As he neared, he saw that the berg's surface was made rough by small pits and escarpments. It was hard to imagine that this was the material that formed the gleaming hoops around the Bell, or the City's anchor-bands, or the fine inlays in Surfboards. He was within an arm's length of the berg, still Waving smoothly... If he lived long enough, he would like to see the workshops — the foundries, Bzya called them — where the transformation of this stuff took place...

Invisible hands grabbed his chest and legs, yanking him sideways. He found himself tumbling head over heels away from the Bell. He cried out. He scrabbled at the Air but could gain no purchase, and his legs thrashed at the emptiness in a futile effort to Wave.

Trembling, he paddled at the Air, trying to still his roll. Hosch was laughing at him, he realized; and Bzya, too, seemed to be having trouble suppressing a smile.

Just another little game, then; another test for the new boy.

He closed his eyes, willing the trembling of his limbs to still. He tried to think. Invisible hands? Only a magfield could have jolted him like that — the Bell's protective magfield. And of course he'd been knocked sideways; that was the way fields affected moving charged objects, like his body. That was why it was necessary, when Waving, to move legs and arms across the flux lines of the Magfield to generate forward motion.

So the Bell's own magfield shell had thrown him. Big joke.

Logue would probably have told him off for not anticipating this, he realized. Laughed at him as well, to drive home the point.

Farr's fear turned to anger. He looked forward to the day when he would no longer have so much to learn... and he could maybe administer a few lessons of his own.

His self-control returning, Farr began to make his clumsy way back to the Bell. "Give me the ropes," he said.

12

THE HUGE LUMBER CARAVAN WAS visible for many days before it reached Qos Frenk's ceiling-farm.

Dura, descending from a wheat-field at the end of a shift, watched the caravan's approach absently. It was a trace of darkness on the curving horizon, a trail of tree trunks toiling through the vortex lines from the wild forests on the upflux fringe of the hinterland, on its way to the City at the furthest downflux. She wasn't too interested. The hinterland sky, even this far from Parz, was never empty of traffic. The caravan would pass in a couple of days, and that would be that.