Raft

3

Hollerbach lifted his head from the lab report, eyes smarting. He removed his spectacles, set them on the desk top before him, and began methodically to massage the ridge of bone’ between his eyes. “Oh, do sit down, Mith,” he said wearily.

Captain Mith continued to pace around the office. His face was a well of anger under its covering of black beard and his massive belly wobbled before him. Hollerbach noted that Mith’s coverall was frayed at the hem, and even the golden Officer’s threads at his collar looked dulled. “Sit down? How the hell can I sit down? I suppose you know I’ve got a Raft to run.”

Hollerbach groaned inwardly, “Of course, but—”

Mith took an orrery from a crowded shelf and shook it at Hollerbach. “And while you Scientists swan around in here my people are sick and dying—”

“Oh, by the Bones, Mith, spare me the sanctimony!” Hollerbach thrust out his jaw. “Your father was just the same. All lectures and no damn use.”

Mith’s mouth was round. “Now, look, Hollerbach—”

“Lab tests take time. The equipment we’re working with is hundreds of thousands of shifts old, remember. We’re doing our best, and all the bluster in the Nebula isn’t going to speed us up. And you can put down that orrery, if you don’t mind.”

Mith looked at the dusty instrument. “Why the hell should I, you old fart?”

“Because it’s the only one in the universe. And nobody knows how to fix it. Old fart yourself.”

Mith growled — then barked laughter. “All right, all right.” He set the orrery back on its shelf and pulled a hard-backed chair opposite the desk. He sat with legs splayed under his belly and raised troubled eyes to Hollerbach. “Look, Scientist, we shouldn’t be scrapping. You have to understand how worried I am, how frightened the crew are.”

Hollerbach spread his hands on the desk top; liver-spots stared back at him. “Of course I do, Captain.” He turned his ancient spectacles over in his fingers and sighed. “Look, we don’t need to wait for the lab results. I know damn well what we’re going to find.”

Mith spread his hands palm up. “What?”

“We’re suffering from protein and vitamin deficiencies. The children particularly are being hit by bone, skin and growth disorders so archaic that the Ship’s medical printouts don’t even refer to them.” He thought of his own grandchild, not four thousand shifts old; when Hollerbach took those slim little legs in his hands he could feel the bones curve… “Now, we don’t think there’s anything wrong with the food dispensers.”

Mith snorted. “How can you be so sure?”

Hollerbach rubbed his eyes again. “Of course I’m not sure,” he said, irritated. “Look, Mith, I’m speculating. You can either accept that or wait for the tests.”

Mith sat back and held up his palms. “All right, all right. Go on.”

“Very well, then. Of all the Raft’s equipment our understanding is, by necessity, greatest of the dispensers. We’re overhauling the brutes; but I don’t expect anything to be found wrong.”

“What, then?”

Hollerbach climbed out of his chair, feeling the familiar twinge in his right hip. He walked to the open door of his office and peered out. “Isn’t it obvious? Mith, when I was a kid that sky was blue as a baby’s eyes. Now we have children, adults even, who don’t know what blue is. The damn Nebula has gone sour. The dispensers are fed by organic compounds in the Nebula atmosphere — and by airborne plants and animals, of course. Mith, it’s a case of garbage in, garbage out. The machines can’t work miracles. They can’t produce decent food out of the sludge out there. And that’s the problem.”

Behind him Mith was silent for a long time. Then he said, “What can we do?”

“Beats me,” said Hollerbach, a little harshly. “You’re the Captain.”

Mith got out of his chair and lumbered up to Hollerbach; his breath was hot on the old Scientist’s neck, and Hollerbach could feel the pull of the Captain’s weighty gut. “Damn it, stop patronizing me. What am I supposed to tell the crew?”

Abruptly Hollerbach felt very tired. He reached with one hand for the door frame and wished his chair weren’t so far away. “Tell them not to give up hope,” he said quietly. “Tell them we’re doing all we know how to do. Or tell them nothing. As you see fit.”

Mith thought it over. “Of course, not all your results are in.” There was a trace of hope in his voice. “And you haven’t completed that machine overhaul, have you?”

Hollerbach shook his head, eyes closed. “No, we haven’t finished the overhaul.”

