‘Because it’s the only one in the universe. And nobody knows how to fix it. Old fart yourself.’
Mith growled - then barked laughter. ‘All right, all right.’ He set the orrery back on its shelf and pulled a hard-backed chair opposite the desk. He sat with legs splayed under his belly and raised troubled eyes to Hollerbach. ‘Look, Scientist, we shouldn’t be scrapping. You have to understand how worried I am, how frightened the crew are.’
Hollerbach spread his hands on the desk top; liver-spots stared back at him. ‘Of course I do, Captain.’ He turned his ancient spectacles over in his fingers and sighed. ‘Look, we don’t need to wait for the lab results. I know damn well what we’re going to find.’
Mith spread his hands palm up. ‘What?’
‘We’re suffering from protein and vitamin deficiencies. The children particularly are being hit by bone, skin and growth disorders so archaic that the Ship’s medical printouts don’t even refer to them.’ He thought of his own grandchild, not four thousand shifts old; when Hollerbach took those slim little legs in his hands he could feel the bones curve . . . ‘Now, we don’t think there’s anything wrong with the food dispensers.’
Mith snorted. ‘How can you be so sure?’
Hollerbach rubbed his eyes again. ‘Of course I’m not sure,’ he said, irritated. ‘Look, Mith, I’m speculating. You can either accept that or wait for the tests.’
Mith sat back and held up his palms. ‘All right, all right. Go on.’
‘Very well, then. Of all the Raft’s equipment our understanding is, by necessity, greatest of the dispensers. We’re overhauling the brutes; but I don’t expect anything to be found wrong.’
‘What, then?’
Hollerbach climbed out of his chair, feeling the familiar twinge in his right hip. He walked to the open door of his office and peered out. ‘Isn’t it obvious? Mith, when I was a kid that sky was blue as a baby’s eyes. Now we have children, adults even, who don’t know what blue is. The damn Nebula has gone sour. The dispensers are fed by organic compounds in the Nebula atmosphere - and by airborne plants and animals, of course. Mith, it’s a case of garbage in, garbage out. The machines can’t work miracles. They can’t produce decent food out of the sludge out there. And that’s the problem.’
Behind him Mith was silent for a long time. Then he said, ‘What can we do?’
‘Beats me,’ said Hollerbach, a little harshly. ‘You’re the Captain.’
Mith got out of his chair and lumbered up to Hollerbach; his breath was hot on the old Scientist’s neck, and Hollerbach could feel the pull of the Captain’s weighty gut. ‘Damn it, stop patronizing me. What am I supposed to tell the crew?’
Abruptly, Hollerbach felt very tired. He reached with one hand for the door frame and wished his chair weren’t so far away. ‘Tell them not to give up hope,’ he said quietly. ‘Tell them we’re doing all we know how to do. Or tell them nothing. As you see fit.’
Mith thought it over. ‘Of course, not all your results are in.’ There was a trace of hope in his voice. ‘And you haven’t completed that machine overhaul, have you?’
Hollerbach shook his head, eyes closed. ‘No, we haven’t finished the overhaul.’ ‘So maybe there’s something wrong with the machines after all.’ Mith clapped his shoulder with a plate-sized hand. ‘All right, Hollerbach. Thanks. Look, keep me informed.’
Hollerbach stiffened. ‘Of course.’
Hollerbach watched Mith stride away across the deck, his belly oscillating. Mith wasn’t too bright - but he was a good man. Not as good as his father, maybe, but a lot better than some of those who were now calling for his replacement.
Maybe a cheerful buffoon was right for the Raft in its present straits. Someone to keep their spirits up as the air turned to poison—
He laughed at himself. Come on, Hollerbach; you really are turning into an old fart.
He became aware of a prickling over his bald pate; he glared up at the sky. That star overhead was a searing pinpoint, its complex orbit bringing it ever closer to the path of the Raft. Close enough to burn the skin, eh? He couldn’t remember a star being allowed to fall so threateningly close before; the Raft should have been shifted long since. He’d have to get on to Navigator Cipse and his boys. He couldn’t think what they were playing at.
