There were two men who were trying to thwart him, who had shrewdly undermined his and Thorn's theories, two men who had shown an odd personality reversal in the past months, who had impressed him with a fleeting sense of strangeness and alienage.
Two members of the World Executive Committee.
Conjerly and Tempelmar.
Brushing the treetops, swooping through leaf-framed gaps, startling a squirrel that had been dozing on an upper branch, Clawly glided into the open and made a running landing on the olive-floored sun-deck of Conjerly's home.
It was very quiet. There was only the humming of some bees in the flower garden, up from which sweet, heavy odors drifted sluggishly and curled across the deck. The sun beat down. On all sides without a break, the trees—solid masses of burnished leaves—pressed in.
Clawly crossed quietly to the dilated doorway in the cream-colored wall. He did not remove his flying togs. His visor he had thrown open during flight.
Raising his hand, he twice broke the invisible beam spanning the doorway. A low musical drone sounded, was repeated.
There was no answering sound, no footsteps. Clawly waited.
The general quiet, the feeling of lifelessness, made his abused nerves twitch. Forest homes like this, reached only by flying, were devilishly lonely and isolated.