The trees astonished him. They towered above him, fully five times as
high as any he had ever seen. Their stems were of enormous girth--rough
and hard to the touch. There seemed to be something moving in their
heavy foliage, far above him, and he heard faint, sharp whistling
sounds. He looked around uneasily.
The size of the trees worried him. If there were animal life, it might
be proportionately large. He shuddered. The desert, although
uncomfortable, had had one advantage: he had been alone there.
Still, it was not loneliness that he was seeking, he thought grimly.
Obviously, he....
He stiffened. He had been staring abstractedly at the coarse grass which
grew thickly around him. Now his eyes became focussed upon a movement
there--not three feet away. The grass was waving strangely, in a
peculiar, uneven line; and he caught sight of something slim and green,
that was not the grass. His throat contracted painfully. The thing did
not seem to move, yet it was coming nearer. Whenever he caught sight of
a part of its body, it appeared stationary; yet the waving of the grass
was closer, and ever closer. It was very close now....
Suddenly his power of locomotion returned. He rolled over backward, and
scrambled along the ground to a tree. Grasping the rough trunk, he
pulled himself erect; and held himself in that position, panting.
He could see the thing more plainly now. It was like a long, green whip
in the grass. Its forepart was raised in the air, and terminated in a
triangular head, with two bright eyes whose steady, unwinking stare made
him tremble weakly. With an effort he took his eyes from the creature;
and, pushing himself away from the tree, ran desperately, as far as his
legs would carry him. When he fell, he continued to crawl--farther, and
ever farther into the green woods.
He wondered if all creatures crawled in this world of Toon. Perhaps the
great gravitational pull made erect postures impossible.
For a long time he climbed steadily, threading his way through the
underbrush, skirting fallen trees. He felt increasingly drowsy. His
sleep period would come soon, he knew. He could not stave it off much
longer. And when he had slept, he must eat....
He came to level ground. Ahead was an opening in the trees, where a wide
ledge of stone was revealed. Out upon this he crawled, and gazed at the
scene that opened out below. Miles of waving tree tops met his view; but
what held his attention was a strip of silver cutting the green.
He felt a warm glow of satisfaction. Water, in his mind, was closely
associated with organization, transportation facilities, reasoning
beings....
Yet he must be wary. He had no idea what sort of beings they might be.
This might be a canal, but it was strangely irregular in its course. At
least he was making progress....
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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