“So maybe there’s something wrong with the machines after all.” Mith clapped his shoulder with a plate-sized hand. “All right, Hollerbach. Thanks. Look, keep me informed.”

Hollerbach stiffened. “Of course.”

Hollerbach watched Mith stride away across the deck, his belly oscillating. Mith wasn’t too bright — but he was a good man. Not as good as his father, maybe, but a lot better than some of those who were now calling for his replacement.

Maybe a cheerful buffoon was right for the Raft in its present straits. Someone to keep their spirits up as the air turned to poison—

He laughed at himself. Come on, Hollerbach; you really are turning into an old fart.

He became aware of a prickling over his bald pate; he glared up at the sky. That star overhead was a searing pinpoint, its complex orbit bringing it ever closer to the path of the Raft. Close enough to burn the skin, eh? He couldn’t remember a star being allowed to fall so threateningly close before; the Raft should have been shifted long since. He’d have to get on to Navigator Cipse and his boys. He couldn’t think what they were playing at.

Now a shadow swept across him, and he made out the silhouette of a tree rotating grandly far above the Raft. That would be Pallis, returning from the Belt. Another good man, Pallis… one of the few left.

He dropped his prickling eyes and studied the deck plates beneath his feet. He thought of the human lives that had been expended on keeping this little metal island afloat in the air for so long.

And was it only to come to this, a final few generations of sour sullenness, falling at last to the poisoned air?

Maybe it would be better not to move the Raft out from under that star. Let it all go up in one last blaze of human glory—

“Sir?” Grye, one of his assistants, stood before him; the little round man nervously held out a battered sheaf of paper. “We’ve finished another test run.”

So there was still work to do. “Well, don’t stand about like that, man; if you’re no use you’re certainly no ornament. Bring that in and tell me what it says.”

And he turned and led the way into his office.

The Raft had grown in the sky until it blocked out half the Nebula. A star was poised some tens of miles above the Raft, a turbulent ball of yellow fire a mile wide, and the Raft cast a broadening shadow down through miles of dusty air.

Under Pallis’s direction Rees and Gover stoked the fire bowls and worked their way across the surface of the tree, waving large, light blankets over the billowing smoke. Pallis studied the canopy of smoke with a critical eye; never satisfied, he snapped and growled at the boys. But, steadily and surely, the tree’s rise through the Nebula was moulded into a slow curve towards the Rim of the Raft.

As he worked Rees chanced the wrath of Pallis by drinking in the emergent details of the Raft. From below it showed as a ragged disc a half-mile wide; metal plates scattered highlights from the stars and light leaked through dozens of apertures in the deck. As the tree sailed up to the Rim the Raft foreshortened into a patchwork ellipse; Rees could see the sooty scars of welding around the edges of the nearer plates, and as his eye tracked across the ceiling-like surface the plates crowded into a blur, with the far side of the disc a level horizon.

At last, with a rush of air, the tree rose above the Rim and the upper surface of the Raft began to open out before Rees. Against his will he found himself drawn to the edge of the tree; he buried his hands in the foliage and stared, open-mouthed, as a torrent of color, noise and movement broke over him.

The Raft was an enormous dish that brimmed with life. Points of light were sprinkled over its surface like sugar-sim over a confectionery. The deck was studded with buildings of all shapes and sizes, constructed of wood panels or corrugated metal and jumbled together like toys. All around the Rim machines as tall as two men hulked like silent guardians; and at the heart of the Raft lay a huge silver cylinder, stranded like a trapped whale among the box-like constructions.

A confusion of smells assaulted Rees’s senses — sharp ozone from the Rim machines and other workshops and factories, woodsmoke from a thousand chimneys, the hint of exotic cooking scents from the cabins.

And people — more than Rees could count, so many that the Belt population would be easily lost among them — people walked about the Raft in great streams; and knots of running children exploded here and there into bursts of laughter.

He made out sturdy pyramids fixed to the deck, no more than waist high. Rees squinted, scanning the deck; the pyramids stood everywhere. He saw a couple lingering beside one, talking quietly, the man scuffing the metal cone with one foot; and there a group of children chased through a series of the pyramids in a complicated game of catch.

And out of each pyramid a cable soared straight upwards; Rees tilted his face back, following the line of the cables, and he gasped.

