Hosch wrapped his thin hands around the support pole. "Why aren't we dead?"

It was a good question. Clouds of electron gas around a Bell usually meant current surges in the Corestuff hoops. Maybe the cable from the Harbor was fraying, or a hoop failing. But if that was so the Bell's field would fail almost immediately. The Bell should have imploded by now.

"The current supply is still steady," Bzya said. "Listen."

They both held their breath, and looked into the Air; Hosch adopted the empty-eyed expression of a man trying to concentrate on hearing.

Another flash. This time the Bell actually rocked in the soupy underMantle, and Bzya, clinging tightly to the pole, was swung around like a sack. He pulled himself closer to the pole and wrapped his legs around it.

The supervisor's breath stank of meat and old beercake. "Okay," he said. "We know the Harbor supply is steady. What's causing the flashes?"

"There have to be current surges in the Corestuff hoops."

"If the City supply is steady that's impossible."

Bzya shook his head, thinking hard. "No, not impossible; the surges are just caused by something else."

Hosch's mouth pursed. "Oh. Changes in the Magfield. Right."

The Bell wasn't malfunctioning; the Magfield itself was betraying them. The Magfield had become unstable, and it was inducing washes of charge flow in their protective hoops and dragging them away from their upward path to home.

"What's causing the Magfield to vary?" Bzya asked. "Another Glitch?"

Hosch shrugged. "Hardly matters, does it? We're not going to live to find out."

There was an upward jolt, this time without the accompanying blue flash.

Bzya grasped the pole. "Feel that? That was the Harbor. They're pulling us up. We're not dead yet. They're trying to..."

And then the blue light came again, and this time stayed bright. Bzya felt the writhing Magfield haul at his stomach and the fibers of his body, even as it tore at the Bell itself.

Electron gas sparked from his own fingertips in streamers. It was really quite beautiful, he thought absently.

The Bell was hurled sideways, away from the Spine. Bzya's hands were torn from the support pole. The Bell's curving wall came up, like a huge cupped palm, to meet him. His face rammed into a window, hard. His body bent backward as it crammed itself into the tight inner curve of the wall. The structure of the Bell shuddered and groaned, and there was a distant, singing sound above him. That was the cables breaking, he thought through his pain. He felt oddly pleased at his own cleverness at such a deduction.

The walls wrenched, settled; the Bell rolled.

He fell into darkness.

—

Beyond the transparent walls, huge, ghostly buildings hovered over the humans.