Harp grinned back at him, though he was puffing. "We'll get you some claw sandals when you're older."

Laython grinned too, superciliously, and sprinted ahead of them both. He didn't have to say anything. Claw sandals would only have hampered his long, prehensile toes.

Night had cut the illumination in half. Seeing was easier, with the sunglare around on the other side of Voy. The trunk was a great brown wall three klomters in circumference. Gavving looked up once and was disheartened at their lack of progress. Thereafter he kept his head bent to the wind, clawing his way across the green cotton, until he heard Laython yell.

"Dinner!"

A quivering black speck, a point to port of windward. Laython said, "Can't tell what it is."

Harp said, "It's trying to miss. Looks big."

"It'll go around the other side! Come on!"

They crawled, fast. The quivering dot came closer. It was long and narrow and moving tail-first. The great translucent fin blurred with speed as it tried to win clear of the trunk. The slender torso was slowly rotating.

The head came in view. Two eyes glittered behind the beak, one hundred and twenty degrees apart.

"Swordbird," Harp decided. He stopped moving.

Laython called, "Harp, what are you doing?"

"Nobody in his right mind goes after a swordbird."

"It's still meati And it's probably starving too, this far in!"

Harp snorted. "Who says so? The Grad? The Grad's full of theory, but he doesn't have to hunt."

The swordbird's slow rotation exposed what should have been its third eye. What showed instead was a large, irregular, fuzzy green patch. Laython cried, "Fluff! It's a bead injury that got infected with fluff. The thing's injured, Harp!"