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and faded slowly away . . .
llf came walking shakily through the opening in the thickets to Sam's sleeping
place. His head still seemed to hum inside with the greenweb's drone but the
Queen Grove was quiet again; no voices called anywhere. Sam was settled into
his pit.
llf saw something gleam on the ground near the front end of the pit. He went
over and looked at it, then at the big, moss-grown dome of Sam's shell.
"Oh, Sam," he whispered, "I'm not sure we should have done it..."
Sam didn't stir. llf picked up Mr. Terokaw's blue and silver gun gingerly by
the barrel and went off with it to look for Auris.
He found her at the edge of the grove, watching Het's aircar on the other side
of the road. The aircar was turned on its side and about a third of it was
sunk in the ground. At work around and below it was the biggest member of the
clean-up squad llf had ever seen in action.
They went up to the side of the road together and looked on while the aircar
continued to shudder and turn and sink deeper into the earth, llf suddenly
remembered the gun he was holding and threw it over on the ground next to the
aircar. It was swallowed up instantly there. Tumbleweeds came rolling up to
join them and clustered around the edge of the circle, waiting. With a
final jerk, the aircar disappeared. The disturbed section of earth
began to smooth over. The tumbleweeds moved out into it.
There was a soft whistling in the air, and from a Queen Tree at the edge of
the grove a hundred and fifty feet away, a diamondwood seedling came lancing
down., struck at a slant into the center of the circle where the aircar had
vanished, stood trembling a moment, then straightened up. The
tumbleweeds nearest it moved respectfully aside to give it
room. The seedling shuddered and unfolded its first five-
fingered cluster of silver-green leaves. Then it stood still.
llf looked over at Auris. "Auris," he said, "should we have done it?"
Auris was silent a moment.
"Nobody did anything," she said then. "They've just gone away again." She took
llfs hand. "Let's go back to the house and wait for Riquol and Meldy to wake
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up."
The organism that was the diamondwood forest grew quiet again. The quiet
spread back to its central mind unit in the
Queen Grove, and the unit began to relax towards somnolence.
A crisis had been passedperhaps the last of the many it had foreseen when
human beings first arrived on the world of
Wrake.
The only defense against Man was Man. Understanding that, it had laid its
plans. On a world now owned by Man, it adopted Man, brought him into its
ecology, and its ecology into a new and again successful balance.
This had been a final flurry. A dangerous attack by dangerous humans. But the
period of danger was nearly over, would soon be for good a thing of the past.
It had planned well, the central mind unit told itself drowsily. But
now, since there was no further need to think today, it would stop thinking .
. .
Sam the mossback fell gratefully asleep.
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