The native village was about what I expected from our reconnaissance flights. It was beautifully camouflaged. You couldn't tell it from the rest of the forest except that the trees were larger and were hollow—apparently hewn out with patient care to make a comfortable living space inside. Lyranians lived in one place, if what I could see of their dwellings was any criterion. I wanted to look inside, but K'wan hustled us down the irregular "street" that wound through the grove of giant trees until we finally came to the granddaddy of them all, a trunk nearly forty feet in diameter.
K'wan gestured at the tree. "Your house while you are here. We made it for you Earthmen." His voice came over my menticom and was duly recorded on the ship, since we were in constant contact, giving our impressions of the place. So far it was strictly SOP.
"Thanks," I said. "We appreciate it." I was really touched at this tribute. K'wan had probably evacuated his own house to furnish us quarters where we could be together. The size of it indicated that it must be the chief's residence. But like all primitives he had to lie a little and the fiction of making this place for us was a way of salvaging pride in the face of our technological superiority.
He walked inside and we followed, expecting to find a gloomy hole—but instead the room glowed with a soft light that came from the walls themselves. The air was cool and comfortable, a pleasing contrast to the heat outside.
"What the—" I began, but Allardyce was already peering at the walls.
"A type of luminous fungus," he said. "A saprophyte. Lives on the wood of this tree and gives off light. Clever."
I shut my mouth and looked around. There were other rooms opening off this one and along one wall a knobby imitation of a staircase led upward to a hole overhead.
"Hmmm, a regular skyscraper," Ed Barger commented, noting the direction of my gaze. "Well, we should not be crowded, at any rate."
I had been noticing something was wrong without realizing it. You know the feeling you get when you've lost something, but can't quite remember what it was. Then my neurons made connections and I realized that the communicator and the menticom were both as dead as if we were in a lead box.
Quietly I moved to the door—and Dan's voice hammered in my ears: "Skipper! Answer me! What's wrong?"