Now a shadow swept across him, and he made out the silhouette of a tree rotating grandly far above the Raft. That would be Pallis, returning from the Belt. Another good man, Pallis . . . one of the few left.
He dropped his prickling eyes and studied the deck plates beneath his feet. He thought of the human lives that had been expended on keeping this little metal island afloat in the air for so long. And was it only to come to this, a final few generations of sour sullenness, falling at last to the poisoned air?
Maybe it would be better not to move the Raft out from under that star. Let it all go up in one last blaze of human glory—
‘Sir?’ Grye, one of his assistants, stood before him; the little round man nervously held out a battered sheaf of paper. ‘We’ve finished another test run.’
So there was still work to do. ‘Well, don’t stand about like that, man; if you’re no use you’re certainly no ornament. Bring that in and tell me what it says.’
And he turned and led the way into his office.
The Raft had grown in the sky until it blocked out half the Nebula. A star was poised some tens of miles above the Raft, a turbulent ball of yellow fire a mile wide, and the Raft cast a broadening shadow down through miles of dusty air.
Under Pallis’s direction Rees and Gover stoked the fire bowls and worked their way across the surface of the tree, waving large, light blankets over the billowing smoke. Pallis studied the canopy of smoke with a critical eye; never satisfied, he snapped and growled at the boys. But, steadily and surely, the tree’s rise through the Nebula was moulded into a slow curve towards the Rim of the Raft.
As he worked, Rees chanced the wrath of Pallis by drinking in the emergent details of the Raft. From below it showed as a ragged disc a half-mile wide; metal plates scattered highlights from the stars and light leaked through dozens of apertures in the deck. As the tree sailed up to the Rim the Raft foreshortened into a patchwork ellipse; Rees could see the sooty scars of welding around the edges of the nearer plates, and as his eye tracked across the ceiling-like surface the plates crowded into a blur, with the far side of the disc a level horizon.
At last, with a rush of air, the tree rose above the Rim and the upper surface of the Raft began to open out before Rees. Against his will he found himself drawn to the edge of the tree; he buried his hands in the foliage and stared, openmouthed, as a torrent of colour, noise and movement broke over him.
The Raft was an enormous dish that brimmed with life. Points of light were sprinkled over its surface like sugar-sim over a confectionery. The deck was studded with buildings of all shapes and sizes, constructed of wood panels or corrugated metal and jumbled together like toys. All around the Rim, machines as tall as two men hulked like silent guardians; and at the heart of the Raft lay a huge silver cylinder, stranded like a trapped whale among the box-like constructions.
A confusion of smells assaulted Rees’s senses - sharp ozone from the Rim machines and other workshops and factories, woodsmoke from a thousand chimneys, the hint of exotic cooking scents from the cabins.
And people - more than Rees could count, so many that the Belt population would be easily lost among them - people walked about the Raft in great streams; and knots of running children exploded here and there into bursts of laughter.
He made out sturdy pyramids fixed to the deck, no more than waist high. Rees squinted, scanning the deck; the pyramids stood everywhere. He saw a couple lingering beside one, talking quietly, the man scuffing the metal cone with one foot; and there a group of children chased through a series of the pyramids in a complicated game of catch.
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. The light of the Nebula was filtered by its passage through the rotating ranks of trees, so that the deck of the Raft was immersed in a soothing gloom; around the forest dancing skitters softened the light to pastel pink.
Rees’s tree rose until it passed the highest layer of the forest. The Raft turned from a landscape back 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 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.
There was a heavy hand on his shoulder. Rees started. Pallis stood over him, the canopy of smoke a backdrop to his stern face. ‘What’s the matter?’ he growled. ‘Never seen a few thousand trees before?’
Rees felt himself flush. ‘I . . .’
But Pallis was grinning through his scars. ‘Listen, I understand. Most people take it all for granted. But every time I see it from outside - it gives me a kind of tingle.’ A hundred questions tumbled through Rees’s mind. What would it be like to walk on that surface? What must it have been like to build the Raft, hanging in the void above the Core?
