Teal felt obscurely sorry for the mummy-cows, moved to speak to them, to explain. "Even then the world was growing cold," he said. "My grandmother crossed the Gap to find the answer. After that people were excited enough to build this bridge, so now we can travel between the worlds whenever we like.

"But in the end Allel failed. The Sun's still cooling, and she found no answer."

"But you will... fix-x it, ssir?"

Teal laughed. If only he could find a human with such imagination -- "Maybe."

The dawn stained the sky a little brighter. Soon the village would be stirring; he had to be aloft quickly--

There was an odd shrewdness in Orange's brown eyes. "I... w-will help you." She turned and made her way to one of the piles of balloon equipment. With her articulated trunk she pulled at a bark tarpaulin.

His heart lifting, Teal shooed the other cows away from the rope anchor and began to check the knots and stays.

The morning was approaching its murky peak by the time Teal and his unexpected ally had assembled a one-man balloon and attached it to the rope bridge. Teal wrestled with a cluster of alcohol burners, directing heated air into the leather envelope's brown gloom.

At last the envelope rose from the frozen earth, billowing like a waking giant. Orange strained to hold it back; she trumpeted in alarm as she was dragged across the ground. Teal pulled a harness round his shoulders.

There was a gust of wind. The balloon lurched higher and its guide ropes began to scrape up the rope bridge.

The harness dug into Teal's armpits. His feet left the ground.

Orange fell away, her huge head rotating up to him. Soon the anchor shrank to a cluster of bundles, anonymous in the gray landscape.

He wriggled in the harness, swinging slowly beneath the envelope. He looked to the south and picked out his home village. It looked like a muddy patch sprinkled with teepees... and out of one of the teepees came a running figure, shouting like an angry insect.

Damen, his brother. It had to be. Well, Teal couldn't be stopped now.

He continued to rise and Damen's cries dropped away. Soon there was only the creak of the rigging, his own rapid breath.

The barren landscape opened out further. It was a dreary panorama of red and gray, starved of color and warmth by the dying Sun. His grandmother spoke of flowers a bright orange, birds as blue as ice -- of hundreds or thousands of people in villages clustered so close they were forced to fight over resources.

But now colors like blue were only a dim childhood memory to Teal. And there were only a few score people in Teal's village, and no one knew how far away their nearest surviving neighbors were.