"Where do they think we'd escape to?" he demanded bitterly.
"They're not to keep us from escaping, Joel."
Just then the bus started smoothly, gathered momentum, burst out into the brilliant light of Asgard's twin suns.
Joel forgot the electrified screens, craning his neck, trying to see everything at once. The spaceport, he realized, must be located at some distance from Eden. The road ran straight ahead—a glittering plastic ribbon cutting a channel through the fantastic jungle.
It was monstrous, that jungle. It writhed, twisted, swayed in great swaths although there wasn't the faintest breeze. Suddenly the bus stopped with a jerk to allow a herd of huge tree-like plants to swarm across the road.
Joel gaped at them in amazement. They had thick flesh-like trunks from which writhing tentacles sprouted like the arms of an octopus. A mass of wriggling squirming thread-like roots propelled the plants forward with startling speed.
"Ugh!" Joel shuddered, turned to Tamis. "What are those?"
"Nigel trees."
Joel wrenched back suddenly from the window. One of the nigel trees had lashed out with a tentacle. It touched the screen. There was a green spark. The tentacle jerked back.
"Now do you see why the screens are electrified?" Tamis asked. "The nigel trees are carnivorous."