The women were a flurry of action around him, snatching for their wings, moving out. Ryllin reached the door, looked about her, then immediately turned toward a violet-white glare that hadn't been there when they'd gone to sleep. Carlot and Karilly followed. Wend hadn't found her wings. She was near tears as she searched.

Booce left her. Nothing terrible could happen to Wend aboard Logbearer, and this would teach her always to know where her wings were.

He saw it all at a glance:

Logbearer was moored against a vast wall of bark, the east side of the trunk. Coals in their retaining net burned bright orange along the middle length of the pipe. The nozzle cone pointed east toward the Clump. Some meters from the cone, live steam condensed into a white stream klomters long.

The Clump was a distant whori of white-and-gray storm, with the misty white tube of the Smoke Ring converging beyond and below it. The eye might follow that white line down the sky . . . and where the tree converged to a point, there was Voy.

The glare-white pinpoint had been masked by the in tuft when Booce went to sleep. The in tuft was gone. It had torn loose days before Booce expected it. Freed from its weight, the tree had lurched outward. Booce had guessed as much; now he could see it.

In toward Voy, a fluttering black silhouette was haloed in blue light.

Mishael had been outside on watch. The lurch had torn her loose. She was far in along the trunk, flapping outand-east to bring her out, just as she'd been taught. But he'd never taught her to lose one of her wings!

Ryllin and the girls flew toward her: foreshortened black silhouettes. They made slow progress. In-and-west would have taken them straight in, but the west was a wall of black bark.

Booce followed slowly. Mishael seemed to have it under control.

With the in tuft gone the center of mass was higher on the tree. Tide was pulling Booce away from the tree, and in. A new breeze announced that the tree was under sail, accelerated by the wind on the out tuft. He kick-flapped to adjust. Ryllin and the girls had nearly reached Mishael. Karilly looked up and flapped to turn. She was shouting at him. The wind tore her voice away. He tried to hear. She kicked toward him, screaming-

Booce turned toward Logbearer, too late.

The lurch and the breeze and Booce's inattention, these had caused the disaster. A flurry of coals had been jarred loose from the sikenwire cage. Irradiated by the pipefire, the bark had been drying and warming for tens of days. It had been ready to ignite.