faithful sisters had listened to my ideas about how we should not be content with anything less than the highest hilltops.

"Once you've grown a shell, you stay where you are."

So they agreed to follow me.

But I led them a long, long ways, and they would complain that they were tired and sore and getting afraid of running into some meat-eating mobile. They even wanted to move into the empty shells of Mothers who had been eaten by the olfway or died when cancer, instead of young, developed in the conception-spots.

"Come on," I urged. "There's no prestige in moving into empties. Do you want to take bottom place in every community-pulsing just because you're too lazy to build your own covers?"

"But we'll resorb the empties and then grow our own later on."

"Yes? How many Mothers have declared that? And how many have done it? Come on, Sluggos."

We kept getting into higher country. Finally, I scanned the set-up I was searching for. It was a small, flat-topped mountain with many hills around it. I crept up it. When I was on top, I test-beamed. Its summit was higher than any of the eminences for as far as I could reach. And I guessed that when I became adult and had much more power, I would be able to cover a tremendous area. Meanwhile, other virgins would sooner or later be moving in and occupying the lesser hills.

As Father would have expressed it, I was on top of the world.

It happened that my little mountain was rich. The search-tendrils I grew and then sunk into the soil found many varieties of minerals. I could build from them a huge shell. The bigger the shell, the larger the Mother. The larger the Mother, the more powerful the pulse.

Moreover, I detected many large flying mobiles. Eagles, Father termed them. They would make good mates. They had sharp beaks and tearing talons.

Below, in a valley, was a stream. I grew a hollow-tendril under the soil and down the mountainside until it entered the water. Then I began pumping it up to fill my stomachs.

The valley soil was good. I did what no other of our kind had ever done, what Father had taught me. My far-groping tendrils picked up seeds dropped by trees or flowers or birds and planted them. I spread an underground net of tendrils around an apple tree. But I didn't plan on 

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