Dura scrambled across the Magfield flux lines to the Net. Men, women and older children were gathered in tight huddles, their thin bodies bumping together as they floated in the turbulent Magfield, laboring at the Net. They cast fearful, distracted glances at the approaching vortex instabilities, and from all around the Net Dura could hear muttered — or shouted — prayer-chants, pleas for the benevolence of the Xeelee.

Watching the Human Beings, Dura realized they were huddling together for comfort, not for efficiency. Rather than working evenly and systematically around the Net, the people were actually impeding each other from working effectively at the dismantling; whole sections of the tangled Net were being left unattended.

Dura's feeling of depressed helplessness deepened. Perhaps she could help them organize better — act as Logue's daughter for once, she admonished herself wearily, act as a leader. But as she studied the frightened faces of the Human Beings, the round, staring eyecups of the children, she recognized the weary terror which seemed to be numbing her own reactions.

Maybe huddling and praying was as rational a response as any to this latest disaster.

She twisted in the Air and Waved toward an empty section of Net, keeping well away from Esk and Philas. Logue would have to do the leading; Dura would remain one of the led.

The first of the massive ripples neared the encampment. Feeling the growing tension in the Air, Dura grasped the Net's sturdy rope and pulled her body against its shuddering bulk. For a moment her face was pressed against the Net's thick mesh, and she found herself staring at an Air-pig, not an arm's length from her. The rope-threaded holes punched through its fins were widened with age, ringed by scar tissue. The Air-pig seemed to be looking into her eyes, its six eyestalks pushed straight out from its brain pan, the cups swiveled at her. The beast was one of the oldest of the Air-pigs — as a kid, she recalled wistfully, she would have known the names of each one of the meager herd — and it must have seen plenty of spin storms before. Well, she thought. What's your diagnosis? Do you think we've a chance of getting through this storm any better than we have all the others? Will you live to see the other side of it? What do you think?

The creature's fixed, mournful stare, the brown depths of its eyecups, afforded her no reply. But its musty animal warmth stank of fear.

The mat of rope before her face glimmered suddenly, blue-white; her head cast a shadow before her.

She turned to see that one vortex line had drifted to within a couple of mansheights of her position; it shimmered in the Air, quivering, a cable emitting an electric-blue glow almost too clamorous for her eyes.