At dusk the three men halted. "We could set up an arc," Tinnerman said, reaching behind to pat his harness.
Don Abel grunted negatively. "Use a light, and everything on the planet will know where we are. We don't want the thing that made that," he gestured toward the trail, "to start hunting us."
The third man spoke impatiently. "It rains at night, remember? If we don't get close pretty soon, the water'll wash out the prints."
Tinnerman looked up. "Too late," he said. There was no thunder, but abruptly it was raining, solidly, as it must to support a forest of this type. They could hear the steady deluge flaying the dense leaves far above. Not a drop reached the ground.
"The trees won't hold it back forever," Abel remarked. "We'd better break out the pup tent in a hurry—"
"Hey!" Fritz Slaker's voice sang out ahead. "There's a banyan or something up here. Shelter!"
Columns of water hissed into the ground as the great leaves far above overflowed at last. The men galloped for cover, packs thumping as they dodged the sudden waterfalls.
They stripped their packs and broke out rations silently. The dry leaves and spongy loam made a comfortable seat, and after a day of hiking the relaxation was bliss. Tinnerman leaned back against the base of the nearest trunk, chewing and gazing up into the bole of the tree. It was dark; but he could make out a giant spherical opacity from which multiple stems projected downward, bending and swelling for a hundred feet until they touched the ground as trunks twelve feet in diameter.
Don Abel's voice came out of the shadow. "The monster passed right under here. I'm sitting on the edge of a print. What if it comes back?"