The board fell away from him, tumbling across the face of the City.

Falling naked through the Air, he watched the board recede. He tried to Wave, to rock his legs through the Air, but his strength was gone; he could get no purchase on the Magfield.

He was moving too fast, in any case.

Oddly he felt no fear, only a kind of regret. To have come so close and not to have made it…

The Skin of Parz was huge before him, a wall across the sky.

All around the City, cooling fragments of the Quantum Sea, huge and threatening, streamed upward from the Pole.

In the Stadium, there was panic.

Adda leaned forward in his cocoon and peered down. The bulk of the Stadium was a turbulent mass of human torsos and struggling limbs; even as he watched, the network of delicate guide ropes which had crisscrossed the Stadium collapsed, engendering still more chaos as a thousand people struggled to escape. The crowd, screaming, sounded like trapped animals. Lost in the melee, Adda saw the purple uniforms of stewards and food vendors scrambling along with the rest.

They all wanted to get out, obviously. But get out to what? Where was safety to be found — inside the cozy Skin of the City? But that Skin was just a shell of wood and Corestuff ribs; it would burst like scraped leather if…

He was kicked in the back, hard. He gasped as the Air was forced out of his lungs, and he fell forward; then the rope fixing his cocoon on one side parted, and he was spun around.

He struggled out of his cocoon, ignoring the protests of stiff joints, and prepared to take on whoever had struck him. But it was impossible to tell. The Committee Box was full of panicking courtiers, their made-up faces twisted with fear, fighting free of cocoons and restrictive robes. Adda opened his mouth and laughed at them. So all their finery, and fine titles, offered no protection from mortal terror. Where was their power now?

Muub was struggling out of his own cocoon with every expression of urgency.

Adda said, “Where will you go?”

“The Hospital, of course.” Muub gathered his robes tight around his legs and glanced around the Box, looking for the fastest way out. “It’s going to be a long day’s work…” Apparently on impulse, he grabbed Adda’s arm. “Upfluxer. Come with me. Help me.”

Adda felt like laughing again, but he recognized earnestness in Muub’s eyes. “Why me?”

Muub gestured to the scrambling courtiers. “Look at these people,” he said wearily. “Not many cope well in a crisis, Adda.” He glanced at the upfluxer appraisingly. “You think I’m a little inhuman — a cold man, remote from people. Perhaps I am. But I’ve worked long enough as a Physician to gain a functional understanding of who can be relied on. And you’re one of them, Adda. Please.”

Adda was surprisingly moved by this, but he pulled his arm free of Muub’s grasp. “I’ll come if I can. I promise. But first I have to find Farr — my kinsman.”

Muub nodded briskly. Without another word he began to work his way through the crowd of courtiers still blocking the Box’s exit, using his elbows and knees quite efficiently.

Adda glanced down at the crowded Stadium once more. The crush there was becoming deadly now; he saw imploded chests, limp limbs, Air-starved faces like white flowers in the mass of bodies.

He turned away and launched himself toward the exit.

Farr could be in any of a number of places — with the Skin-riders outside the City itself, or up somewhere near the Surfer race, or down in the Harbor with his old work-friends — but he would surely make for the Mixxaxes’ to find Adda. The Mixxaxes’ part of the mid-Upside was on the opposite side of Parz, and Adda began the long journey across a City in turmoil.

It was as if some malevolent giant, laughing like a spin storm, had taken the City and shaken it. People, young and old, the well-dressed rich and drab manual workers alike, fled through the corridor-streets; screams echoed along the avenues and Air-shafts. Perhaps each of these scurrying folk had some dim purpose of their own in the face of the Glitch — just as Adda did. But collectively, they swarmed.

To Adda it was like a journey through hell. Never before had he felt so confined, so enclosed in this box built by lunatics to contain lunatics; he longed to be in the open Air where he could see what the Star was doing. He reached Pall Mall. The great vertical avenue was full of noise and light; people and cars swarmed over each other, Speakers blaring. Shop-fronts had been smashed open, and men and women were hastening through the crowds with arms full of goods — clothes, jewelry. Above his head, at the top of the Mall — the uppermost Upside — the golden light of the Palace Garden filtered down through the miniature bushes and ponds, as peaceful and opulent as ever. But now lines of guards fenced off the grounds of the Palace from any citizen who thought that might be a good direction to flee.

Adda, close to the center of the Mall now, felt an absurd impulse to laugh. Guards. Looters… What did these people hope to achieve? What did they think was happening to the world around them? It would be a triumph if their precious City survived this disaster intact enough for the looters to find an opportunity to flaunt their ill-gotten wealth.

As if in response to his thought, the City lurched.

The Mall — the huge vertical shaft of light and people around him — leaned to the right. He flailed at the Air, scrabbling for balance. The street had shifted with shocking suddenness. There was an immense groan; he heard wood splintering, clearwood cracking, a high-pitched scream which must be the sound of a Corestuff rib failing.

People rained through the Air.

Helpless, they didn’t even look human — they were like inanimate things, carvings of wood, perhaps. Their bodies hailed against shop-fronts and structural pillars; the Mall echoed with screams, with small, sickening crunches.

A woman slammed against Adda’s rib-cage, knocking away his breath once more. She clung to him with desperate strength, as if she thought he might somehow save her from all this. She must have been as old as Adda himself. She wore a rich, heavy robe which was now torn open, revealing a nude torso swathed in fat, her loose dugs dangling; her hair was a tangled mess of blue-dyed strands with yellow roots. “What’s happening? Oh, what’s happening?”

He pulled the woman away from his body, disengaging her as kindly as he could. “It’s a Glitch. Do you understand? The Magfield must be shifting — distorted by the charged material erupting from the Quantum Sea. The City is trying to find a new, stable…”

He stopped. Her eyes were fixed on his face, but she wasn’t listening to a word.

He pulled her robe closed and tied it shut. Then he half-dragged her across the Mall and left her clinging to a pillar before a shop-front. Perhaps she’d recover her wits, find her way to her home. If not, there was little Adda could do for her.

He found an exit to a side-street. He Waved his way down it with brisk thrusts of his legs, trying to ignore the devastation around him.

The journey through the wormhole lasted only heartbeats, but it seemed an eternity to Dura. She clung to her place, feeling as helpless and as terrified as the squealing pigs.

Out of control, despite all Hork’s vain heavings at the console, the “Flying Pig” rattled against the near-invisible walls of the corridor. Spectacular flashes burst all around the clumsy vessel.

The end came suddenly.

Light — electric blue — blossomed from the infinity point, beneath the plummeting craft at the terminus of the corridor. The light hurtled up the corridor like a fist, unavoidable. Dura stared into it, feeling its intensity sting her eyes.