To each cable was tethered the trunk of a tree.

To Rees one flying tree had been wonder enough. Now, over the Raft, he was faced with a mighty forest. Every tethering cable was vertical and quite taut, and Rees could almost feel the exertion of the harnessed trees as they strained against the pull of the Core. The light of the Nebula was filtered by its passage through the rotating ranks of trees, so that the deck of the Raft was immersed in a soothing gloom; around the forest dancing skitters softened the light to pastel pink.

Rees’s tree rose until It passed the highest layer of the forest. The Raft turned from a landscape back into an island in the air, crowned by a mass of shifting foliage. The sky above Rees seemed darker than usual, so that he felt he was suspended at the very edge of the Nebula, looking down over the mists surrounding the Core; and in all that universe of air the only sign of humanity was the Raft, a scrap of metal suspended in miles of air.

There was a heavy hand on his shoulder. Rees started. Pallis stood over him, the canopy of smoke a backdrop to his stern face. “What’s the matter?” he growled. “Never seen a few thousand trees before?”

Rees felt himself flush. “I…”

But Pallis was grinning through his scars. “Listen, I understand. Most people take it all for granted. But every time I see it from outside — it gives me a kind of tingle.” A hundred questions tumbled through Rees’s mind. What would it be like to walk on that surface? What must it have been like to build the Raft, hanging in the void above the Core?

But now wasn’t the time; there was work to do. He got to his feet, wrapping his toes in the foliage like a regular woodsman.

“Now, then, miner,” Pallis said, “we’ve got a tree to fly. We have to drop back into that forest. Let’s get the bowls brimming; I want a canopy up there so thick I could walk about on it. All right?”

At last Pallis seemed satisfied with the tree’s position over the Raft. “All right, lads. Now!”

Gover and Rees ran among the fire bowls, shoving handfuls of damp wood into the flames. Smoke rolled up to the canopy above them. Gover coughed as he worked, swearing; Rees found his eyes streaming, the sooty smoke scouring his throat.

The tree lurched beneath them, almost throwing Rees into the foliage, and began to fall clear of its canopy of smoke. Rees scanned the sky: the falling stars wheeled by noticeably slower than before; he guessed that the tree had lost a good third of its rotation in its attempt to escape smoke’s darkness.

Pallis ran to the trunk and uncoiled a length of cable. He thrust his neck and shoulders down through the foliage and began to pay out the cable; Rees could see how he worked the cable to avoid snagging it on other trees.

At last the tree was sliding through the outer layers of the forest. Rees peered across at the trees they passed, each slowly turning and straining with dignity against its tether. Here and there he made out men and women crawling through the foliage; they waved to Pallis and called in distant voices.

As it entered the gloom of the forest Rees sensed the tree’s uncertainty. Its leaves turned this way and that as it tried to assess the irregular patterns of light playing over it. At last it came to a slow, grand decision, and its turning accelerated; with a smooth surge it rose by a few yards—

— and came to an abrupt halt. The cable attached to its trunk was taut now; it quivered and bowed through the air as it hauled at the tree. Rees followed the line of the cable; as he had expected its far end had reached the deck of the Raft, and two men were fixing it firmly to one of the waist-high pyramids.

He got to his knees and touched the familiar wood. Sap rushed through the shaped branch, making its surface vibrate like skin; Rees could sense the tree’s agitation as it strove to escape this trap, and he felt an odd sympathy pull at his stomach.

Pallis made some final tests of the cable and then walked briskly around the wooden platform, checking that all the glowing bowls had been doused. At last he returned to the trunk and pulled a bundle of paperwork from a cavity in the wood. He crouched down and slipped through the foliage with a quiet rustle — and then popped his head back through. He peered around until he spotted Rees. “Aren’t you coming, lad? Not much point staying here, you know. This old girl won’t be going anywhere for a good few shifts. Well, come on; don’t keep Gover from his food.”

Hesitantly Rees made his way to the trunk. Pallis dropped through first. When he’d gone Gover hissed: “You’re a long way from home, mine rat. Just remember — nothing here is yours. Nothing.” And the apprentice slipped into the screen of leaves.

Heart thumping, Rees followed.

