Dajeil Gelian climbed the steps to the parapet of the tower. A breeze caught her robe’s hood and spilled her heavy, still-wet hair out and down. The sun-line had set, throwing highlights of gold and ruby light across the sky and turning the starboard horizon into a fuzzy violet border. The wind stiffened. It felt cold.

Amorphia was not walking back this evening; after the creature had hurried up the narrow path through the tower’s walled garden and out of the land-gate, it just rose up into the air, without any obvious AG pack or flying suit, and then accelerated through the air in a dark, thin blur, curving through the air to disappear a few seconds later over the edge of the cliff beyond.

Dajeil looked up. There were tears in her eyes, which annoyed her. She sniffed them back angrily and wiped her cheeks. A few blinks, and the view of the sky was steady and unobscured again.

It had indeed already begun.

A flight of the dirigible creatures were dropping down from the red-speckled clouds above her, heading for the cliffs. Looking closely, she could see the accompanying drones that were their herders. Doubtless the same scene was being repeated at this moment both beneath the grey surface of the sea on the far side of the tower as well as above, in the region of furious heat and crushing pressure that was the gas-giant environment.

The dirigible creatures hesitated in the skies above; in front of them, a whole area of the cliff, perhaps a kilometre across and half that in height, simply folded in on itself in four parcel-neat sections and disappeared backwards into four huge, long glowing halls. The reassured dirigible creatures were shepherded towards one of the opened bays. Elsewhere, other parts of the cliffs were performing similar tricks; lights sparkled in the spaces revealed. The entire swathe of grey-brown scree - easily twenty kilometres across and a hundred metres in both depth and height - was folding and tipping in eight gigantic Vs and channelling several billion tonnes of real-enough rock into eight presumably reinforced ship bays, doubtless to undergo whatever transformational process was in store for the sea and the gas-giant atmosphere.

A titanic, bone-resounding tremor shook the ground and rumbled over the tower while huge clouds of dust leapt billowing into the chilly air as the rock disappeared. Dajeil shook her head - her wet hair flapping on the sodden shoulders of her robe - then walked towards the doorway which led to the rest of the tower, intending to retreat there before the clouds of stone dust arrived.

The black bird Gravious made to settle on her shoulder; she shooed it off and it landed flapping uproariously on the edge of the opened trap door.

‘My tree!’ it screamed, hopping from leg to leg. ‘My tree! They’ve - I - my - it’s gone!’