Rees woke from a comfortable sleep in his nest of foliage. Pallis hung over him, silhouetted by a bright sky. "Shift change," the pilot said briskly. "Hard work ahead for all of us; docking and unloading and--"

"Docking?" Rees shook his head clear of sleep. "Then we've arrived?"

Pallis grinned. "Isn't that obvious?"

He moved aside. Behind him the Raft hung huge in the sky. A single star was poised some tens of miles above the Raft, a turbulent ball of yellow fire a mile wide, and the huge metal structure cast a broadening shadow down through miles of dusty air.

Under Pallis's direction Rees and Gover stoked the fire bowls and worked their way across the surface of the tree, waving large, light blankets over the billowing smoke. Pallis studied the canopy of smoke with a critical eye; never satisfied, he snapped and growled at the boys. But, steadily and surely, the tree's rise through the Nebula was molded into a slow curve towards the rim of the Raft.

The Raft grew in the sky until it blocked out half the Nebula. From below it showed as a ragged disc a half-mile wide; metal plates scattered highlights from the stars and light leaked through dozens of apertures in the deck. As the tree sailed up to the rim the Raft foreshortened into a patchwork ellipse; Rees could see the sooty scars of welding around the edges of the nearer plates, and as his eye tracked across the ceilinglike surface the plates crowded into a blur, with the far side of the disc a level horizon.

At last, with a rush of air, the tree rose above the rim and the upper surface of the Raft began to open out before Rees. He found himself drawn to the edge of the tree; he buried his hands in the foliage and stared, open-mouthed, as a torrent of color, noise and movement broke over him.

The Raft was an enormous dish that brimmed with life. Points of light were sprinkled over its surface. The deck was studded with buildings of all shapes and sizes, constructed of wood panels or corrugated metal and jumbled together like toys.

A confusion of smells assaulted Rees's senses -- sharp ozone from giant machines around the rim, wood smoke from a thousand chimneys, the hint of exotic cooking scents from the cabins. And people -- more than Rees could count, so many that the Belt population would be easily lost among them -- people walked about the Raft in great streams; and knots of running children exploded here and there into bursts of laughter.