His clothing came apart, and she peeled a layer of thick, expensive material away from his belly and chest. She ran her left hand down the curve of his stomach and found his cache; with a deft, tender motion she pulled out the small penis, wrapped it in her fingers and squeezed it gently. It swelled rapidly, pushing at her palm like a small animal. He’d opened her coverall now, and she shrugged out of it, kicking her legs impatiently out of the clinging material and letting the garment drift away into the Air. She felt Hork’s hand slide, dry and hot, up her thigh and between her legs; she opened her thighs softly and he ran his fingers over her cleft, as clumsily and eagerly as an adolescent. There was a coolness inside her, and she knew that she was ready, that membranes inside her were already sighing lubricating Air into her. Now she took Hork’s penis — it was pulsing, rhythmically — and pushed it deep inside her; it entered her easily. He sighed, and buried his face in her shoulder; she turned her head, resting her cheek on his hair. His penis was like a warm, beating heart inside her. His legs, still clothed, were warm and rough against hers as she began to scissor her thighs, back and forth, letting the pattern of her movements stimulate the muscle walls inside her.

At last she felt herself clench at him, hard; she shuddered, and she heard him gasp, his bulk heavy against hers as they drifted in the Air. Her muscles pulsed around him, and for a few seconds she felt flutters, beats, as the rhythms of their bodies strove to merge. But soon they coalesced, and she felt a surge of triumph as the walls of her vagina throbbed in unison with Hork.

He came quickly, and she only heartbeats later. They cried out and shuddered against each other; she felt the muscles of his back move under her fingers.

Hork slumped against her. She held him against her body, curling her fingers in his hair, unwilling to release his warmth and mass. She felt his penis still inside her, small and hot. The moment of closeness stretched on, and she thought of how strange this liaison would have seemed to her — deep in the lethal depths of the Star with the ruler of an astonishing City — if she could have imagined it, in the days before she left the upflux. For some reason she thought of Deni Maxx, the brisk doctor from Muub’s Hospital. But your coupling would have seemed much stranger to a watching Ur-human, Dura imagined her saying. We believe their sexual mechanism was based — not on compression, like ours — but on frictional forces. That’s obviously impossible for us, embedded in superfluid as we are, so when they designed us…

Slowly the closeness faded. The sounds of the craft — the snuffling of the feeding Air-pigs, the soft whirr of the turbine axle, the slow hissing of the wood-lamps — seeped back into her awareness. Hork’s bulk seemed separate from her once more, and she became aware of folds of cloth trapped uncomfortably between their bodies, of a stiffness in her back as her body leaned forward over his belly.

Gently she pushed him away. His penis fell out of her with a soft, warm sound.

He looked into her eyes, smiled — he looked as if he had been crying, she thought briefly, startled — and tucked his penis back into its cache. He hauled his coverall around the circumference of his stomach, and she reached for her discarded clothes.

“Well,” she said at last. “Where did that come from?”

He drifted away from her and settled back into the small seat close to the control console; she saw how his sparkling coverall was noticeably less elegant now, crumpled and sitting askew on his shoulders. “Fear,” he said simply. His composure was restored, she saw, but he wasn’t bothering to restore his usual abrasive front. The atmosphere between them had changed; the tension which had pervaded the ship in the days since its launch had dissipated. “Fear. Obviously. I needed — comfort. I needed to lose myself. I don’t know if that’s enough of a reason; I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” Absently she reached up and fed more leaf fragments into the pigs’ hopper. “I wanted it too.”

He ran his hands over the simple instruments before him. “I meant what I said, you know. For myself, I’d rather be here, running this ship, than anywhere in the Star. In Parz, the problems I have to deal with, day to day…” For a brief, empathetic moment she could imagine how it must be to be in a position like Hork’s — with the welfare of not just himself, not just his family, but of thousands resting on his shoulders. She watched the set of his face and recalled the hint of weeping she thought she’d detected; briefly she felt she understood him. He said, “Nothing ever gets solved, you see. That’s the trouble. Or if it does, the next day it is worse. At least here…” He grasped the simple controls. “At least here, I am doing something. Going somewhere!”

“Yes, but doing what? Going where?”

He looked up at her. “You know there’s no reply to that. We’re seeking help, from whatever came out of the Core once before to destroy us.”

“And how are we supposed to find it?”

“You sound like the Finance sub-Committee,” he said sourly. “All we can do is put ourselves into a position where they can find us… whoever they are.”

She felt her mood swinging away from him now; she felt hot and vaguely soiled, and once more the tight curves of the walls seemed to close in around her. She recalled, now, that they hadn’t kissed once. She didn’t even like this man. “So you’re happy to be going somewhere. Anywhere. Is that what this is really all about? — providing you with recreation from your awful burdens? And if it is, did you really have to drag me down into the depths with you?”

For a moment there was an element of hurt in his face, and his lips parted as if he were about to protest; but then he smiled, and she saw his defensive front enclose him once more. “Now, now. Let’s not bicker. We don’t want to be found at odds when our host from the Core comes to meet us, do we?”

“I don’t think I can restrain myself for such a long wait,” she said with contempt, and she turned back to her pigs, stroking and soothing them.

There was another thud at the hull, a scrape along the length of the ship. This one was softer than before, but still Dura found herself shuddering. She calmed the nervous pigs with quiet words, and wondered if she had been right — if it really would be such a long wait, after all.

Electron gas crackling from its superconducting hoops, the tiny wooden ship labored centimeter after centimeter into the thickening depths of the neutron star.

Bzya was to be put on double shifts, inside the Bells. He didn’t know when he would next have enough free time to get away from the Harbor between dives. So he invited Adda and Farr to come see him off, in a place he called a “bar”.

Adda found the place with some difficulty. The bar was a small, cramped chamber tucked deep inside the Downside. The only light came from guttering wood-lamps on the walls; in the green, poky gloom Adda was strongly aware of how deep inside the carcass of the City he was buried.

In one corner of the bar was a counter where a couple of people were apparently serving something, some kind of food. Rails crisscrossed the chamber with no apparent pattern; men and women clustered together in small groups on the rails, slowly eating their way through bowls of what looked like bread, and talking desultorily. Adda saw heavy workers’ tunics, scarred flesh, thick, twisted limbs. One or two appraising stares were directed at the upfluxer.

Bzya was alone at a length of rail, close to the far wall. He saw Adda and raised an arm, beckoning him over; three small bowls were fixed to the rail beside him.

Adda pushed forward, feeling self-conscious in his bandages, and clambered stiffly through the crowded place, aware of the babble of conversation all-around him.