Dura had chosen a sleep place about fifty mansheights from the center of the Human Beings' current encampment, in a place where the Magfield had felt particularly thick, comfortingly secure. Now she began to Wave toward the Net. Wriggling, rippling her limbs, she felt electricity course through her epidermis; and she pushed with arms and legs at the invisible, elastic resistance of the Magfield as if it were a ladder. Fully awake now, she found herself filled with a belated anxiety — an anxiety healthily laced with guilt at her tardiness — and as she slid across the Magfield she spread the webbed fingers of her hands and beat at the Air, trying to work up still more speed. Neutron superfluid made up most of the bulk of the Air, so there was barely any resistance to her hands; but still she clawed at the Air, her impatience mounting, seeking comfort in activity.

The vortex lines slid like dreams across her field of vision now. Ripples hurtled in great even chains, as if the vortex lines were ropes shaken by giants located in the mists of the Poles. As the waves beat past her they emitted a low, cool groan. The amplitude of the waves was already half a mansheight. By Bolder's guts, she thought, maybe that old fool Adda is right for once; maybe this really is going to be the worst yet.

Slowly, painfully slowly, the encampment grew from a distant abstraction, a mélange of movement and noise, to a community. The encampment was based around the crude cylindrical Net made of plaited tree-bark, slung out along the Magfield lines. Most people slept and ate bound up to the Net, and the length of the cylinder was a patchwork of tied-up belongings, privacy blankets, cleaning brushes, simple clothes — ponchos, tunics and belts — and a few pathetic bundles of food. Scraps of half-finished wooden artifacts and flags of untreated Air-pig leather dangled from the Net ropes.

The Net was five mansheights across and a dozen long. It was at least five generations old, according to the older folk like Adda. And it was the only home of about fifty humans — and their only treasure.

As she neared it, clawing her way through the clinging Magfield, Dura suddenly saw the flimsy construct with an objective eye — as if she had not been born in a blanket tied to its filthy knots, as if she would not die still clinging to its fibers. How fragile it was: how pathetic, how defenseless they truly were. Even as she approached to join her people in this moment of need, Dura felt depressed, weak, helpless.