I'm not sure that they weren't. Besides, how did they know that there'd be four of us?"

"They could have been hopeful, or maybe four is their idea of a delegation. Remember there were four of them that visited us, and they suggested that four of us visit them."

"It's obvious," Allardyce added, "that this place has been made for us. K'wan wasn't lying."

Barger shook his head. "I still don't like it. I think we'd better get out of here. If they are as good biologists as this tree indicates, they're a Class VI civilization at least—and we're not set up to handle levels that high."

"I don't think that's necessary," Allardyce said. "They don't seem unfriendly, and until they do, we're better off sitting pat and playing the cards as they're dealt. We can always warn the ship in case anything goes wrong."

"Don't be jumpy," Alex broke in. "I told you they were all right. They grew the place for me. It's just grown a little since."

I made a noncommittal noise.

"It's true," Alex said. "While I was here I needed quarters and nobody wanted me in with them. They have some custom about not letting strangers in their houses after sunset. So they took a sapling and sprayed it with some sort of stuff and by the next afternoon I had a one-room house."

"Where did you stay that first night?" I demanded.

Alex shrugged. "In one of the trees down the street," he said, pointing through the door. "It was some sort of a storage warehouse. No air conditioning and blacker than the inside of the Coal Sack. It rains pretty bad at night and they had to give me some shelter."

He was right on time with his last statement, because the skies opened up and started to pour. The four-hour evening rain had begun. It had fascinated us at first, the regularity with which the evening showers arrived and left, but our meteorologist assured us that it was a perfectly natural phenomenon in a planet with no axial tilt.

"But growing a tree in a day is fantastic," I said. "What's more, it's unbelievable, a downright—"

"Not so fantastic," Allardyce interrupted. "This really isn't a tree. It's a cycad—related to the horsetail ferns back on Earth. They grow pretty fast anyway and they might grow faster here. Besides, the Lyranians 

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