This time, Hosch and Bzya did not seem surprised. Hosch turned to press his face to a window, while Bzya relaxed his grip on the support post and flexed the fingers of his immense hands.

"What is it now?" Farr whispered.

"We think we've snagged a berg..."

Below the surface of the Quantum Sea, nuclei — clusters of protons and neutrons — could not survive. And deeper still, in the dark belly of the Sea itself, densities became so high that the nucleons themselves were brought into contact. Hyperons, exotic combinations of quarks, could form from the colliding nucleons. The hyperons could combine into stable islands of dense material — Corestuff bergs — which could persist away from the formative densities of the heart of the Star. The bergs drifted up, in Quantum Sea currents, to higher levels to be retrieved by the Fishermen and returned to Para City.

"It's clinging to the outside of the Bell," Bzya said. He mimed the impact of the berg against the Bell with his fists. "See? It's drawn there by the magnetic field of the Bell, of its Corestuff hoops. And it stays, stuck by the Magfield set up in response in its own interior."

Hosch grinned again, and Farr was aware of the supervisor's foul breath. "Good Fishing. We were lucky. We can't be more than four meters below Parz. Now, boy. Watch." With a grandiloquent gesture, Hosch closed the two switches on the small control panel beside him.

Farr held his breath, but nothing seemed to have changed. The Bell still swayed alarmingly through the underMantle — in fact it seemed to be rotating, his stomach told him, perhaps knocked into a twist by the impact of the berg.

Bzya said patiently, "He's sent a signal to the Harbor, along the cables. That we're ready to be hauled up."

Hosch grinned at him. "And that's why we're here, boy. That's the reason they put men in these cages, and stuff them down into the underMantle. All to close those little switches. See? Otherwise, how else would the Harbor know when to haul up the Bells?"

"Why three of us? Why not just one Fisherman?"

"Double redundancy," Hosch said. "If something hit the mission — well, one of us might live long enough to throw the switches, and bring home the precious Corestuff." He was obviously relishing teasing out Farr's fear.

Farr tried to bite back. "Then you should have told me what was going on before. What if something had gone wrong, and I hadn't known what to do?"

Bzya regarded Hosch impassively. "The boy has a point, Hosch."

"Anyway," Farr said, "it can't take much skill to throw a simple switch..."

"Oh, that's not the skill," Hosch said quietly. "The skill is in staying alive long enough to do it."

—