The board stabilized in the Air, Gasping, Cris dragged himself forward across the board; his chest ached from the pressure of the board in its flight. There was the City, far below him, but still close enough for him to make out detail — the Spine, the gaping cargo ports, the encrustation of Garden on its upper surface. He felt a surge of relief, and even a little shame; he couldn't have been thrown so impossibly high after all.

Carefully, cautiously, he tucked his knees under him, rested his feet against the board, and stood up. The Magfield was quivering like a live thing under him, and he rocked the board against it, tilting his aching ankles; but, for the moment, the field was fairly stable. Predictable. He could Surf on it... and he was going to have to, if he was to make it through this.

He glanced around the sky. He was alone now; there was no sign of any of the other hundred Surfers. Again he felt a burst of triumph, accompanied by shame. Had he survived because he was the best? Or the luckiest, perhaps?

And, he reminded himself, he might join the rest in the anonymity of death yet, before this day was through.

The vortex lines around him writhed, tortured by instabilities, by impossible, ungainly forms which warped as they propagated, gathering energy. The end of the vortex lines — the boundary of the volume of Air in which there were no vortex lines — was rushing toward him, a wall of emptiness. In that region, he knew, the turbulence of the Air, lashed by the neutrino storm from the Core, was such that its superfluid properties had broken down. He wouldn't be able to Surf; the friction would be impossible. Damn it, he wouldn't be able to breathe. His capillaries would clog, his heart strain at the thickening Air...

He shook his head, tried to focus. He looked down. He had to get back to the City before the turbulence reached him. (That remote part of him prodded his mind over this. Why should he be any safer in the City than outside?) Again he shook his head, growling at himself. The City was the only place to go, safe or not. Therefore he would go there. But already the chunks of frozen Sea-stuff were hurtling up around the City. A graze from one of those...

Thinking about it was pointless. He spread his feet against the board, bent his legs, and thrust.

He Surfed as he'd never Surfed before — perhaps as nobody had Surfed before. He thrust at the board again and again, ramming its Corestuff web across the shaking Magfield. He soared between rippling vortex lines, ducking and swooping. Soon he was moving so quickly that the residual normal-fluid component of the Air whipped at his hair, his face. But still he accelerated, slamming his feet against the board until his soles ached.