Here moulds and yeasts and rusts were stunted by the sunlight. Grasses and weeds and trees survived, instead. This was an ideal environment for plants that needed sunlight to form chlorophyl, with which to make use of the soil that had been formed. So on the highlands the vegetation was almost earthlike. And there was a remarkable side-effect on the fauna which had been introduced in the same manner and at the same time as the creatures down below. In coolness which amounted to a temperate climate, there developed no such frenzy of life as made the nightmare jungles under the clouds. Plants grow at a slower rate than fungi, and less luxuriantly. There was no vast supply of food for large-sized plant-eaters. Insects which were to survive, here, could not grow to be monsters. Moreover, the nights here were chill. Very many insects grow torpid in the cool of a temperate-zone night, but warm up to activity soon after sunrise. But a large creature, made torpid by cold, will not revive so quickly. If large enough, it will not become fully active until close to dark. On the plateau, the lowland monsters would starve in any case. But more;--they would have only a fraction of each day of full activity. So there was a necessary limit to the size of the creatures that lived above the clouds. To humans from other planets, the life on the plateau would not have seemed horrifying at all. Save for the absence of birds to sing, and a lack of small mammals to hunt or merely to enjoy, the untouched, sunlit plateau with its warm days and briskly chill nights would have impressed most civilized men as an ideal habitation. But Burl and his followers were hardly prepared to see it that way at first glance. If told about it in advance, they would have thought of it with despair. But they did not know beforehand. They toiled upward, their leader moved by such ridiculous motives of pride and vanity as have caused men to achieve greatness throughout all history. Two great continents were discovered back on Earth by a man trying to get spices to hide the gamey flavor of half-spoiled meat, and the power that drives mile-long space-craft was first discovered and tamed by men making bombs to destroy their fellows. There were precedents for foolish motives producing results far from foolishness.