"Some say the Father tree has always girded the world and grown in this spot, the very point where our Universe first blossomed from the elder one. Some say its roots anchor the very universal forces to dimensions themselves. Other Elders say that the Great World-Tree has a leaf for every star in the sky and a bud for every world. Why the Great Elder once said..." intoned the Shaman of the R'tahari to the interlopers before him. He was very plant-like himself, with woody-skin and long green hair that intertwined with his mossy beard to frame his wise azure-eyes. Currently,they blazed with conviction but the bemused humans who stood before him seemed unimpressed.

"Look, ya'll, We get it. It's a hell of a big tree and you primitives love to worship it or whatever that hokum your doing is," drawled Jim Duke, the head of 'Planetary Expeditions' resource acquisition team as he pondered the ridiculous situation before him. He still had a hard time wrapping his brain around the fact that a dozen natives of an advanced star-faring culture had chained themselves to a tree like a bunch of dirty twentieth-century earth hippies.

"It is not just a tree, it is the center, the anchor of the void, the wellspring, it's fate and that of all are intertwined..." intoned the group in response, tightening the ranks in front of the massive harvesting equipment.

Jim Davis squinted and his deeply tan and worn face took on a moment of softness, "Look, friend... I get your attached to it. Hell, it's impressive enough, I'll grant you. I mean you can see the mutha-trucker from orbit but your leaders sold the rights to it for exploration and that's that. Time marches on. But look here, I didn't leave Louisiana, ride a goddamned Chinese firecracker into orbit, freeze my balls off in suspended animation while we traveled a trillion miles, frozen like a Popsicle, and then sweat my ass-off as I trekked all this godforsaken equipment across half a world and up this fucking plateau to quibble semantics with a walking talking bush. So it comes down and if you and your friends don't move I'll turn the lot of you into end-tables too," he groused, his normally bland eyes lighting up with a reserve of back country fire. Then motioning to his workers to start up their gigantic plasma chainsaws and nuclear-harvesters, he gave the go sign and stepped aside.

"Noooo!" howled the R'tahari in unison as the mighty machines roared past and sometimes over them, to bite into the age-less tree, beginning to process its immense reserve of exquisite commercial-grade wood.

The natives continued to howl and pray but the men paid no attention. Nor did the strange shaking of the earth as the tree was processed concern them, nor even the sky above, where with each cut and fallen leaf, star after star winked out.