Under the Green Star

There is no walking of the post when you stand guard in a tree two or three miles high in the air. Guards are mounted in far-spaced lookout stations and there they stay till sunup, or until such time as they are relieved. These lookout stations rather resemble the crow’s nests on a ship, being small, cramped platforms fastened to the ends of branches or the heights of the tree. A wicker railing runs around these platforms about waist-high, and the platforms themselves are securely bound to twig or branch with leathern thongs. They are also usually screened from view by the sort of camouflage I described earlier—twigs or branchlets unobtrusively bent awry so that the huge leaves conceal the platform from any casual notice.

The post Yurgon assigned to me on the night following my dramatic confrontation with the enraged Siona was a remote and lofty one, situated high up in the gigantic tree whereupon the outlaw camp was built. You could only get up to it by climbing a sort of rope ladder, and once in it, you were stuck there till either dawn or your relief came, as the rope ladder was untied and carried away. It was known as “red branch station” in the casual slang of the guards for the branchlet at whose end it was situated was covered with a variety of fungus or mold which was of a distinctive and unique coloration. When Yurgon read out my name and station I could not help but notice that Sligon pricked up his ears. An expression of cunning passed over his ugly, rat-like face, and a gleam of calculation flickered momentarily in his narrow eyes, until, as if by a conscious effort, he wiped his face smooth and innocent of expression.

At the time, this did not seem to be of any importance and I ignored it. Later, of course, I recalled it all too well.

The scuffle of something moving on rough bark awoke me instantly from the light doze into which I had fallen.

Nights on the world of giant trees were of an impenetrable degree of darkness. It was during the hours of night that the most dread and fearsome of the many predators of this planet were abroad, and that which hunted generally did so in complete silence so as not to alarm its prey. So it was that, save for the faint and unending whispering of breeze through the infinitude of leaves, the nights were not only utterly black, but of a ghostly silence as well.

Hence, the slightest sound of an unusual nature tended to arouse suspicion. This is why I snapped to full wakefulness from my dreaming doze when that faint scuffing sound reached my ears. I was crouched at the bottom of the high-railed little platform, my knees bent, for the floor space was miniscule; in an instant I was on my feet, leaning over the wickerwork railing, straining every sense to the fullest.

An almost undetectable tremor ran up the tapering branchlet at whose terminus I was stationed. The vibration was so slight that I might probably not have noticed it at all, had I not been roused to full alertness by the scuffling sound a moment before. I held my breath, heart thumping against my ribs, wondering what slithering monstrosity was inching its way up the branch to which I clung. We were under instructions not to rouse the alarm unless an enemy force was discovered or we ourselves were under the attack of some beast. My hand went out to the curved horn bound to the railing at my side. But still I hesitated—I waited, straining my ears for a repetition of the slight sound I had heard—not wishing to play the fool, afraid of the dark, who gives the alarm at the imagined approach of some nonexistent peril.

Again, that slight tremor up the branch. I had been conducted to my station by a rope ladder; this had been a length of thick rope with fat knots tied in it every three feet or so. It had been unfastened and carried off once I had attained the platform, for such was the custom. Therefore, whatever dread thing was slithering, up the branchlet was clinging to the rough bark itself. In the pitch-dark, my fancy painted a variety of monsters, my favorite among them being an enormous serpent. I could almost see the hideous, slithering shape coiled snakily about the narrow branch, its blunt, wedge-shaped head questing through the blackness for the scent of my flesh …

Was it pure imagination, or did I glimpse the faintest flicker of light below me?

Yes—there it was again! A curious double gleam, like two eyes burning through the dark!

If an enormous snake, or some other night-roaming monster, was approaching my station, there was little enough I could do about it. We guards were equipped with a long, broad-bladed hunting knife whose design was strikingly like that made famous by Colonel Jim Bowie of American frontiersman history; each of us carried one of these all-purpose weapons, which was called a “guard-knife.” We also wore, strapped across our shoulders, a spear or javelin about nine feet long; these, however, formed the extent of our weapons, it being the purpose of a guard to look and listen and, when necessary, give the alarm, but not to fight. It occurred to me that I might well be able to dislodge whatever creature clung to the rough bark if I reached down with my spear. The brute was directly below me now; I could hear its breathing.