Dan's chuckle was humorless. "Thanks, but I hope we keep on hearing from you."

"Don't worry—you will. These people look worse than they really are. At least they have been nice so far."

"They'd better stay that way," Dan replied grimly.

It was my turn to chuckle. "Keep calm and keep your blasters dry. I'm going inside now. You'll hear from us in two hours."

Ed Barger looked at me a trifle oddly as I came through the doorway. "A while ago you were laughing at that story K'wan was telling us about making this house for us. I caught your undertone."

"Sure. What about it?"

"Well, I'm not so sure he was lying."

"Huh?"

"Take a look around you."

I did. It was a nice room, considering its origin—low benches around the walls, a table and four chairs in the center, a soft, thick floor covering that was a pleasure to the feet.

"See anything unusual?" Ed asked.

"No," I said.

"What about those benches?"

"They're part of the walls," I said, "cut out of the tree when it was hollowed out."

"Cut to our size?"

I did a double take. Barger was right. The Lyranians were seven feet tall and long-legged, but the benches were precisely right for human sitting, and the table in the center was only three feet above the gray floor. Suddenly I didn't feel so good.

"And those rooms—there are four of them—scaled to people our size?"

I shrugged. "So they modified the joint for us."

"You still don't get it. This place is living. It's growing. Nothing here except those chairs isn't part of this tree, and 

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