here, among decent people. But where you come from makes you one of us. All I'm asking is that you come along and listen to what they have to say. With your access to the Science buildings you could be… useful.'
Rees tried to clear his thinking. Gover was a vicious, bitter young man, and his arguments — the contradictory mixture of contempt and appeal to fellow-feeling he directed at Rees, for example — were simple- minded and muddled. But what gave Gover's words force was their terrible truth. Part of Rees was appalled that such as Gover could so quickly disorient him — but inside him a core of anger flared up in response.
But if some revolution were to occur — if the Labs were smashed, the Officers imprisoned — what then?
'Gover, look up.'
Gover raised his face.
'See that star up there? If we don't move the Raft the star will graze us. And then we'll fry. And even if we were to survive that — look further out.' He swept an arm around the red-stained sky. 'The Nebula's dying and we'll die with it. Gover, only the Scientists, backed by the organization of the Raft, can save us from such dangers.'
Gover scowled and spat at the deck. 'You seriously believe that? Come on, Rees. I'll tell you something. The Nebula could support us all for a long time yet — if its resources were shared equally. And that's all we want.' He paused. 'Well?'
Rees closed his eyes. Would sky wolves discuss Gover's case as they descended on the wreck of the Raft and picked clean the bones of his children? 'Get lost, Gover,' he said tiredly.
Gover sneered. 'If that's what you want. I can't say I'm sorry…' He grinned at Rees with something approaching pure contempt. Then he slid away through the crowd.
The noise seemed to swirl around Rees, not touching him. He pushed his way through the crush to the bar and ordered straight liquor, and downed the hot liquid in one throw.
jaen joined him and grabbed his arm. 'I've been looking for you. Where…?' Then she felt the bunched muscles under Rees's jacket; and when he turned to face her, she shrank back from his anger.
6
The Scientist Second Class stood in the doorway of the Bridge. He watched the new Third Class approach and tried to hide a smile. The young man's uniform was so obviously new, he stared with such awe at the Bridge's silver hull, and his pallor was undisputable evidence of his Thousandth Shift celebration, which had finished probably mere hours earlier… The Second Class felt quite old as he remembered his own Thousandth Shift, his own arrival at the Bridge, a good three thousand shifts ago.
At least this boy had a look of inquiry about him. So many of the apprentices the Second had to deal with were sullen and resentful at best, downright contemptuous at worst; and the rates of absenteeism and dismissal were worsening. He reached out a hand as the young man approached.
'Welcome to the Bridge,' said Scientist Second Class Rees.
The boy — blond, with a premature streak of gray — was called Nead. He smiled uncertainly.
A bulky, grim-faced security guard stood just inside the door. He fixed Nead with a threatening stare; Rees saw how the boy quailed. Rees sighed. 'It's all right, lad; this is just old Forv; it's his job to remember your face, that's all.' It was only recently, Rees realized a little wistfully, that such heavy-handed security measures had come to seem necessary; with the continuing decline in food supplies, the mood on the Raft had worsened, and the severity and frequency of the attacks of the 'discontents' were increasing. Sometimes Rees wondered if—
He shook his head to dismiss such thoughts; he had a job to do. He walked the wide-eyed boy slowly through the Bridge's gleaming corridors. 'It's enough for now if you get an idea of the layout of the place,' he said. 'The Bridge is a cylinder a hundred yards long. This corridor runs around its midriff. The interior is divided into three rooms — a large middle chamber and two smaller chambers toward the ends. We think that the latter were once control rooms, perhaps equipment lockers; you see, the Bridge seems to have been a part of the original Ship…'
They had reached one of the smaller chambers; it was stacked with books, piles of paper and devices of all shapes and sizes. Two Scientists, bent in concentration, sat cocooned in dust. Nead turned flat, brown eyes on Rees. 'What's this room used for now?'
'This is the Library,' Rees said quietly. 'The Bridge is the most secure place we have, the best protected from weather, accident — so we keep our records here. As much as we can: one copy of everything vital, and some of the stranger artefacts that have come down to us from the past…'
They walked on following the corridor to a shallow staircase set into the floor. They began to descend toward a door set in the inner wall, which led to the Bridge's central chamber. Rees thought of warning the boy to watch his step — then decided against it, a slightly malicious humor sparkling within him.
Nead took three or four steps down — then, arms flailing, he tipped face-forward. He didn't fall; instead he bobbed in the stairwell, turning a slow somersault. It was as if he had fallen into some invisible fluid.
Rees grinned broadly.
Nead, panting, reached for the wall. His palms flat against the metal he steadied himself and scrambled back up the steps. 'By the Bones,' he swore, 'what's down there?'
'Don't worry, it's harmless,' Rees said. 'It caught me the first time too. Nead, you're a Scientist now. Think about it. What happened when you went down those steps?'
The boy looked blank.
Rees sighed. 'You passed through the plane of the Raft's deck, didn't you? It's the metal of the deck that provides the Raft's gravity pull. So here — at the center of the Raft, and actually in its plane — there is no pull. You see? You walked into a weightless zone.'
Nead opened his mouth — then closed it again, looking puzzled.
'You'll get used to it,' Rees snapped. 'And maybe, with time, you'll even understand it. Come on.'
He led the way through the doorway to the central chamber, and was gratified to hear Nead gasp.
They had entered an airy room some fifty yards wide. Most of its floor area was transparent, a single vast window which afforded a vertiginous view of the depths of the Nebula. Gaunt machines taller than men were fixed around the window. To Nead's untutored eye, Rees reflected, the machines must look like huge, unlikely insects, studded with lenses and antennae and peering into some deep pool of air. The room was filled with a clean smell of ozone and lubricating oil; servomotors hummed softly.
There were perhaps a dozen Scientists working this shift; they moved about the machines making adjustments and jotting copious notes. And because the plane of the Raft passed over the window-floor at about waist height, the Scientists bobbed in the air like boats in an invisible pond, their centers of gravity oscillating above and below the equilibrium line with periods of two or three seconds. Rees, looking at the scene as if through new eyes, found himself hiding another grin. One small, round man had even, quite unselfconsciously, turned upside down to bring his eyes closer to a sensor panel. His trousers rode continually toward the equilibrium plane, so that his short legs protruded, bare.
They stood on a low ledge; Rees took a step down and was soon floating in the air, his feet a few inches from the window-floor. Nead lingered nervously. 'Come on, it's easy,' Rees said. 'Just swim in the air, or bounce up and down until your feet hit the deck.'
Nead stepped off the ledge and tumbled forward, slowly bobbing upright. He reminded Rees of a child entering a pool for the first time. After a few seconds a slow smile spread across the young man's face; and soon he was skimming about the room, his feet brushing at the window below.
Rees took him on a tour around the machines.
Nead shook his head. 'This is amazing.'
Rees smiled. 'This equipment is among the best preserved of the Ship's materiel. It's as if it were unloaded only last shift… We call this place the Observatory. All the heavy-duty sensors are mounted here, and this is where — as a member of my Nebular physics team — you'll be spending most of your time.' They stopped beside a tube ten feet long and encrusted with lenses. Rees ran a palm along the instrument's jewelled flank. 'This baby's my favorite,' he said. 'Beautiful, isn't she? It's a Telescope which will work at all wavelengths — including the
