Hork nodded slowly. "I think I understand. This is how the Star-fount was made." He traced the wormhole with a fingertip. "See? When you hauled on your levers, Dura, this wormhole must have opened up. It took matter from the heart of the Star and transported it to the Crust. The Core material must have exploded at once in the lower pressure, releasing immense energy."

Dura felt odd; she seemed to see Hork as if at the far end of a long, dark corridor.

"At the North Pole there must be huge engines to exploit this energy — the discontinuity drive engines Karen Macrae spoke of, which propel the Star itself." His gaze was distant. "Dura, some day we must reach those engines. And I wonder how the Colonists fared, when that wormhole belched..."

In Dura's eyes all the color had leeched from Hork's face; even the lurid map on the tetrahedron wall had turned to shades of brown, and there was a strange, thin taste on her tongue.

She was exhausted, she realized. There would be time enough in the future for plans and dreams. For now, she longed for the comparative familiarity and security of the "Pig," for food and sleep.

The rich, sweet stink of Air-pigs greeted her as she reached the ship's entrance.

—

He touched Farr's arm. "Wait. We stop here. That's enough."

Farr looked confused. He Waved through a couple more strokes, as if automatically; then, uncertainly, his legs came to rest. He released his grip on the cocoon material and looked down at his hands, which were bent into stiff claws.

Adda let himself drift away from the cocoon and hang in the Air, giving way to his fatigue for the first time since the start of the disaster. The Magfield supported him, but he could feel its continuing shudders. The aches in his legs, arms, back and hands had gone beyond mere fatigue, beyond exhaustion now, he realized, and had transmuted into real pain. He inflated his chest, hauling in dank Polar Air, and felt the thick stuff burn at his lungs and capillaries. He remembered the dire warnings of poor, lost Deni Maxx: that after his encounter with the Air-sow his body would never regain its pneumatic efficiency. Well, this day he'd tested that diagnosis to its limits.

The City was a battered wooden box almost small enough to be covered over by the palm of a hand, with the long, elegant Spine spearing down from its base to the underMantle. A cloud diffused around the upper City, a mist of rubble and dispersing refugees.

The Xeelee starbreakers continued to walk through the Mantle. Vortex strings hailed all around them, deadly and banal.