“Use your knife,” he said, and in another instant they were on the ground and fighting back to back, and he could hear from her fury that she was expending all the effort she could bring to bear. They carved a space of a few feet around themselves.

“Now!”

Together they sprang upward and the air raced past and the great trunks of the trees, then the higher limbs, and then they were in the sky and she was crying out in terror and wild joy, because it was an incredible, wonderful power, it was like becoming a creature of heaven.

The projection snaked wildly in the sky, seeking them with its baleful eye, and for an instant the light touched Gina and she was thrown head over heels.

“Gina!”

Scrambling in the air, she fought her way out of it and upward again, clawing, running, grasping for any edge of the thing, and then she was hanging on it—and he flew past her.

He’d pushed too hard, and now, as he tumbled upward, the object whirled away beneath him. He twisted his body and attempted to head down in a controlled manner, but wind blasted into his face and he rushed straight into the yawning ring.

It was racing past when he felt a sudden fearsome tug—and then he was hanging over the trees, the huge edge of the ring sweeping around on both sides of him. For a moment, he remained still. He was unsure why he had stopped. He was hanging from something.

“You’re really heavy,” Gina’s strained voice said.

She was gripping him by the collar of his uniform. He pulled himself up and over the edge of the ring and into the object itself. He fumbled to a squatting position.

“That was my life that time, Gina. You saved my life.”

She looked at him out of stricken, tearing eyes, then went off, climbing quickly and with surprising agility. He climbed after her, but she was incredibly fast, incredibly balanced.

“Gina!”

She had disappeared into the complicated structure.

Then he saw her again, high in the structure, leaping like an acrobat from one catwalk to another.

He wondered if the two of them might be alone on the thing. Did it have a pilot? Crew?

As he clambered up after her, he noticed that the structure had a strange softness to it, a little give and even a little warmth wherever he placed a hand.

No doubt it was also, in some way, alive. Maybe it had no crew because it didn’t need one. A living machine would be its own crew.

Gina was watching him now, no longer climbing. He drew himself upward hand over hand. All around him, the thing hummed and whirred and sighed.

Her eyes were inscrutable pools, set in the silk-smoothness of her face.