He leaned out into the Air beyond the Skin. He opened his mouth, trying to expel from his lungs the Hospital stink of stale capillary-Air. But even outside the Skin the Air was sour; he could smell nuclear-burning wood, Air-pig jetfarts, the smell of human fear. It was as if the City, in its death throes, was wrapped in an invisible cloud of sour-smelling photons, like an immense dying creature leaking its last capillary-Air.

The City, suffering hugely with groans of wood and the shearing scream of failing Corestuff metal, shuddered around him. The Hospital was lodged in the Downside belly of the City, so that Adda was peering out of the Skin like an insect gazing out of a wall. The anchor-bands were still functioning; electron gas shone around them in response to the huge currents surging through their superconducting interiors as the City fought to maintain its position.

The Skin was a blur of motion. All over the City the fragile hull had been kicked away. People clambered out of the City and into waiting cars; most of them dragged possessions after them through the ragged holes they'd made. Cars and free-Waving people diffused away from the City in a widening, blurring cloud. The Air was filled with the yells of people, the braying commands of Speakers.

Beyond the pathetic human river the Glitch-wracked vortex lines were mere sketches, scribbles of instability. The Magfield shuddered perceptibly as the massive upwellings from the Quantum Sea continued.

And in the far distance, the blue-violet fire of Xeelee ships raked through the Mantle. It was a sight he never thought he'd live to see.

"Adda!"

Reluctantly, he turned away from the open Air and concentrated on the ward once more.

The next patient to be evacuated, a woman, was screaming in pain. She was so swaddled in stained bandages that all that could be seen of her was a gaping mouth. Deni Maxx trailed after this grotesque package, stroking the woman's hair and murmuring futile words of comfort. Deni looked to Adda with a mute appeal. He tried to mask his reluctance to touch the injured woman. He moved closer to the woman and stared into her face, muttering gruff, calming words. It was like soothing a wounded Air-pig. But the woman's eyecups were black with bruising, and he doubted that she'd heard him.

They moved quickly to load the woman into a waiting Air-car. At last the car pulled away from the building, and the screams of the woman dwindled slowly.

Deni lingered by the improvised doorway and gulped in breaths of dank Polar Air. She looked into the mists of distance, at the violet limbs of the Xeelee starbreaker beams walking easily through the Star.

"Let's hope those damn things keep away from the City," Adda said.