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A single tree more than a meter thick was cut clean through and he had to step aside as it fell backward
toward him. It shattered when it struck the ground, sending splin-ters flying. Casually he straddled it as
the laser went to work on the last pair of trunks blocking their path.
In the center of the cut-through stump was a darker material the color of morion, an almost black quartz.
It bore an uncanny resemblance to the heartwood of a nor-mal tree.
Perhaps the darker material served as the conduit for raw silica drawn from the soil which the tree
utilized for growth. Fertile ground for speculation outsidehis own field.
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Then he was through the last barrier. At the same time, a small nova went off in frontof his eyes.
Fortunately his vision darkened quickly enough to save him from permanent blindness, but the flare still
hurt. Tears streamed from his eyes, trickled down his cheeks despite the efforts of the suit's humidity
control to soak them up. The visor was black and he couldn't see what was happening. Occasionally the
blackness was marred by a brief silvery cloud, evidence of new flashes.
The suit reminded him of his position. "We must move forward, sir."
He nodded absently, staggered through the gap the laser had cut. The silvery mists grew fainter as he
moved away from the hedge. Soon the visor began to lighten. After a while he could see again. Forest
ahead, sky above. He turned and looked back toward the barrier recently breached.
Flashes continued to fill the gap, but they were greatly lessened in intensity and frequency. The energy
required to generate the bursts must be considerable.
"Interesting." He turned to continue on. Neither leg responded.
"I fear I have sustained some damage, sir."
"Damage?" That word wasn't supposed to be in the MHW's vocabulary. "From what? A little light?
What kind of damage?"
"The growths which form the line behind us are slow to react to attack, sir. Perhaps because they rarely
are attacked. As a result they have evolved a unique method of defending themselves. Unique and yet
obvious. It is quite remarkable."
"I'm sure it is. This world is one remarkable discovery after another. You can detail it for me later." He
tried to walk again, with the same ineffectual result.
"I am very much afraid, sir, that my lower motor drive has been burnt out."
Evan sensed the short hairs on the back of his neck beginning to stiffen. "What do you mean, `burnt
out'?"
"If you care to look down, sir."
Evan did so. It took an effort because the suit servos were not responding smoothly. Behind him, the
hedge was now putting forth only intermittent, feeble flashes that were somehow familiar.
Black scars ran the length of the MHW. In a few places the supposedly invulnerable duralloy exterior
had been melted completely away, revealing smoking components and circuitry. The area around the
suit's right knee was gone entirely. Thin wires and connectors hung from the hole. Wisps of gas drifted
out, showing where the super-cooling insulators had been violated. He was leaking liq-uid nitrogen from
several joints. No wonder he couldn't move.
Anxiously, he looked back at the hedge. Another burst of light, a long pause, and then a last. At the
same time it struck him. What he was seeing in action was an ultra-violet laser.
But that was insane. People used lasers against hostile primitive lifeforms. Primitive lifeforms didn't use
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lasers against people.
The suit confirmed the impossible. "Remarkable, sir, most remarkable. There are no previous records
from anywhere in the Commonwealth of a living form lasing naturally. Perhaps such an evolutionary
development here should have been anticipated."
"It's not possible-no," he hastily corrected himself, "obviously it is possible."
"It is fortunate that we are no longer perceived as a danger. I reacted as quickly as possible, sir. I was
barely able to recognize the threat in time to protect you from serious harm."
"I still don't see how one or two plants could generate enough energy to cut through duralloy."
"One or two could not. However, we were not attacked just by those growths we were cutting through.
Appar-ently a danger to one is perceived as danger to all. It took a while for the hedge to mount a
collective response to our penetration. On Earth, trees under attack warn one another by chemical
means. Here the method must be different, but it is no less efficient, and the response con-siderably more
so.
"These growths are photovores, like many we have seen. Unlike those encountered previously,
however, these apparently have developed the ability to concentrate enormous amounts of energy within
themselves and then to release it all at once, in powerful bursts. As each growth adds its own quota of
energy to the pulse, the effect is magnified repeatedly. We were attacked by a single entity ten meters in
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