“He wears his fear well,” she said sourly.

Seciv pulled at the corner of his mouth. “Perhaps. Or perhaps his fear of not taking the voyage, of remaining here, is the greater. He is gambling a great deal on this voyage, you know.”

This stunt… Yes, Dura did know; she’d become immersed enough in the politics of Parz to be able — with the help of Ito and Toba — to understand something of Hork’s situation. However unreasonable it might be, the citizens of Parz expected Hork to resolve their troubles — to lift food rationing, to restore the lumber convoys and get the place working again. To open the shops, damn it. That he’d manifestly failed to do so (but how could he have succeeded?) had put his position in doubt; there were factions in his Court and on the larger Committee who were gunning for him, with varying degrees of openness.

This ludicrous jaunt into the underMantle was Hork’s last gamble. All or nothing. If it succeeded then he, Hork, would return as the savior of the City and all the peoples of the Mantle. But if it failed — well, Dura thought uneasily, perhaps it would be better for Hork to die in a glorious instant, in the deep underMantle, than at the hands of an assassin here in the bright corridors of Parz.

The crew members had to climb into the ship through a hinged hatch set in the upper end of the cylinder. Hosch, the former Harbor supervisor, had been checking the craft’s simple systems; now Dura watched his thin, hunched shoulders emerge from the craft through the crew hatch. As Muub had expected, Hosch had turned out to be a good manager of the construction project, despite his sour personality; he’d been able effectively to draw out the mercurial expertise of the likes of Seciv Trop and to marry it to the practical skills of his Harbor engineers.

Hosch glanced up, saw that both Dura and Hork were ready. “It’s time,” he said.

Dura felt something within her recede. As if in a dream she watched her own hands and legs working as she clambered down toward the ship.

She climbed stiffly through the hatch and into the interior, squeezing past the row of bound, straining Air-pigs and the sleek turbine beside them. She experienced a mixture of gratified relief at being underway, and a tang of sheer, awful terror.

With bellowed good-byes to the engineers, to Muub, Seciv and the rest, Hork shook Hosch’s thin hand and clambered into the cabin, squeezing his sparkling bulk through the hatch. He seemed careless of the pollution of his gleaming suit by the dirt of the pigs. He dragged the hatch closed after him and dogged its wooden latches tight.

For a moment Hork and Dura hovered close to the hatch, alone in there for the first time. Their eyes met. Now, Dura thought, now the two of them were bound to each other, for good or ill. She could see a slow, appraising awareness of that in Hork’s expression. But there was little fear there; she read humor, enthusiasm.

By the blood of the Xeelee, she thought. He’s actually enjoying this.

Without speaking they descended into the craft.

The pigs were strapped in place close to the top of the cylinder. Dura climbed into her loose harness close to the pigs. The walls of the cabin were fat with Air-tanks, food stores, equipment lockers and a primitive latrine. Cooling fans hummed and wood-lamps, their green glow dim, studded the walls.

Toward the base of the ship Hork took his place at the craft’s simple control panel, a board placed before one of the broader windows and equipped with three levers and a series of switches. He rolled his sleeves back from his arms with every evidence of relish.

There was a pounding on the hull.

Hork thumped back enthusiastically, grinning through his beard. “So,” he said breathlessly, “so it begins!”

The craft jolted into motion. Dura heard a muffled cheer from the engineers in the Harbor, the creaking of the pulleys as they began to pay out cable.

After a few seconds the craft emerged from the Harbor. The golden brilliance of Polar Air-light swept the interior of the ship, filling Dura with a nostalgic, claustrophobic ache. The silhouetted forms of Waving people — some of them children — accompanied the craft as it began its descent from the City.

Hork was laughing. Dura looked down at him, disbelieving.

“Oh, come on,” Hork said briskly. “We’re off! Isn’t this a magnificent adventure? And what a relief it is to be doing something, to be going somewhere. Eh, Dura?”

Dura sniffed, letting her face settle into sourness. “Well, Hork, here I am going to hell in the belly of a wooden pig. It’s a bit hard to find much to smile about. With respect. And we do have work to do.”

Hork’s expression was hard, and she felt briefly uneasy — she’d been around him long enough now to witness several of his towering rages. But he merely laughed aloud once more. His noisy, exuberant presence was overwhelming in the cramped cabin; Dura felt herself shrink from it, as if escaping into herself. Hork said, “Quite right, captain! And isn’t it time you started working the pigs?”

He was right; Dura swiveled in her sling to begin the work. The craft wouldn’t be cut loose of the Harbor cable for some time, but they needed to be sure the internal turbine and the magnetic fields were fully functioning. The animals’ harness, slung across the width of the cabin, kept the pigs’ rears aimed squarely at the wide blades of a turbine. A trough carved from unfinished wood had been fixed a micron or so before the pigs’ sketchy, six-eyed faces, and now Dura took a sack of leaves from a locker and filled the trough with luscious vegetable material, crushing the stuff as she worked. Soon the delicious tang of the leaves filled the cabin. Dura was aware of Hork bending over his console, evidently shutting out the scents; as for herself — well, she could all but taste the protons dripping out onto her tongue.

The pigs could barely stand it. Their hexagonal arrays of eyecups bulged and their mouths gaped wide. With grunts of protest they hurled themselves against the unyielding harness toward the leaves, their jetfarts exploding in the cramped atmosphere of the cabin.

Under the steady pressure of the jetfart stream, the broad blades of the turbine began to turn. Soon the sweet, musky smell of pig-fart permeated the Air of the cabin, reminding Dura, if she closed her eyes, of the scents of her childhood, of the Net with its enclosed herd. She scattered a few fragments of food into the grasp of the pigs’ gaping maws. Just enough to keep them fed, but little enough to keep them interested in more.

The anatomy of a healthy Air-pig was efficient enough to enable it to generate farts for many days on very little food. Pigs could travel meters allowing as much of their bulky substance to dissolve into fart energy as was required; these five, though terrified and frustrated by the conditions into which they had been penned, should have little problem powering the turbine for as long as the humans needed. And there was a back-up system — a stove powered by nuclear-burning wood — if they were desperate enough to need to risk its heat in the confines of the cabin.

Hork, grunting to himself, experimentally threw switches. The ship shuddered in response, and Hork peered out of the window, gauging the effect of the currents generated in the superconducting hoops.

Farr’s face suddenly appeared outside the ship, at the window opposite Dura. His expression was solemn, empty. He was Waving hard, she realized; they must be descending rapidly already, and soon he and the other Wavers would not be able to keep up.

Farr must have given Adda the slip. And so, after all, here was a last good-bye. She forced herself to smile at Farr and raised her hand.

There was a thud from the hull of the “Flying Pig”; the little craft shuddered in the Air before settling again.