take him long to attain full mastery
of the suit's controls, and soon he was gliding cleanly through the
hollows created by the mammoth outthrusting treetops in a course crazy
and twisted, but one which kept him pointing always towards Porno.
Presently he found an easier highway and a faster--a sluggish, dirty
yellow stream, quite broad, which ended, he was sure, in a swamp
within a mile of his destination.

Flanked by the jungle growth which sprouted thickly from each bank, a
gray, ghostly shape in the shadows lying over the water, he sped
through the dying afternoon. He kept at least ten feet above the
surface, well out of reach of such water beasts as from time to time
reared up through the placid surface to scan him. Once a huge gantor,
gulping a drink from the bank, snorted and went trumpeting away at the
grotesque sight of him--flying without wings!--and once too, on rising
cautiously above the treetops to reconnoiter, Carse saw life far more
perilous to him: a small party of men, stooping over a swamp-brink and
plucking the ripe isuan weed. At this he dived steeply and fled on;
and he knew he had gone unobserved, for there came no outcry of
discovery from behind.

* * * * *

Jupiter lowered its murky disk as the miles streamed past, breeding a
legion of shadows welcome to the fabric-clad monster skimming through
them and to the creatures who blinked and stirred as night approached.
The stream broadened into shallow pockets; patches of swamp appeared
and absorbed the stream; and Carse knew he was close to his
destination.

He cut his speed and glanced around. Ahead, the dark spire of a giant
sakari tree climbed into the gloom. It would be a good place. The man
rose slowly; like a wraith on the wind he lifted into its top-most
branches; and there, in the broad, cuplike leaves, he warily ensconced
himself. For man-sounds came into his opened helmet, and through a
fringe of leaves, across a mile of tumbled swamp and marsh, he could
see the guarding fences of the cosmetropolis of Porno.

A last slice of blotched, flaming red, the rim of setting Jupiter,
still silhouetted Porno, sprawled inside its high, electric-wired
fences, and the flood of fading light brushed the town with beauty.
The rows of tin shacks which housed its dives, the clustered,
nondescript hovels, the merchants' grim strongholds of steel--all
merged into a glowing mirage, a scene far alien to the brooding swamp
a