Since Dura and the City woman had left in their Air-car — taking away the children, including their own Jai — the fifteen abandoned Human Beings had trekked across the Mantle toward the Pole. The slow pulsations of the vortex lines marked out the endless days of the journey. With no stores of food, the Human Beings were forced to follow the fringe of the Crust-forest; the leaves of the trees were scarcely nutritious, but they did serve to fool the body into forgetting its hunger for a while. Every few days their food ran out and they were forced to interrupt the march. There was some game to be had but the forest was unfamiliar, and the animals, still scared and scattered after the most recent Glitch, were wary and difficult to trap.

Without their own herd, the Human Beings were slowly starving to death. And on this hopeless trek, with its endless days of slow, painful Waving, the Human Beings were probably burning off their energy faster than they could replace it. Mur couldn't forget the richness of the "bread" Dura had brought to them, when she had come Waving out of the sky so unexpectedly with her startling stories of Cities in the Air.

Their progress around the Mantle's curve was imperceptible, a crushingly discouraging crawl. Every time he woke to another changeless Mantlescape Mur felt discouraged. And, even when the Pole was neared, the Human Beings would still have to cross the hinterland, the cultivated belt around the Pole. How would the inhabitants of those regions — themselves suffering after the Glitches — welcome this band of starving refugees as they came drifting beneath their ceiling-farms?

The logical thing for the Human Beings to do would be to give up this trek. Their best chance of survival would be to stay here, or even retreat a little further into the upflux, and try to establish a new home on the edge of the Crust-forest. Stop wasting their energies on this trek. They could build a new Net, establish a new herd of Air-pigs. They could even, he'd thought dizzily as he Waved across the silent Air, experiment with maintaining flocks of rays. The flesh of the ray was tough and not as palatable as Air-pig, but it softened when broiled using nuclear-burning heat; and the eggs were fine to eat and easy to store.