Raft

'How are you feeling? Do you have any specific pain?'

'Don't fuss, boy,' Cipse snapped with the ghost of his old tetchiness. 'I'm perfectly all right. And I am the most senior of us, you know. The others… rely on me…' His words were lost in a fit of coughing.

'I'm sorry,' Rees said carefully. 'You're the best judge, of course. But — ah — since your well-being is so vital to our morale, let me help you, for this one shift. Just stay here; I think I can handle the work of both of us. And I can keep Roch occupied. I'm afraid there's no way he'll let you off the star before the end of the shift, but perhaps if you sit still — try to sleep even—'

Cipse thought it over, then said weakly, 'Yes. It would feel rather good to sleep.' He closed his eyes. 'Perhaps that would be for the best. Thank you, Rees…'

'No, I don't know what's wrong with him,' Rees said. 'You're the one with bio training, Grye. He hardly woke up when it came time to return him to the surface. Maybe his heart can't stand up to the gravity down there. But what do I know?'

Cipse lay strapped loosely to a pallet, his face a bowl of perspiration. Grye hovered over the still form of the Navigator, his hands fluttering against each other. 'I don't know; I really don't know,' he repeated.

The four other Scientists of the group formed an anxious backdrop. The tiny cabin to which they'd all been assigned seemed to Rees a cage of fear and helplessness. 'Just think it through,' he said, exasperated. 'What would Hollerbach do if he were here?'

Grye drew in his stomach pompously and glowered up at Rees. 'May I point out that Hollerbach isn't here? And furthermore, on the Raft we had access to dispensers of the finest drugs — as well as the Ship's medical records. Here we have nothing, not even full rations—'

'Nothing except yourselves!' Rees snapped.

A circle of round, grime-streaked faces stared at him, apparently hurt.

Rees sighed. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Look, Grye, there's nothing I can suggest. You must have learned something in all the years you worked with those records. You'll simply have to do what you think best.'

Grye frowned, and for long seconds studied Cipse's recumbent form; then he began to loosen the Navigator's clothing.

Rees turned away. With his duty fulfilled claustrophobia swiftly descended on him, and he pushed Ms way out of the cabin.

He prowled the confines of the Belt. He met few people: it was approaching mid-shift and most Belt folk must be at work or in their cabins. Rees breathed lungfuls of Nebula air and gloomily studied the over-familiar details of the little colony's construction: the battered cabins, walls scarred by generations of passing hands and feet, the gaping nozzles of the roof jets.

A breeze brought him a distant scent of wood, and he looked up. Hanging in the sky in tight formation was the flight of trees which had brought him here from the Raft. The bulk of the supply machine was still slung between them, and Rees made out Pallis's overseer tree hovering in the background. The elegant trees, the faint foliage scent, the figures clambering through the branches: the airy spectacle was quite beautiful, and it brought home to Rees with a sudden, sharp impact the magnitude of what he had lost in returning here.

The rotation of the Belt swept the formation over a horizon of cabins. Rees turned away.

He came to the Quartermaster's. Now the smell of stale alcohol filled his head and on impulse he slid into the bar's gloomy interior. Maybe a couple of shots of something tough would help his mood; relax him enough to get the sleep he needed — The barman, Jame, was rinsing drink bowls in a bag of grimy water. He scowled through his gray-tinged beard. 'I've told you before,' he growled. 'I don't serve Raft shite in here.'

Rees hid his anger under a grin. He glanced around the bar; it was empty save for a small man with a spectacular burn scar covering one complete forearm. 'Looks like you don't serve anyone else either,' Rees snapped,

Jame grunted. 'Don't you know? This shift they're finally going to offload that supply machine from the trees; that's where all the able bodies are. Work to do, see — not like you feckless Raft shite—'

Rees felt his anger uncoil. 'Come on, Jame. I was born here. You know that.'

'And you chose to leave. Once a Rafter, always a Rafter.'

'Jame, it's a small Nebula,' Rees snapped. 'I've seen enough to teach me that much at least. And we're all humans in it together, Belt and Raft alike—'

But Jame had turned his back.

Rees, irritated, left the bar. It had been — how long? a score of shifts? — since their arrival at the Belt, and the miners had only just worked out how to unship the supply device. And he, Rees, with experience of tree flight and of Belt conditions, hadn't even been told they were doing it…

He anchored his toes in the wall of the Quartermaster's and stretched to his full height, peering at the formation of trees beyond the far side of the Belt. Now that he looked more carefully he could see there were many people clinging awkwardly to the branches. Men swarmed over the net containing the supply device, dwarfed by its ragged bulk; they tied ropes around it and threw out lengths that uncoiled toward the Belt.

At last a loose web of rope trailed from the machine, Tiny shouts crossed the air; Rees could see the pilots standing beside the trunks of the great trees, and now billows of smoke bloomed above the canopies. With massive grandeur the trees' rotation slowed and they began to inch toward the Belt. The coordination was skillful; Rees could see how the supply machine barely rocked through the air.

The actual transfer to the Belt would surely be the most difficult part. Perhaps the formation would move to match the Belt's rotation, so that the dangling ropes could be hauled in until the machine settled as a new component of the chain of buildings. Presumably that was how much of the Belt had been constructed — though generations ago…

One tree dropped a little too fast. The machine rocked. Workers cried out, clinging to the nets. Tree-pilots called and waved their arms. Slowly the smoke over the offending tree thickened and the formation's motion slowed.

Damn it, thought Rees furiously, he should be up there! He was still strong and able despite the poor rations and back-crushing work—

With a distant, slow rip, the net parted.

Rees, wrapped in introspective anger, took a second to perceive the meaning of what he saw. Then all of his being seemed to lock on that small point in the sky.

The pilots worked desperately, but the net became a mist of shreds and tatters; the formation dissolved in slow lurches of wood and smoke. Men wriggled in the air, rapidly drifting apart. The supply machine, freed of its constraints, hovered as if uncertain what to do. One man, Rees saw, was still clinging to the side of the machine itself.

The machine began to fall; soon it was sailing toward the Belt in a slow curve.

Rees dropped to hands and knees and clung tightly to the Belt cables. Where was the damn thing headed? The gravity fields of both star kernel and Nebula Core were hauling at the machine; the Core field was by far the most powerful, but was the machine close enough to the star for the latter to predominate?

The machine could pass through the structure of the Belt like a fist through wet paper.

The immediate loss of life would be enormous, of course; and within minutes the Belt, its integrity gone, would be torn apart by its own spin. A ring-shaped cloud of cabins, trailing pipes, rope fragments and squirming people would disperse until at last each survivor would be alone in the air, facing the ultimate fall into the Core…

Or, Rees's insistent imagination demanded, what if the machine missed the Belt but went on to impact the star kernel? He recalled the craters left even by raindrops at the base of a five-gee gravity well; what would the roaring tons of the supply machine do? He imagined a great splash of molten iron which would spray out over the Belt and its occupants. Perhaps the integrity of the star itself would be breached…

The tumbling supply machine loomed over him; he stared up, fascinated. He made out details of dispenser nozzles and input keyboards, and he was reminded incongruously of more orderly times, of queuing for supplies at the Rim of the Raft. Now he saw the man who still clung to the machine's ragged wall. He was dark-haired and long-boned and he seemed quite calm. For a moment his eyes locked with Rees's, and then the slow rotation of the machine took him from Rees's view.

The machine grew until it seemed close enough to touch.

Then, with heart-stopping slowness, it slid sideways. The great bulk whooshed by a dozen yards from the