But now wasn’t the time; there was work to do. He got to his feet, wrapping his toes in the foliage like a regular woodsman.
‘Now then, miner,’ Pallis said, ‘we’ve got a tree to fly. We have to drop back into that forest. Let’s get the bowls brimming; I want a canopy up there so thick I could walk about on it. All right?’
At last Pallis seemed satisfied with the tree’s position over the Raft. ‘All right, lads. Now!’
Gover and Rees ran among the fire bowls, shoving handfuls of damp wood into the flames. Smoke rolled up to the canopy above them. Gover coughed as he worked, swearing; Rees found his eyes streaming, the sooty smoke scouring his throat.
The tree lurched beneath them, almost throwing Rees into the foliage, and began to fall clear of its canopy of smoke. Rees scanned the sky: the falling stars wheeled by noticeably slower than before; he guessed that the tree had lost a good third of its rotation in its attempt to escape the smoke’s darkness.
Pallis ran to the trunk and uncoiled a length of cable. He thrust his neck and shoulders down through the foliage and began to pay out the cable; Rees could see how he worked the cable to avoid snagging it on other trees.
At last the tree was sliding through the outer layers of the forest. Rees peered across at the trees they passed, each slowly turning and straining with dignity against its tether. Here and there he made out men and women crawling through the foliage; they waved to Pallis and called in distant voices.
As it entered the gloom of the forest, Rees sensed the tree’s uncertainty. Its leaves turned this way and that as it tried to assess the irregular patterns of light playing over it. At last it came to a slow, grand decision, and its turning accelerated; with a smooth surge it rose by a few yards——and came to an abrupt halt. The cable attached to its trunk was taut now; it quivered and bowed through the air as it hauled at the tree. Rees followed the line of the cable; as he had expected its far end had reached the deck of the Raft, and two men were fixing it firmly to one of the waist-high pyramids.
He got to his knees and touched the familiar wood. Sap rushed through the shaped branch, making its surface vibrate like skin; Rees could sense the tree’s agitation as it strove to escape this trap, and he felt an odd sympathy pull at his stomach.
Pallis made some final tests of the cable and then walked briskly around the wooden platform, checking that all the glowing bowls had been doused. At last he returned to the trunk and pulled a bundle of paperwork from a cavity in the wood. He crouched down and slipped through the foliage with a quiet rustle - and then popped his head back through. He peered around until he spotted Rees. ‘Aren’t you coming, lad? Not much point staying here, you know. This old girl won’t be going anywhere for a good few shifts. Well, come on; don’t keep Gover from his food.’
Hesitantly Rees made his way to the trunk. Pallis dropped through first. When he’d gone Gover hissed: ‘You’re a long way from home, mine rat. Just remember - nothing here is yours. Nothing.’ And the apprentice slipped into the screen of leaves.
Heart thumping, Rees followed.
Like three water drops they slid down their cable through the scented gloom of the forest.
Rees worked his way hand over hand down the thin cable. At first the going was easy, but gradually a diffuse gravity field began to tug at his feet. Pallis and Gover waited at the base of the cable, peering up at him; he swung through the last few feet, avoiding the sloping sides of the anchor cone, and landed lightly on the deck.
A man walked up bearing a battered clip pad. The man was huge, his black hair and beard barely concealing a mask of scars more livid than Pallis’s. A fine black braid was attached to the shoulder of his coverall. He scowled at Rees; the boy flinched at the power of the man’s gaze. ‘You’re welcome back, Pallis,’ the man said, his voice grim. ‘Although I can see from here you’ve brought back half your stock.’
‘Not quite, Decker,’ said Pallis coolly, handing over his paperwork. The two men moved into a huddle and went through Pallis’s lists. Gover scuffed impatiently at the deck, wiping his nose against the back of his hand.
And Rees, wide-eyed, stared.
The deck beneath his feet swept through a network of cables away into a distance he could barely comprehend. He could see buildings and people set out in great swathes of life and activity; his head seemed to spin with the scale of it all, and he almost wished he were back in the comforting confines of the Belt.