The Hard Scientist came towards base at a run, laboring through the high, fleshy stalks of the graminiformes. "Something—in the forest—" His eyes bulged, he panted, his mustache and fingers trembled. "Something big. Moving behind me. I was putting in a benchmark, bending down. It came at me. As if it was swinging down out of the trees. Behind me." He stared at the others with the opaque eyes of terror or exhaustion.
"Sit down, Porlock. Take it easy. Now wait, go through this again. You sou' something—"
"Not clearly. Just the movement Purposive. A—an—I don't know what it could have been. Something self-moving In the trees, the arboriformes, whatever you call 'em. At the edge of the woods."
Harfex looked grim. "There is nothing here that could attack you, Porlock There are not even microzoa. There could not be a large animal."
"Could you possible have seen an epiphyte drop suddenly, a vine come loose behind you?"
"No," Porlock said. "It was coming down at me, through the branches. When I turned it took off again, away and upward. It made a noise, a sort of crashing If it wasn't an animal, God knows what it could have been! It was big— as big as a man, at least Maybe a reddish color. I couldn't see, I'm not sure."
"It was Osden," said Jenny Chong "doing a Tarzan act" She giggled nervously, and Tomiko repressed a wild feckless laugh. But Harfex was not smiling
"One gets uneasy under the arboriformes," he said in his polite, repressed voice. "IVe noticed that Indeed that may be why I've put off working in the forests. There's a hypnotic quality in the colors and spacing of the stems and branches, especially the helically-arranged ones; and the spore-throwers grow so regularly spaced that it seems unnatural. I find it quite disagreeable, subjectively speaking I wonder if a stronger effect of that sort mightn't have produced a hallucination ...?"