Even nearby, three directions out of four would be wrong.
Farther away, the chance of stumbling on the way back to the ship would
be nonexistent.
Alicia saw a human footprint on the trodden muck near the last carcass.
It pointed toward the wood.
They reached the wood, and search looked hopeless. Then by purest chance
they found a place where Johnny had stumbled and fallen headlong. He'd
leaped up and fled crazily. For some fifteen yards they could track him
by the trampled dried small growths he'd knocked down in his flight.
Then there were no more such growths. All signs of his flight were lost.
But they went on.
There were strangenesses everywhere, of which they could realize only a
small part because they had been city-dwellers back on Earth. There was
one place where trees grew like banyans, and it was utterly impossible
to penetrate them. They swerved aside. There was another spot where
giant trees like sequoias made a cathedral-like atmosphere, and it
seemed an impiety to speak. But Holden reported tonelessly in the
walkie-talkie, and assured Jones and Al and Jamison that all so far was
well.
They heard a vast commotion of chattering voices, and they hoped that it
might be a disturbance of Johnny Simms' causing.
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