„We have things out from underneath, Charles; you can let go your end of the rope and toss the mast over whenever you want.” The fine cord slithered instantly out of sight, and the ten-inch twig that was one of the Bree’s main booms followed. Seeing things fall free in triple gravity, Lackland found, was even worse than thinking about it. Maybe it would be better at the poles — then you couldn’t see them at all. Not where an object falls some two miles in the first second! But perhaps the abrupt vanishing would be just as hard on the nerves. Lackland shrugged off these thoughts and turned back to the tank.

For the couple of hours the process took he watched the Bretfs reassembly through the vision sets. With just the traces of a wish that he might go along, he saw the cluster of rafts pushed out into the broad stream, and listened to the farewells of Barlennan, Dondragmer, and the crew — he could guess at the meaning of the sounds uttered even by the sailors who spoke no English. Presently the current bore the vessel far enough from the cliff to be seen from the tank’s position. Lackland raised a hand silently in farewell, and watched her as she shrank slowly and finally vanished toward the distant sea.

For long minutes he sat silently; then roused himself to call the Toorey base.

„You may as well come and pick me up. I’ve done all I can on the surface.”

X: HOLLOW BOATS

The river, once away from the vicinity of the great fall, was broad and slow. At first the air trapped by the descending „water” furnished a breeze toward the sea, and Barlennan ordered the sails set to take advantage of it; but this presently died out and left the ship at the mercy of the current. This was going in the right direction, however, and no one complained. The land adventure had been interesting and profitable, for several of the plant products collected could certainly be sold at high prices once they reached home; but no one was sorry to be afloat again. Some looked back at the waterfall as long as it could be seen, and once everyone stared into the west to catch a glimpse of the rocket as the muted thunder of its approach reached them; but in general the feeling was one of anticipation.

The banks on either side began to draw more and more attention as they proceeded. During their overland journey they had become accustomed to the sight of an occasional upright growth of the sort that the Flyer had called a „tree,” usually seeing one every few days. They had been fascinating objects at first, and had, indeed, proved a source of one of the foods they planned to sell at home. Now the trees were becoming more and more numerous, threatening to replace the more familiar sprawling, rope-branded plants entirely, and Barlennan began to wonder if even a colony planted here might not be able to support itself by trade in what the Flyer had called fir cones.

For a long time, fully fifty miles, no intelligent Me was sighted, though animals in fair numbers were seen along the banks. The river itself teemed with fish, though none appeared large enough to constitute a danger to the Bree. Eventually the river on either side became lined with trees, which extended no one could tell how far inland; and Barlennan, spurred by curiosity, ordered the ship steered closer to shore to see what a forest — he had no such word for it, of course — looked like.

It was fairly bright even in the depths of the wood, since the trees did not spread out at the top nearly as much as is common on Earth, but it was strange enough. Drifting along almost in the shadow of the weird plants, many of the crew felt a resurgence of their old terror of having solid objects overhead; and there was a general feeling of relief when the captain silently gestured the helmsman to steer away from the bank once more.

If anyone lived there they were welcome to it. Dondragmer expressed this opinion aloud, and was answered by a general mutter of approval. Unfortunately, his words were either not heard or not understood by listeners on the bank. Perhaps they were not actually afraid that the Bree’s crew meant to take their forest away JrOm them, but they decided to take no chances; and once more the visitors from high-weight suffered an experience with projectile weapons.

The armory this time consisted entirely of spears. Six of them flew silently from the top of the bank and stuck quivering in the Bree’s deck; two more glanced from the protective shells of sailors and clattered about on the rafts before coming to rest. The sailors who had been hit leaped convulsively from pure reflex, and both landed yards away in the river. They swam back and clambered aboard without assistance, for all eyes were directed toward the source of the mysterious attack. Without orders the helmsman angled more sharply toward the center of the river.

„I wonder who sent those — and if they used a machine like the Flyer’s. There wasn’t the same noise.” Barlennan spoke half aloud, not caring whether he were answered. Terblannen wrenched one of the spears out of the deck and examined its hardwood point; then, experimentally, he threw it back at the receding shore. Since throwing was a completely new art to him, except for experiments such as he had made in getting objects to the top of the tank in the stone-rollers’ city, he threw it as a child throws a stick, and it went spinning end over end back to the woods. Barlennan’s question was partly answered; short as his crewman’s arms were, the weapon reached the bank easily. The invisible attackers at least didn’t need anything like Lackland’s gun, if they were anything like ordinary people physically. There seemed no way to tell what the present attackers were, and the captain had no intention of finding out by direct examination. The Bree kept on downstream, while an account of the affair went winging up to Lackland on distant Toorey.

For fully a hundred miles the forest continued while the river widened gradually. The Bree kept out in midstream for a time after her single encounter with the forest dwellers, but even that did not keep her completely out of trouble. Only a few days after the arrival of the spears, a small clearing was sighted on the left bank. His viewpoint only a few inches off the surface prevented Barlennan from seeing as well as he would have liked, but there were certainly objects in that clearing worthy of examination. After some hesitation he ordered the ship closer to that bank. The objects looked a little like trees, but were shorter and thicker. Had he been higher he would have seen small openings in them just above ground level which,might have been informative; Lackland, watching through one of the vision sets, compared the things at once to pictures he had seen of the huts of African natives, but he said nothing yet. Actually he was more interested in a number of other items lying partly in and partly out of the river in front of what he already assumed to be a village. They might have been logs or crocodiles, for they were not too clearly visible at this distance, but he rather suspected they were canoes. It would be interesting to see how Barlennan reacted to a boat so radically different from his own.

It was quite a while, however, before anyone on the Bree realized that the „logs” were canoes or the other mysterious objects dwellings. For a,time, in fact, Lackland feared that they would drift on downstream without ever finding out; their recent experience had made Barlennan very cautious indeed. However, there were others besides Lackland who did not want the ship to drift by without stopping, and as she approached the point on her course opposite the village a red and black flood of bodies poured over the bank and proved that the Earthman’s conjecture had been correct. The loglike objects were pushed into the stream, each carrying fully a dozen creatures who apparently belonged to the identical species as the Bree’s crew. They were certainly alike in shape, size, and coloring; and as they approached the ship they uttered earsplitting hoots precisely like those Lackland had heard on occasion from his small friends.