The Planet Savers docx

[...]... struck the camp While the others were packing up the last oddments, ready for the saddle, I gave the girl Kyla the task of readying the rucksacks we'd carry after the trails got too bad even for the pack animals, and went to stand at the water's edge, checking the depth of the ford and glancing up at the smoke-hazed rifts between peak and peak The men were packing up the small tent we'd use in the forests,... knew of the trailmen and their world Nature seems to have a sameness on all inhabited worlds, tending toward the economy and simplicity of the human form The upright carriage, freeing the hands, the opposable thumb, the color-sensitivity of retinal rods and cones, the development of language and of lengthy parental nurture—these things seem to be indispensable to the growth of civilization, and in the. .. accomplish it Most of the trailmen never touched ground in their entire lives, except when crossing the passes above the snow line Not a dozen of them, including my foster-parents who had so painfully brought me out across Dammerung, had ever crossed the ring of encircling mountains that walled them away from the rest of the planet Humans sometimes penetrated the lower forests in search of the trailmen It... to the ordinary humans, except for considering them fair game for plundering when they came uninvited into trailman country But they, with all Darkover, revered the Hasturs, and it was a fine point of diplomacy—if the Darkovans sent their most important leader, they might listen to him "In the second place," Regis Hastur continued, "the Darkovans are my people, and it's my business to negotiate for them... the loop of vine and reached, with her free hand, for the next loop Now she was swinging out over the edge of the boiling rapids Tight-mouthed, I gestured to the others to spread out slightly below—not that anything would help her if she fell Hjalmar, watching as the woman gained the third loop—which joggled horribly to her slight weight—shouted suddenly, "Kyla, quick! The loop beyond—don't touch the. .. out of the wreckage and the weeks I'd spent, broken-bodied and delirious, gently tended by one of the red-eyed, twittering women of the trailmen In all I had spent eight years in the Nest, which was not a nest at all but a vast 15 sprawling city built in the branches of enormous trees With the small and delicate humanoids who had been my playfellows, I had gathered the nuts and buds and trapped the small... travel other than the feet of men or beasts We passed tiny villages and isolated country estates, and a few of the solitary towers where the matrix mechanics worked alone with the secret sciences of Darkover, towers of glareless stone which sometimes shone like blue beacons in the dark Kendricks drove the truck which carried the animals, and was amused by it Rafe and I took turns driving the other truck,... small arboreal animals they used for food, taken my share at weaving clothing from the fibres of parasite plants cultivated on the stems, and in all those eight years I had set foot on the ground less than a dozen times, even though I had travelled for miles through the tree-roads high above the forest floor Then the Old-One's painful decision that I was too alien for them, and the difficult and dangerous... sapiens as the most complex of nature's forms The trailmen were a pausing-place which had proved tenacious When the mainstream of evolution on Darkover left the trees to struggle for existence on the ground, a few remained behind Evolution did not cease for them, but evolved homo arborens; nocturnal, nystalopic humanoids who lived out their lives in the extensive forests The truck bumped over the bad,... men They never came beyond the Kadarin On the other hand, 26 almost any human who ventured into their territory became, by that act, fair game for attack A few of the Darkovan mountain people had trade treaties with the trailmen; they traded clothing, forged metals, small implements, in return for nuts, bark for dyestuffs and certain leaves and mosses for drugs In return, the trailmen permitted them . " ;The People of the Sky—" (using the trailmen's name for themselves) "—don't like outsiders, but they might be persuaded. The worst part would be getting there. The plane,. crossed the ring of encircling mountains that walled them away from the rest of the planet. Humans sometimes penetrated the lower forests in search of the trailmen. It was one-way traffic. The trail- men. for an answer, then touched another button and steel louvers closed noise- lessly over the windows, blacking them out. I rose in sudden panic, then relaxed as the room went dark. The darkness felt