Like three water drops they slid down their cable through the scented gloom of the forest.

Rees worked his way hand over hand down the thin cable. At first the going was easy, but gradually a diffuse gravity field began to tug at his feet. Pallis and Gover waited at the base of the cable, peering up at him; he swung through the last few feet, avoiding the sloping sides of the anchor cone, and landed lightly on the deck.

A man walked up bearing a battered clip pad. The man was huge, his black hair and beard barely concealing a mask of scars more livid than Pallis’s. A fine black braid was attached to the shoulder of his coverall. He scowled at Rees; the boy flinched at the power of the man’s gaze. “You’re welcome back, Pallis,” the man said, his voice grim. “Although I can see from here you’ve brought back half your stock.”

“Not quite, Decker,” said Pallis coolly, handing over his paperwork. The two men moved into a huddle and went through Pallis’s lists. Gover scuffed impatiently at the deck, wiping his nose against the back of his hand.

And Rees, wide-eyed, stared.

The deck beneath his feet swept through a network of cables away into a distance he could barely comprehend. He could see buildings and people set out in great swathes of life and activity; his head seemed to spin with the scale of it all, and he almost wished he were back in the comforting confines of the Belt.

He shook his head, trying to dispel his dizziness. He concentrated on immediate things: the easy pull of gravity, the gleaming surface beneath his feet. He tapped experimentally at the deck. It made a small ringing noise.

“Take it easy,” Pallis growled. The big tree-pilot had finished his business and was standing before him. “The plate’s only a millimeter thick, on average. Although it’s buttressed for strength.”

Rees flexed his feet and jumped a few inches into the air, feeling the pull as he settled gently back. “That feels like half a gee.”

Pallis nodded. “Closer to forty per cent. We’re in the gravity well of the Raft itself. Obviously the Nebula Core is also pulling at us — but that’s tiny; and in any event we couldn’t feel it because the Raft is in orbit around the Core.” He tilted his face up at the flying forest. “Most people think the trees are there to keep the Raft from falling into the Core, you know. But their function is to stabilize the Raft — to keep it from tipping over — and to counteract the effects of winds, and to let us move the Raft when we have to…” Pallis bent and peered into Rees’s face, his scars a crimson net. “Are you OK? You look a little dizzy.”

Rees tried to smile. “I’m fine. I suppose I’m just disconcerted at not being in a five-minute orbit.”

Pallis laughed. “Well, you’ll get used to it.” He straightened. “Now then, young man, I have to decide what’s to be done with you.”

Rees felt a coldness prickle over his scalp as he began to think ahead to the moment when he would be abandoned by the tree-pilot, and scorn for himself ran through his thoughts. Had he boldly left his home only to become dependent on the kindness of a stranger? Where was his courage?

He straightened his back and concentrated on what Pallis was saying.

“…I’ll have to find an Officer,” the pilot mused, scratching a stubbly chin. “Log you as a stowaway. Get you a temporary Class assignment until the next tree goes out. All that paperwork, damn it…

“By the Bones, I’m too tired. And hungry, and dirty. Let’s leave it until next shift. Rees, you can stop over at my cabin until it’s sorted. You too, Gover, though the prospect is hardly enticing.”

The apprentice stared into the distance; he didn’t look around at the pilot’s words.

“But I don’t have supplies for three growing lads like us. Or even one, come to think of it. Gover, get out to the Rim and get a couple of shifts’ worth on my number, will you? You too, Rees; why not? You’ll enjoy the sightseeing. I’ll go scrape a few layers of dust off my cabin.”

And so Rees found himself trailing the apprentice through the swarm of cables. Gover stalked ahead, not deigning to wait; in all this murky, tree-shadowed world the apprentice was Rees’s only fixed point, and so the miner made sure he didn’t lose sight of Gover’s unprepossessing back.

They came to a thoroughfare cut through the tangle of cables. It was crowded with people. Gover paused at the edge of the thoroughfare and stood in sullen silence, evidently waiting for something. Rees stood beside him and looked around. The clear, straight path was about ten yards wide: it was like looking along a tree-roofed tunnel. The path was lined with light; Rees made out globes fixed to the cables just like the globes in the depths of the star mine.

