this planet on its own terms. Otherwise, you'd go
stale and die out."

"Live on the ground all the time?" Mathild said in a faint voice.

"Yes, Mathild. The life in the treetops was to have been only an interim
period, while you gathered knowledge you needed about Tellura and put it
to use. But to be the real masters of the world, you will have to
conquer the surface, too.

"The device your people worked out, that of sending criminals to the
surface, was the best way of conquering the planet that they could have
picked. It takes a strong will and courage to go against custom, and
both those qualities are needed to lick Tellura. Your people exiled just
such fighting spirits to the surface, year after year after year.

"Sooner or later, some of those exiles were going to discover how to
live successfully on the ground and make it possible for the rest of
your people to leave the trees. You and Honath have done just that."

"Observe please, Jarl," Adler said. "The crime in this first successful
case was ideological. That was the crucial turn in the criminal policy
of these people. A spirit of revolt is not quite enough, but couple it
with brains and--_ecce homo_!"

Honath's head was swimming. "But what does all this mean?" he said. "Are
we--not condemned to Hell any more?"

"No, you're still condemned, if you still want to call it that," Jarl
Eleven said soberly. "You've learned how to live down there, and you've
found out something even more valuable: how to stay alive while cutting
down your enemies. Do you know that you killed three demons with your
bare hands, you and Mathild and Alaskon?"

"Killed--"

"Certainly," Jarl Eleven said. "You ate three eggs. That is the
classical way, and indeed the only way, to wipe out monsters like the
dinosaurs. You can't kill the adults with anything short of an anti-tank
gun, but they're helpless in embryo--and the adults haven't the sense to
guard their nests."

Honath heard, but only distantly. Even his awareness of Mathild's warmth
next to him did not seem to help much.

"Then we have to go back down there," he said dully. "And this time
forever."

"Yes," Jarl Eleven said, his voice gentle. "But you wont be alone,
Honath. Beginning tomorrow, you'll have all your people with you."

"_All_ our people? But you're going to drive them out?"

"All of them. Oh, we won't prohibit the use of the vine-webs too, but
from now on your race will have to fight it out on the surfa