Tired as he was, something probed at the edge of his awareness. It seemed darker than before. Why should that be? He pushed himself out of the ward and Waved a few weary mansheights into the sky. Behind him, the Skin was a limitless wooden wall which cut away half of the sky. It was bounded about by the huge anchor-bands and punctuated by a hundred crude gashes; a slowing trickle of cars and people still dribbled from the opened-up walls and diffused into the wastes of the Air. The Skin was dark, intimidating...

Too dark. That was it.

Adda Waved a little further and twisted his head around, surveying the Corestuff anchor-bands. The huge hoops were like a gray cage over the City's wooden face — but they were dull, lifeless, where a little earlier they had crackled with blue electron gas.

The glow of the gas had gone.

So the dynamos, the huge, wood-burning lungs of the City, had failed at last. Perhaps they had been abandoned by their attendants; or maybe some essential part of the City's infrastructure had failed under the strain of holding the City against the fluctuating Magfield.

It scarcely mattered.

There was a sharp explosion. A hail of splinters fanned out from the base of the City, at the junction of the Spine and the main inhabited section. The splinters sailed away through the showers of sewage material still falling from the base of Parz.

There might be no more than heartbeats left.

Adda Waved strongly back to the improvised Hospital port and dived into the melee of swaddled patients, harassed staff and volunteers. He found Farr helping Deni Maxx to fix a patient's bandages. He grabbed Farr's and Deni's arms roughly; he hauled them away from the unconscious patient and toward the exit.

"We've got to get out of here."

Deni stared at him, the deep yellow Air-light scouring shadow-lines in her face. "What is it? I don't understand."

"The anchor-bands have lost power," Adda hissed. "They can't sustain the City, here above the Pole. The City's going to drift — come under intense stress... We have to get away from here. The City will never withstand it..."

Farr glanced back to the patients and helpers. "But we're not finished."

"Farr," Adda said with all the persuasiveness he could muster, "it's over. You've done a marvelous job, but there's nothing more you can do. Once the effects of the band failure hit we won't be able to complete the evacuation anyway."

Deni Maxx stared into his face, her mouth tight. "I'm not leaving."

Adda felt his scarred old heart break once more.

"But you'll die," he said, hearing a plea in his voice. "These wretched people can never survive anyway. There's no point..."

She pulled her arm from his grasp. She looked back into the ward, as if all this had been a mere distraction from her work.