Honath shuddered and said nothing. Of course, it was al-
ways raining down below in Hell, that much could be seen by
a child. Even on sunny days, the endless pinpoint rain of
transpiration, from the hundred million leaves of the eternal
trees, hazed the forest air and soaked the black bog forever.
He looked around in the brightening, misty morning. The
eastern horizon was black against the limb of the great red
sun, which had already risen about a third of its diameter; it
was almost time for the small, blue-white, furiously hot con-
sort to follow. All the way to that brink, as to every other
horizon, the woven ocean of the tree tops flowed gently in
long, unbreaking waves, featureless as some smooth oil. Only
nearby could the eye break that ocean into its details, into the
world as it was: a great, many-tiered network, thickly over-
grown with small ferns, with air-drinking orchids, with a
thousand varieties of fungi sprouting wherever vine crossed
vine and collected a little humus for them, with the vivid par-
asites sucking sap from the vines, the trees, and even each
other. In the ponds of rainwater collected by the closely
fitting leaves of the bromelaids, tree-toads and peepers stopped
down their hoarse songs dubiously as the light grew. and fell
silent one by one. In the trees below the world, the tentative
morning screeches of the lizard-birdsthe souls of the
damned, or the devils who hunted them, no one was quite
sure whichtook up the concert.
A small gust of wind whipped out of the hollow above the