imagining the confusion it must be causing as people looked up from the Raft's avenues and factories at this monster in the sky. 'But the miners will be back. Or maybe,' he added grimly, 'we'll be forced to go to meet them…'
His voice tailed away.
Clinging to the belly of the whale, waving feebly, was a man.
At the outbreak of the miners' attack Gover had joined the mob crowding down the stairway from the Platform, using his fists and elbows to escape the flying glass, the screams, the fire. Now, as suddenly as it had begun, the attack was over. Gover crawled from his shelter under the Platform and climbed cautiously back up the stairs.
Fearfully he scanned the burning shelters, the blackened bodies — until he saw Decker. The big man was stalking through the devastation, bending to assist medical efforts, throwing a kick at the scorched ruin of a bookcase. His motions had the look of a man caged by frustration and anger.
But he was obviously far too busy to have observed that Gover had made himself scarce during the battle. With relief Gover hurried toward Decker, eager to be noticed now; his footsteps crunched over shattered glass.
A shadow swept across the littered deck. Gover quailed, twisted his head and looked up.
A whale! And no more than a hundred yards above the Raft, drifting like a vast, translucent balloon. What the hell was going on? His agile mind bubbled with speculation. He'd heard tales that the whales could be trapped and hunted. Maybe he could have Decker send up some of those damn fool tree-pilots; he had a gratifying vision of standing at the rim of a tree, hurling his fire bombs into a huge, staring eye—
Someone thumped his arm. 'Get out of the way, damn you.'
Two men were trying to get past him. They half-dragged a woman; her face was ruined by flame, and tears leaked steadily from her remaining eye. Gover, annoyed, prepared to snap at the men — these weren't even Committee members… but something about the tired tension in their faces made him step aside.
He glanced up once more, noticing without interest that a tree was rising toward the whale… then he made out a dark, irregular blot on the whale's hide. He squinted against the almost direct starlight.
By the Bones, it was a man. A coarse wonder blossomed in Gover, and for a brief moment his self- centeredness evaporated. How the hell could a man end up riding a whale?
The whale rolled slowly, bringing the man a little closer. There was something naggingly familiar about the whale rider's dimly seen frame—
Gover had no idea what was going on; but maybe he could make something out of this.
His breath hissing through his teeth, Gover worked his way through the wounded and battle-weary, searching for Decker.
In the hours after he had 'persuaded' the whale to leave its school, Rees had often wished he could die.
The whale climbed steadily out of the Nebula's depths, convulsed with loneliness and regret at leaving its companions. It drowned Rees in a huge pain, burnt him with the fierce, enormous agony of it all. He had been unable to eat, sleep; he had lain against the stomach wall, barely able to move, even his breathing constricted; at times, barely conscious, he had found himself squirming across the belly floor's warm slime.
But he kept his concentration. Like match flames in a wind he held before his mind's eye images of Hollerbach, Pallis and the rest; and with the Raft fixed in his thoughts, he crooned the whales' song, over and over.
Shifts had passed as Rees lay there, dreading sleep. Then, quite abruptly, he sensed a change; a breeze of confusion had been added to the whale's mental storm, and the beast seemed to be sweeping through tight curves in the air. He rolled onto his belly and peered through the murky cartilage.
At first he could not recognize what he saw. A vast, rust-brown disc which dwarfed even the whale, a sparse forest of trees turning slowly over unlit avenues of metal…
It was the Raft.
With sudden strength he had torn at the cartilage before his face, forcing his fingers through the dense, fibrous material.
The tree rose steadily toward the rolling bulk of the whale.
'Come on, boy,' Pallis snapped. 'Whoever's up there saved our skins. And now we're going to save him.'
Reluctantly Nead worked at his fire bowls. 'Surely you don't think he brought the whale here intentionally?'
Pallis shrugged. 'What other explanation is there? How many times have you seen a whale come so close to the Raft? Never, that's how many. And how often do you see a man riding a whale?
'Two impossible events in one shift? Nead, the law of the simplest hypothesis tells you that it's all got to be connected.' Nead glanced at him curiously. 'You see,' Pallis grinned, 'even Scientists Third Class don't have the monopoly on knowledge. Now work those bloody bowls!'
The tree rose from its blanket of smoke. Soon the whale filled the sky; it was a monstrous, rolling ceiling, with the passenger carried around and around like a child on a roundabout.
As the tree closed, its rotation slowed jerkily, despite all Nead's efforts. At last it came to rest altogether perhaps twenty yards beneath the belly of the whale.
The whale's three eyes rolled downwards toward the succulent foliage.
'There's nothing I can do,' Nead called. 'The damn smoke's thick enough to walk on, but she just won't budge.'
'Nead, a tree has about the same affection for a whale as a plate of meat-sim has for you. She's doing her best; just hold her steady.' He cupped his hands and bellowed across the air. 'Hey, you! On the whale!'
He was answered by a tentative wave.
'Listen, we can't get any closer. You'll have to jump! Do you understand?'
A long pause, then another wave.
'I'll try to help you,' Pallis called. 'The whale's spin should throw you across; all you have to do is let go at the right time.'
The man buried his face in the flesh of the whale, as if utterly weary. 'Nead, the guy doesn't look too healthy,' Pallis murmured. 'When he comes this way he might not do a good job of grabbing hold. Forget the fire bowls for a minute, and stand ready to run where he hits.'
Nead nodded and straightened up, toes locked in the foliage.
'You up there… we'll do this on the next turn. All right?'
Another wave.
Pallis visualized the man parting from the whale. He would leave the spinning body tangentially, travel in a more or less straight line to the tree. There should really be no problem — provided the whale didn't take it into its head to fly off at the last second—
'Now! Let go!'
The man raised his head — and, with agonizing slowness, curved Ms legs beneath him.
'That's too slow!' Pallis cried. 'Hold on or you'll…'
The man kicked away, sailing along a path that was anything but tangential to the whale's spin.
'…Or you'll miss us,' Pallis whispered.
'By the Bones, Pallis, it's going to be close.'
'Shut up and stand ready.'
The seconds passed infinitely slowly. The man seemed limp, his limbs dangling like lengths of rope. Thanks to the man's release the whale's spin had thrown him to Pallis's right — but, on the other hand, his kick had taken him to the left—
— and the two effects together were bringing him down Pallis's throat; suddenly the man became an explosion of arms and legs that plummeted out of the sky. The man's bulk crumpled against Pallis's chest, knocking him backwards into the foliage.
The whale, with a huge, relieved shudder, soared into the sky.
Nead lifted the man off Pallis and laid him on his back. Under a tangle of filthy beard the man's skin was stretched tight over his cheek bones. His eyes were closed, and the battered remnants of a coverall clung to his
