Pallis stabbed a finger at Gover's pack. "You're still carrying half your stock of wood. The fires are dying. And look at the state of the smoke screen. More holes than your damn vest. My tree doesn't know whether she's coming or going, thanks to you. Can't you feel her shuddering? Now move it."

With a flurry of motion Gover pulled himself to the nearest pot and began hauling wood from his pack. Soon fresh billows of smoke were rising to join the depleted cloud, and the shuddering of the tree subsided.

His exasperation simmering, Pallis watched the boy's awkward movements. Oh, he'd had his share of poor apprentices in the past, but in the old times most of them had at least been willing to learn. To try. And gradually, as hard shifts wore by, those young people had grown into responsible men and women, their minds toughening with their bodies.

But not this lot. Not the new generation.

This was his third flight with the boy Gover. And the lad was still as sullen and obstructive as when he'd first been assigned to the trees; when they got back to the Raft Pallis would be more than glad to hand him back to Science.

His gaze roamed around the red sky, restless.

The air of the Nebula was, as always, stained blood-red. A corner of his mind tried to measure that redness -- was it deeper than last shift? -- while his eyes flicked around the objects scattered through the Nebula above and below him. The clouds were like handfuls of grayish cloth sprinkled through miles of air. Stars fell among and through the clouds in a slow, endless rain that tumbled down to the Core. It was as if he were suspended in a great cloud of light; the star-spheres receded with distance into points of light, so that the sky itself was a curtain glowing red-yellow. The falling stars were an array of pinpoints dwindling into the far distance; the depths of the Nebula, far below him, were a sink of murky crimson.

The light of the mile-wide stars cast shifting shadows over the clouds, the scattered trees, the huge blurs that might be whales. Here and there he saw a tiny flash that marked the end of a star's brief existence...

In his time, the world had changed around Pallis. The Nebula seemed to be choking up. The crisp blue skies, the rich breezes of his youth were memories now; the very air was turning into a smoky crimson sludge.

The world was dying, and no one knew why, or how to stop it.

And one thing was for sure. Pallis's trees didn't like this gloom.

He sighed, trying to snap out of his introspection. The stars kept falling no matter what the color of the sky. Life went on, and he had work to do.