For several long minutes Tang studied the insect but it made no further movement. He lowered his glasses and sat down in the doorway with his legs hanging outside, making himself plainly visible to his observer. He suspected that it was not a member of the planet's dominant species, but he waited to see how it would react to him. That reaction would be the best demonstration of its intelligence.
After a wait of over fifteen minutes the creature turned slowly and hopped away. It traveled in long awkward jumps much like an Earth grasshopper, its progress aided by short wings which Tang noted then for the first time. It entered a dense copse of brush that grew in large rings like the practice exercises in a schoolboy's penmanship book.
Tang rested in the doorway for a good hour after the insect had disappeared before he stepped to the ground. He looked for the planet's sun but the sky was thick with clouds that seemed not to move. He walked around the ship. There was nothing of immediate interest within sight. Locking the port door he walked toward Lutscher's ship.
His progress became slower as he neared his goal. Whether or not Lutscher was inside he would probably have his guns set for intruders. True, most watch guns when activated gave a warning shot overhead or into the ground, before concentrating on an encroacher, but with a criminal a man never knew what to expect. And Lutscher could be ruthless. However, he reached the ship without challenge.
Picking up a shiny bit of crystal at his feet he rapped on the vessel's metal skin, and waited. He knew the sound would be heard inside, while his voice probably would not. He repeated the rapping several times before he decided that Lutscher was not inside. Shrugging his shoulders he turned away. His next move would be to investigate the brushland into which the stick-insect had disappeared.
Once there he found that the openings he had noted were not ringlets, as they had appeared through his glasses. Rather they were formed by branches growing up from large flat limbs lying on the ground. The branches were bent inward like barrel staves and gave the limbs the appearance of huge skeleton torsos, with the ribs pointed upward. Small finger-like roots reached from the limbs and buried themselves in the sandy soil.
Progress through the woods, Tang soon found, was possible only by walking through the tunnels made by the branches. Traveling diagonally was slow, tortuous work, while walking alongside the limbs was impossible—they grew too close together. However, the branches of the tunnel only met well above his head, and the limbs themselves offered a hard walking surface. He made good progress.
The temperature had gone up several degrees since morning and Tang was soon perspiring freely. The planet's greater gravity pull brought a loginess to his limbs, but this was compensated for by a strange feeling of well-being. The feeling, he surmised, was caused by the high oxygen content of the air he was breathing.
He walked until he came to the branch tunnel's open end and stepped out into the planet's murky sunlight. Ahead loomed the trunk of a tree, a huge trunk probably thirty feet in diameter. He noted now that the large limbs that ran along the ground grew from this trunk. It took him only a minute to perceive that the entire plot of vegetation, which must have covered over a square mile, originated here.