“No, leave it,” she sobbed. “Leave it here, in the forest.”
Dead eyes, looking up at the death of the alien world of life into which he had now crossed, forever! Yes, it was fitting.
Farris’ heart quailed as he stumbled away with Lys through the forest that was rocking and raging in its death-throes.
Far away around them, the gray-green death was leaping on. And fainter, fainter, came the strange telepathic cries that he would never be sure he had really heard.
“We die, brothers! We die!”
And then, when it seemed to Farris that sanity must give way beneath the weight of alien agony, there came a sudden change.
The pulsing rush of alternate day and night lengthened in tempo. Each period of light and darkness was longer now, and longer—
Out of a period of dizzying semi-consciousness, Farris came back to awareness. They were standing unsteadily in the blighted forest, in bright sunlight.
And they were no longer hunati.
The chlorophyll drug had spent its force in their bodies, and they had come back to the normal tempo of human life.