“Punching through the storm wall,” Y’sul shouted. “Tackling the rim winds. Should be spectacular!” Ahead, a great dark wall of tearing, whirling cloud could be glimpsed beyond the tatters and scraps of gas that the ship was stabbing its way through. Jagged lines of lightning pulsed across this vast cliff like veins of quicksilver.

They were still making maximum speed towards the wall, which seemed to stretch as far to each side as they could see, and up for ever. Downwards was a more swirling mass of even darker gas, boiling like something cooking in a cauldron. The wind picked up, thrumming the rails and rigging and aerials like an enormous instrument. The Poaflias shuddered and buzzed. “Time to get below, suspect,” Hatherence shouted. A julmicker bladder blew off a nearby railing — it looked like it had been the last one left — smacked Y’sul across his starboard side and was instantly lost to the shrieking gale. “Could be,” Y’sul agreed. “After you.”

They watched from the ship’s armoured storm deck, crowded in with Slyne beneath a blister of thick diamond set at midships, looking out across the deck and watching the Poaflias’s nose plunge into the storm like a torpedo thrown at ahorizontal waterfall of ink. The ship groaned, started to spin, and they were all thrown against each other. They disappeared into the wall of darkness. The Poaflias shook and leapt like a Dweller child on the end of a harpoon line.

Slyne whooped, pulling on levers and whirling wheels. Stuck in the far reaches of the ovaloid space, Slyne’s pet-children whimpered.

“This entirely necessary?” Fassin asked Y’sul. “Doubt it!” the Dweller said. A big flat board covered in studs above Slyne started to light up. In the darkness, it was quite bright…

Hatherence pointed at it as dozens more of the studs lit. “What’s that?”

“Damage-control indicators!” Slyne said, still working levers and spinning wheels. They all rose to the ceiling as the ship dropped sharply, then crashed back down again.

“Thought it might be,” Hatherence said. She was thrown hard against Fassin in a violent turn, and apologised.

When the glare started to get too distracting, Slyne turned the damage-control board off.

In the worst of the turbulence, one of Slyne’s pet-children threw itself at its master and had to be torn off and smacked unconscious before being thrown into a locker. It was unclear whether it had been desperately seeking comfort or attacking. Y’sul was sick. Fassin had never seen a Dweller be sick. Stuck to the ceiling again, coated in a greasy film of vomit, Slyne cursing as he tried to keep hold of the controls, his pet-children keening from all sides, somebody mumbled, “Fuck, we’re going to die.” They all denied responsibility afterwards. The Poaflias burst out of the torrent of storm cloud into a vast and hazy calm and started to drop like a lump of iron. Slyne drew in gas to whoop but caught some of Y’sul’s earlier output and just spluttered. Coughing and retching and cursing Y’sul’s lineage to some point only shortly after the Big Bang, he got the ship level and under control, contacted Regatta Control and limped — the ship had lost all its rigging, railings and four of its six engines — to the Lower Marina and a berth in a Storm Repair Facility.

Looking up, into the colossal bowl of the circling storm and on into the haze and the star-specked sky beyond, tiny shapes could be seen, slow-circling against the brassy glare of light.

— The pick-up fleet and relaying craft are all in orbit, Hatherence told him.

They were in a steep-pitched, multi-tiered viewing gallery packed with Dwellers. Protected by carbon ribs ready to be explosively deployed should a competition craft come too close — and attached to the Dzunda, a klick-long Blimper riding just inside the storm-wall boundary — the gallery was a relatively safe place to watch GasClipper races. Giant banner screens could scroll up on either side of the fan of dent-seats to provide highlights of other races and relay events too distant to witness directly.

· The pick-up fleet? Fassin asked.

· That is as it was described to me, Hatherence said, settling into her seat alongside his. Dwellers around them were staring at them, seemingly fascinated by their alienness. Y’sul had gone off to meet an old friend. While he was with them, Dwellers only glanced at Fassin and Hatherence now and again. With him gone, they stared shamelessly. They had both got used to it, and Fassin was confident that, if Valseir was here and looking for him, he wouldn’t have too difficult a job finding him.

· How big a fleet? Fassin asked.

· Not sure.

There were hundreds of accommodation and spectator Blimpers within the storm’s vast eye, scores of competing GasClippers and support vessels, plus dozens of media and ancillary craft, not to mention a ceremonial — and War-neutral — Dreadnought, the Puisiel. This was decked out with multi-tudinous bunting, lines of ancient signal flags and festoons of Dweller-size BalloonFlowers, just so that there’d be no possi-bility of anyone mistaking it for a Dreadnought taking part in the greater and fractionally more serious competition taking place beyond the Storm.

The side screens lit up and they watched some early action from a race which had taken place the day before. Around them, a thousand Dwellers hooted and roared and laughed, threw food, made spoken kudos bets that they would later deny or inflate accordingly, and traded insults.

· Any other news from outside? Fassin asked.

· Our orders remain as they were. There have been more semi-random attacks throughout the system. Nothing on the same scale as the assaults on the Seer assets earlier. The defen-sive preparations continue apace. Manufacturers continue to make heroic efforts. The people continue to make great but willing sacrifice. Morale remains most high. Though, unofficially, people would seem to be growing more frightened. Some rioting. Deep-space monitors have picked up still ambiguous traces of a great fleet approaching from the direction of the E-5 Disconnect.

— How great?

— Great enough to be bad.

— Much rioting?

— Not much rioting.

The Blimper powered up, distantly revving its engines. A ragged cheer resounded around them as the Dwellers realised things were about to start happening.

· Well, major, the colonel sent, signal strength low in the clat-tering hubbub of noise. — We are finally off the ship Poaflias, we are alone, I think it unlikely we can be overheard, and I have built up an extravagant desire to know quite why we are here. Unless you have, in the course, perhaps, of your studies, discov-ered that you are an insatiable fan of GasClippering.

· According to Oazil, Valseir is alive.

The colonel was silent for a while. Then she sent, — You tell me so, do you?

· Of course, Oazil may be mad or deluded or a fantasist or just a mischief-maker, but from what he said he knew Valseir, or had at least been instructed by Valseir on what to ask me to make sure I really was who I claimed to be.

· I see. So, his turning up at the house was not chance?

· I suspect he’d been keeping a watch on it. Or somebody had, waiting for us — for me — to turn up.

· And he told you to come here?

· He did.

· And then?

· Valseir will find me.

Another cheer went up as the Dzunda began to pick up speed, becoming part of a small fleet of similar spectator craft flocking through the gas towards the starting grid of GasClippers arranged a couple of kilometres ahead. This would be a short race, only lasting an hour or so, with turns around buoys set in the Storm Wall. The races would grow longer and more gruelling as the meet progressed, culminating in a last epic struggle all the way round the vast storm’s inner surface.