passing the tree's fallen fruit from tendril-frond to frond and so on up the slope and into my irises. I had a different destination in mind for them.

Meanwhile, my sisters had topped two hills much lower than mine. When I found out what they were doing, my nerves quivered. Both had built shells! One was glass; the other, cellulose!

"What do you think you're doing? Aren't you afraid of the olfway?"

"Pulse away, old grouch. Nothing's the matter with us. We're just ready for winter and mating-heat, that's all. We'll be Mothers, then, and you'll still be growing your big old shell. Where'll your prestige be? The others won't even pulse with you 'cause you'll still be a virgin and a half-shelled one at that!"

"Brittlehead! Woodenhead!"

"Yah! Yah! Hardhead!"

They were right—in a way. I was still soft and naked and helpless, an evergrowing mass of quivering flesh, a ready prey to any meat-eating mobile that found me. I was a fool and a gambler. Nevertheless, I took my leisure and sunk my tendrils and located ore and sucked up iron in suspension and built an inner shell larger, I think, than Grandmother's. Then I laid a thick sheath of copper over that, so the iron wouldn't rust. Over that I grew a layer of bone made out of calcium I'd extracted from the rocks thereabouts. Nor did I bother, as my sisters had done, to resorb my virgin's stalk and grow an adult one. That could come later.

Just as fall was going out, I finished my shells. Body-changing and growing began. I ate from my crops, and I had much meat, too, because I'd put up little cellulose latticework shells in the valley and raised many mobiles from the young that my far-groping tendrils had plucked from their nests.

I planned my structure with an end in mind. I grew my stomach much broader and deeper than usual. It was not that I was overly hungry. It was for a purpose, which I shall transmit to you later, dearie.

My stew-stomach was also much closer to the top of my shell than it is in most of us. In fact, I intentionally shifted my brain from the top to one side and raised the stomach in its place. Father had informed me I should take advantage of my ability to partially direct the location of my adult organs. It took me time, but I did it just before winter came.

Cold weather arrived.

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