There were people everywhere, an even stream that flowed briskly in both directions along the path. Some of them stared at Rees’s dishevelled appearance, but most politely looked away. They were all clean and well-groomed — although there were hollow eyes and pale cheeks, as if some sickness were haunting the Raft. Men and women alike wore a kind of coverall of some fine, gray material; some wore gold braid on their shoulders or cuffs, often woven in elaborate designs. Rees glanced down at his own battered tunic — and with a jolt recognized it as an aged descendant of the garments of the Raft population. So miners wore Raft cast-offs?

He wondered what Sheen would say about that…

Two small boys were standing before him, gazing with round eyes at his dingy tunic. Rees, horribly embarrassed, hissed to Gover: “What are we waiting for? Can’t we move on?”

Gover swivelled his head and fixed Rees with a look of dull contempt.

Rees tried to smile at the boys. They just stared.

Now there was a soft, rushing sound from the center of the Raft. Rees, with some relief, stepped out into the thoroughfare, and he made out the bizarre sight of a row of faces sliding towards him above the crowd. Gover stepped forward and held up a hand. Rees watched him curiously—

— and the rushing grew to a roar. Rees turned to see the blunt prow of a Mole bearing down on him. He stumbled back; the speeding cylinder narrowly missed his chest. The Mole rolled to a halt a few yards from Gover and Rees. A row of simple seats had been fixed to the upper surface of the Mole; people rode in them, watching him incuriously.

Rees found his mouth opening and closing. He had expected some wonderful sights on the Raft, but — this? The little boys’ mouths were round with astonishment at his antics. Gover was grinning. “What’s the matter, mine rat? Never seen a bus before?” The apprentice walked up to the Mole and, with a practiced swing, stepped up into a vacant seat.

Rees shook his head and hurried after the apprentice. There was a low shelf around the base of the Mole; Rees stepped onto it and turned cautiously, lowering himself into the seat next to Gover’s — and the Mole jolted into motion. Rees tumbled sideways, clinging to chair arms; he had to wriggle around until he was facing outwards, and at last found himself gliding smoothly above the heads of the throng.

The boys ran after the Mole, shouting and waving; Rees did his best to ignore them, and after a few yards they tired and gave up.

Rees stared frankly at the man next to him, a thin, middle-aged individual with a sheaf of gold braid at his cuff. The man studied him with an expression of disdain, then moved almost imperceptibly to the far side of his seat.

He turned to Gover. “You call me a ‘mine rat.’ What exactly is a ‘rat’?”

Gover sneered. “A creature of old Earth. A vermin, the lowest of the low. Have you heard of Earth? It’s the place we—” he emphasized the word “ — came from.”

Rees thought that over; then he studied the machine he was riding. “What did you call this thing?”

Gover looked at him with mock pity. “This is a bus, mine rat. Just a little something we have here in the civilized world.”

Rees studied the lines of the cylinder under its burden of furniture and passengers. It was a Mole all right; there were the scorch marks showing where — something — had been cut away. On an impulse he leaned over and thumped the surface of the “bus” with his fist. “Status!”

Gover studiously ignored him. Rees was aware of his thin neighbor regarding him with curious disgust—

— and then the bus reported loudly, “Massive sensor dysfunction.”

The voice had sounded from somewhere under the thin man; he jumped and stared open-mouthed at the seat beneath him.

Gover looked at Rees with a grudging interest. “How did you do that?”

Rees smiled, relishing the moment. “Oh, it was nothing. You see, we have — ah — buses where I come from too. I’ll tell you about it some time.”

And with a delicious coolness he settled back to enjoy the ride.

The journey lasted only a few minutes. The bus paused frequently, passengers alighting and climbing aboard at each stop.

They passed abruptly out of the mass of cables and slid over a clear expanse of deck. Unimpeded Nebula light dazzled Rees. When he looked back the cables were like a wall of textured metal hundreds of feet tall, topped by discs of foliage.

The nose of the bus began to rise.

At first Rees thought it was his imagination. Then he noticed the passengers shifting in their seats; and still the tilt increased, until it seemed to Rees that he was about to slide back down a metal slope to the cables.

