He made out sturdy pyramids fixed to the deck, waist-high. 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.

A hundred questions tumbled through Rees’s mind. What would it be like to walk on that metal surface? What must it have been like for the Crew who had built the Raft, hanging in the void above the Core?

But now wasn’t the time; there was still work to do. Pallis was already bellowing at Gover. Rees got to his feet, wrapping his toes in the foliage like a regular woodsman.

Pallis joined him, and they labored at a fire bowl together.

“Rees, you can’t have had any real idea what the Raft is like. So… why did you do it? What were you running from?”

Rees considered the question. “I wasn’t running from anything, pilot. The mine is a tough place, but it was my home. No. I left to find the answer.”

“The answer? To what?”

“To why the Nebula is dying.”

Pallis studied the serious young miner and felt a chill settle on his spine.

How much education did the average miner get? Pallis doubted Rees was even literate. As soon as a child was strong enough he or she was forced into the foundry or down to the crushing surface of the iron star, to begin a life of muscle-sapping toil…

And the Belt’s children were forced there by the economics of the Nebula, he reminded himself harshly; economics which he — Pallis — helped to keep in place.

He shook his head, troubled. Pallis had never accepted the theory, common on the Raft, that the miners were a species of sub-human, fit only for the toil they endured. What was the life span of the miners? Thirty thousand shifts? Less, maybe half of Pallis’s own age already?

What a fine woodsman Rees would make… or, he admitted ruefully, maybe a better Scientist.

A vague plan began to form in his mind.

Maybe Pallis could help Rees find a place on the Raft.

It wouldn’t be easy. Rees would face a lifetime of hostility from the likes of Gover. And the Raft was no bed of flowers and leaves; its economy, too, had declined with the slow choking of the Nebula.

But Rees deserved a chance. And Rees was a smart kid. Maybe, Pallis mused, just maybe he might actually find some answers. Was it possible?

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

The tree had passed the highest layer of the forest. The Raft turned from a landscape 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 Nebula’s 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.

His heart lifted, bursting with the exhilaration of a thousand questions.

“Did Rees find his answers?”

Eve just smiled, and the images, of the glowing Nebula and its mile-wide stars, faded from my view, receding into a scrap of crimson light, a spark lost in the greater blaze of human history…[5]

The assaults continued, waves of them, generations of humans battering against the great Xeelee defenses… and leaving shards of humanity stranded in the great spaces around the Xeelee Prime Radiant.

At last, even those broken shards became weapons of war.

Rodi climbed through the hatch and into the flitter. The craft was a box the size of a small room. He threaded his way through the interior.

There was a girl in one of the pilot seats. She turned. Tall and muscular, she wasn’t much older than Rodi’s twenty years.

Rodi tripped over a locker.

The girl’s eyes glittered with amusement. “Take it easy. You’re Rodi. Right? I’m Thet.”

His face hot, Rodi took the seat beside her. “Glad to meet you.” The instrument panel before him looked utterly alien.

“Well, buckle in.” Thet punched fat buttons. Monitors showed muscles contracting in the Ark’s hull. “And don’t be so nervous.”

“I’m not.”

“Of course you are. I never understand why. You’ve taken flitters outside the Ark before, haven’t you?”

“Sure.” He tried not to sound defensive. “On inter-Ark hops. But this is my first mission drop — my first time out of hyperspace. It’s a little different.”

She raised fine eyebrows. “We didn’t evolve in hyperspace.”

“Maybe. But it’s all I know—”

An orifice in the hull opened and exploded at them; the flitter surged into hyperspace. It was like being born.

A Virtual image of the Ark swam into their monitors. Holism Ark was a Spline ship: a rolling, fleshy sphere encrusted with blisters. It was a living being, Rodi mused, and it looked like it.

He wondered briefly what those blisters on the hull were. They couldn’t be seen from within the Ark…

The flitter receded rapidly. Hyperspace smeared the Ark’s image.

Now more Arks came into view. The flitter skirted islands of huge flesh as it worked its way through the fleet.

At last the flitter surged into clear hyperspace; Thet swung the flitter about.

Holism Ark was lost in a blurred wall of ten thousand Arks that cut the Universe in half. This was the Exaltation of the Integrality. Rodi imagined he could hear a thrumming as the great armada forged onwards; flitters skimmed between the huge hulls and rained into three-space.

“We’re privileged to see this,” Rodi said.

“Definitely,” said Thet laconically. “A sight that hasn’t changed for three thousand years.” She snapped the flitter away; the Exaltation became a blur in the distance. Her shaven head gleamed in the cabin lights. “I’ll tell you how we’re privileged. After a hundred generations it’s us who are around as the Exaltation reaches Bolder’s Ring, the true Prime Radiant of the Xeelee. And so the sky here is full of lost human colonies. Bits of ancient, failed assaults. Instead of a dozen missionary drops a century we’re getting a hundred a year. Which is why they’re pressing almost anybody into service.”

“Thanks,” he said drily.

She grinned, showing teeth. “So I’m your tutor on your first drop. And I’m not what you expected. Am I?”

Rodi said nothing.

“Look — I’m resourceful, a good pilot. I’m no great thinker, okay?… but you’re different. Top marks in the seminary, Gren tells me. You should soon surpass me. And with all that understanding you should have no fear. The Integrality says that the death of an individual is unimportant.”

“Yes.” That was a child’s precept; he clutched the thought and felt his anxiety recede.

“And you do believe in the Integrality. Don’t you?” Her voice was sly.

Was she mocking him? “Of course. Don’t you?”

She didn’t reply. She stabbed at the control panel. The flitter popped out of hyperspace.