already retracting back toward the catcher's mitt that had stopped them. Small animals scampered along knotted cables and flaking vines, chirruping, squealing, venting visible yellow farts. Everywhere was animation, a sense that nothing dwelled too long..

             "Come," Seeker said. It cast off smoothly and Cley followed down a wide-mouthed, olive-green tube. She was surprised to find that she could see through its walls.

             Sunlight filtered through an enchanted canopy. Clouds formed from mere wisps, made droplets, and eager leaves sucked them in. She was kept busy watching the slow-motion but perpetual rhythm of this place until Seeker darted away, out of the tube, and into a vast volume dominated by a hollow half-sphere of green moss. The other hemisphere, she saw, was transparent. It let in a bar of yellow sunlight which had been reflected and refracted far down into the living maze around them.

             Seeker headed straight for the mossy bowl and attached itself to a low plant. Cley awkwardly bounced off the resilient moss, snatched at a spindly tree, and finally reached Seeker. It was eating crimson bulbs that grew profusely. Cley tried some and liked the rich, grainy taste. But her irritation grew as her hunger dwindled. Seeker seemed about to go to sleep when she said, "You brought us here on purpose, didn't you?"

             "Surely." Seeker lazily blinked.

             Angered by this display of unconcern, Cley shouted, "I wanted to find my people!"