He shook his head tiredly. He had had enough wonders for one shift. If only Gover would give him a few hints about what was going on—

He closed his eyes. Come on, think it through, he told himself. He thought of the Raft as he had seen it from above. Had it looked bowl-shaped? No, it had been flat all the way to the Rim; he was sure of that. Then what?

Fear shot through him. Suppose the Raft was falling! Perhaps the cables on a thousand trees had snapped; perhaps the Raft was tipping over, spilling its human cargo into the pit of air—

He snorted as with a little more thought he saw it. The bus was climbing out of the Raft’s gravity well, which was deepest at the structure’s center, If the bus’s brakes failed now it would roll back along the plane in from the Rim towards the Raft’s heart…just as if it were roiling downhill. In reality the Raft was, of course, a flat plate, fixed in space; but its central gravity field made it seem to tilt to anyone standing close to the Rim.

When the slope had risen to one in one the bus shuddered to a halt. A set of steps had been fixed to the deck alongside the bus’s path; they led to the very Rim. The passengers jumped down. “You stay there,” Gover told Rees; and he set off after the others up the shallow stairs.

Fixed almost at the Rim was the huge, silhouetted form of what must be a supply machine. The passengers formed a small queue before it.

Rees obediently remained in his seat. He longed to examine the device at the Rim. But there would be another shift, time and fresh energy to pursue that.

It would be nice, though, to walk to the edge and peer into the depths of the Nebula… Perhaps he might even glimpse the Belt.

One by one the passengers returned to the bus bearing supply packets, like those which Pallis had brought to the Belt. The last passenger thumped the nose of the bus; the battered old machine lurched into motion and set off down the imaginary slope.

Pallis’s cabin was a simple cube partitioned into three rooms: there was an eating area, a living room with seats and hammocks, and a cleaning area with a sink, toilet and shower head. Pallis had changed into a long, heavy robe. The garment’s breast bore a stylized representation of a tree in the green braid which Rees had come to recognize as the badge of Pallis’s woodsman Class. He told Rees and Gover to clean themselves up. When it was Rees’s turn he approached the gleaming spigots with some awe; he barely recognized the clean, sparkling stuff that emerged as water.

Pallis prepared a meal, a rich meat-sim broth. Rees sat cross-legged on the cabin floor and ate eagerly. Gover sat in a chair wrapped in his customary silence.

Pallis’s home was free of decoration save for two items in the living area. One was a cage constructed of woven slats of wood, suspended from the ceiling; within it five or six young trees hovered and fizzed, immature branches whirling. They filled the room with motion and the scent of wood. Rees saw how the skitters, one or two adorned with bright flowers, fizzed towards the cabin lights, bumping in soft frustration against the walls of their cage. “I let them out when they’re too big,” Pallis told Rees. “They’re just — company, I suppose. You know, there are some who bind up these babies with wire to stunt their growth, distort their shapes. I can’t envisage doing that. No matter how attractive the result.”

The other item of decoration was a photograph, a portrait of a woman. Such things weren’t unknown in the Belt — the ancient, fading images were handed down through families like shabby heirlooms — but this portrait was fresh and vivid. With Pallis’s permission Rees picked it up—

— and with a jolt he recognized the smiling face.

He turned to Pallis. “It’s Sheen.”

Pallis shifted uncomfortably in his chair, his scars flaring red. “I should have guessed you’d know her. We — used to be friends.”

Rees imagined the pilot and his shift supervisor together. The picture was a little incongruous — but not as immediately painful as some such couplings he had envisaged in the past. Pallis and Sheen was a concept he could live with.

He returned the photo to its frame and resumed his meal, chewing thoughtfully.

At the turn of the shift they settled for sleep.

Rees’s hammock was yielding and he relaxed, feeling somehow at home. The next shift would bring more changes, surprises and confusions; but he would face that when it came. For the next few hours he was safe, cupped in the bowl of the Raft as if in the palm of a hand.

A respectful knock jolted Hollerbach out of his trance-like concentration. “Eh? Who the hell is that?” His old eyes took a few seconds to focus — and his mind longer to clear of its whirl of food test results. He reached for his spectacles. Of course the ancient artefact didn’t really fit his eyes, but the discs of glass did help a little.

A tall, scarred man loomed into semi-focus, advancing hesitantly into the office. “It’s me, Scientist. Pallis.”

