"You can go back to the Nest."
She smiled more broadly. "How else will you find the way, my David? For you are my David."
"Don't start that again," he bade her, more roughly than he felt. "Lead the way."
Mara took a nearby jungle trail. After some time, she paused and studied the matted footing. "Tracks," she pronounced. "Certain Skygors, and two pairs of feet shod like yours."
Planter looked at the muddled marks thus diagnosed by the skilled trail-eye of Mara. "My friends and their captors?"
"Aye, that. They went this way. Come."
She slipped aside through the close-set stems. Planter did likewise. Mara slung her crossbow behind her, and climbed a trunk as a beetle scales a flower-stalk. "'Tis safer from Skygors up here," she told him over her shoulder "Follow me carefully."
Planter did so, with difficulty. He was a vigorous climber, and the lesser gravity of Venus made him more agile. But Mara, some forty feet overhead, swung through the criss-cross of limbs and vines like a squirrel. "Wait!" he called, striving to catch up.
She paused, finger to lips. As he came near, she said softly: "Not so loud! We come close. Feel you the spell?"