As the rope approached, a thin sweat covered his brow. Was he somehow throwing his life away in this impulsive gesture? Would he, in the end, have the courage to take the decisive step?

Staring at the magnificent tree he probed at his emotions. There was no fear. There was only elation; the future was an empty sky, within which his hopes would surely find room.

When the rope was a yard from him he grabbed at it and swarmed without hesitation off the Belt.

A file of miners clambered up to the tree, iron plates strapped to their backs. Under the tree-pilot's supervision the plates were lashed securely to the tree rim, widely spaced. The miners descended to the Belt laden with casks of food and fresh water, delivered from the Raft in payment for the kernel metal.

Rees, watching from the foliage, stayed curled closely around a two-feet-wide branch -- taking care not to cut open his palms on its knife-sharp leading edge -- and he kept a layer of foliage around his body. He had no way of telling the time, but the loading of the tree must have taken several shifts.

He was wide-eyed and sleepless. He knew that his absence from work would go unremarked for at least a couple of shifts -- and, he thought with a distant sadness, it might be longer before anyone cared enough to come looking for him.

Well, the world of the Belt was behind him now. Whatever dangers the future held for him, at least they would be new dangers.

In fact he only had two problems. Hunger and thirst...

Disaster had struck soon after he had found himself this hiding place among the leaves. One of the Belt workmen had stumbled across his tiny cache of supplies; thinking it belonged to the despised Raft crewmen the miner had shared the morsels among his companions. Rees had been lucky to avoid detection himself, he realized... but now he had no supplies, and the clamor of his throat and belly had come to fill his head.

When the final miner had slithered down to the Belt Pallis curled up the rope and hung it around a hook fixed to the trunk. He hated these visits to the Belt, the way he was forced to negotiate so hard with these ragged, half-starved miners. He shook his head and turned his thoughts with some relief to the flight home.

"Right, Gover, let's see you move! I want the bowls switched to the underside of the tree, filled and lit before I've finished coiling this rope. Or would you rather wait for the next tree?"

Gover got to work, comparatively briskly; and soon a blanket of smoke was spreading beneath the tree, shielding the Belt and its star from view.