“Oh, pilot. I saw your tree return, I think. Good trip?”

Pallis smiled tiredly. “I’m afraid not, sir. The miners have had a few troubles—”

“Haven’t we all?” Hollerbach grumbled. “I just hope we don’t poison the poor buggers with our food pods. Now then, Pallis, what can I do for you — oh, by the Bones, I’ve remembered. You’ve brought back that damn boy, haven’t you?” He peered beyond Pallis; and there, sure enough, was the skinny, insolent figure of Gover. Hollerbach sighed. “Well, you’d better see Grye and return to your usual duties, lad. And your studies. Maybe we’ll make a Scientist of you yet, eh? Or,” he muttered as Gover departed, “more likely I’ll lob you over the Rim myself. Is that all, Pallis?”

The tree-pilot looked embarrassed; he shifted awkwardly and his scar network flared crimson. “Not quite, sir. Rees!”

Now another boy approached the office. This one was dark and lean and dressed in the ragged remnants of a coverall — and he stopped in surprise at the doorway, eyes fixed to the floor.

“Come on, lad,” Pallis said, not unkindly. “It’s only carpet; it doesn’t bite.”

The strange boy stepped cautiously over the carpet until he stood before Hollerbach’s desk. He raised his eyes — and again his mouth dropped with obvious shock.

“Good God, Pallis,” Hollerbach said, running a hand self-consciously over his bald scalp, “what have you brought me here? Hasn’t he ever seen a Scientist before?”

Pallis coughed; he seemed to be trying to hide a laugh. “I don’t think it’s that, sir. With all respect, I doubt if the lad’s ever seen anyone so old.”

Hollerbach opened his mouth — then closed it again. He inspected the boy more carefully, noting the heavy muscles, the scarred hands and arms. “Where are you from, Sad?”

He spoke up clearly. “The Belt.”

“He’s a stowaway,” Pallis said apologetically. “He travelled back with me and—”

“And he’s got to be shipped straight home.” Hollerbach sat back and folded his skinny arms. “I’m sorry, Pallis; we’re overpopulated as it is.”

“I know that, sir, and I’m having the forms processed right now. As soon as a tree is loaded he could be gone.”

“Then why bring him here?”

“Because…” Pallis hesitated. “Hollerbach, he’s a bright lad,” he finished in a rush. “He can — he gets status reports from the buses—”

Hollerbach shrugged. “So do a good handful of smart kids every shift.” He shook his head, amused. “Good grief, Pallis, you don’t change, do you? Do you remember how, as a kid, you’d bring me broken skitters? And I’d have to fix up little paper splints for the things. A damn lot of good it did them, of course, but it made you feel better.”

Pallis’s scars darkened furiously; he avoided Rees’s curious gaze.

“And now you bring home this bright young stowaway and — what? — expect me to take him on as my chief apprentice?”

Pallis shrugged. “I thought, maybe just until the tree was ready…”

“You thought wrong. I’m a busy man, tree-pilot.”

Pallis turned to the boy. “Tell him why you’re here. Tell him what you told me, on the tree.”

Rees was staring at Hollerbach. “I left the Belt to find out why the Nebula is dying,” he said simply.

The Scientist sat forward, intrigued despite himself. “Oh, yes? We know why it’s dying. Hydrogen depletion. That’s obvious. What we don’t know is what to do about it.”

Rees studied him, apparently thinking it over. Then he asked: “What’s hydrogen?”

Hollerbach drummed his long fingers on the desk top, on the point of ordering Pallis out of the room… But Rees was waiting for an answer, a look of bright inquiry in his eyes.

“Hmm. That would take more than a sentence to explain, lad.” Another drum of the fingers. “Well, maybe it wouldn’t do any harm — and it might be amusing—”

“Sir?” Pallis asked.

“Are you any good with a broom, lad? The Bones know we could do with someone to back up that useless article Gover. Yes, why not? Pallis, take him to Grye. Get him a few chores to do; and tell Grye from me to start him on a bit of basic education. He may as well be useful while he’s eating our damn food, just until the tree flies, mind.”

“Hollerbach, thanks—”

“Oh, get out, Pallis. You’ve won your battle. Now let me get on with my work. And in future keep your damn lame skitters to yourself!”