The Surfers were all in place now; he saw how they settled over their boards, concentrating, spreading their feet and lifting their arms. The marshals continued to scurry around the line like worried little animals, checking positions, adjusting boards with small pushes and shoves. Silence spread along the line; the marshals were withdrawing. Cris felt his senses open up. The board under his feet, the fizz of the Magfield, the freshness of the Air so far from the womb of the City as it sighed through his mouth and capillaries — these were vital and real things, penetrating his head; he had never felt so alive.

And perhaps, a distant, unwelcome part of him said, he never would again.

Well, if that was to be so — if his life was to be a long-drawn-out anticlimax after this superb moment — then let it be; and let this be his finest time.

The marshals glanced along their line at each other. In unison they raised their right arms — and brought them down with a chop, a cry of "Begin"!

Cris thrust savagely at his board. He felt the Magfield surge through the board and his limbs, dragging at the currents of charged particles there. He lunged forward with a roar, lancing through the Air. The tunnel of vortex lines seemed to explode outward around him; blue-white electron gas sparkled over his body. He was half-aware of similar yells around him, from the rest of the line, but he shut out the other Surfers; he focused on his board, the Magfield, his balance and position in the Air.

The line of marshals, ragged and breaking up, hurtled beneath him.

He opened his mouth and yelled again, incoherent. In his peripheral vision he saw that only Ray, and one or two others, had matched his start. He was in the lead, already ahead of the other Surfers! And he knew his style was good, his balance right; the Magfield surged through his body like a wave of heat. He raised a hand before his face and watched electron gas shower from his fingertips; shrouded in blue light he must look like a figure from a dream racing across the sky...

His board slammed upward, into his feet.

He gasped, almost thrown off the board with the shock. It had been like hitting something solid in the Magfield. He let his knees bend, trying to absorb the upward surge; but still he was hurled up into the Air, balanced perilously on his board. The vortex lines slid down the sky around him, and the Magfield flux lines tore at his stomach and chest as he was dragged brutally across them.

He heard screams from the Surfers around him.

The surge passed. Shaken, his knees and ankles aching, he straightened up. He risked glances to left and right. The line of Surfers was ragged, scattered, broken up. Whatever had caused that surge had hit the others as hard as it had him.