Rees tried to lift his arms over his head, but it was as if they were bound to his sides by massive ropes. He closed his eyes. For some reason a vision of the young, white stars at the fringe of the Nebula came to him; and his fear dissolved. A shadow crossed his face.
He opened his eyes. He saw red sky — and pain lanced through his skull.
But he was alive, and the loading of the star’s five gees had gone. There was a cool surface at his back and neck; he ran his hands over it and felt the gritty surface of an iron plate. The plate juddered beneath him; his stomach tightened and he gagged, dry. His mouth was sour, his tongue like a piece of wood, and he wondered how long he had lain unconscious.
Cautiously he propped himself on one elbow. The plate was about ten feet on a side; over it had been cast a rough net to which he was tethered by a rope around his waist. A pile of roughly cut iron was fixed near the center of the plate. The plate had one other occupant: the barman, Jame, who regarded Rees incuriously as he chewed on a piece of old-looking meat-sim. “You’re awake, then,” he said. “I thought Roch had bust your skull wide open; you’ve been out for hours.”
Rees stared at him; then the plate gave another shudder. Rees sat up, testing the gravity — it was tiny and wavering — and looked around.
The Belt hung in the air perhaps half a mile away, surrounding its star kernel like a crude bracelet around a child’s wrist.
So he was flying. On a metal plate? Vertigo swept through him and he wrapped his fingers in the net.
At length he made his way slowly to the edge of the plate, ducked his head to the underside. He saw four jet nozzles fixed at the corners of the plate, the small drive boxes obviously taken from Belt rooftops. Occasionally, in response to tugs by Jame on control strings, the nozzles would spout steam and the plate would kick through the air.
So the miners had invented flying machines while he had been gone. Why, he wondered, did they need them all of a sudden?
He straightened up and sat once more facing Jame. Now the barman was sucking water from a globe; at first he acted as if unaware of Rees, but at length, with a hint of pity on his broad, bearded features, he passed Rees the globe.
Rees allowed the water to pour over his tongue, slide down his parched throat. He passed the globe back. “Come on, Jame. Tell me what’s going on. What happened to Cipse?”
“Who?”
“The Nav — The Scientist. The ill one.”
Jame looked blank. “One of them died down there. Heart packed up, I heard. A fat old guy. Is that who you mean?”
Rees sighed. “Yes, Jame; that’s who I mean.”
Jame studied him; then he pulled a bottle from his waistband, unstopped it and took a deep draught.
“Jame, why aren’t I dead also?”
“You should be. Roch thought he had killed you; that’s why he didn’t hit you any more. He had you hauled up and brought to the damn Quartermaster’s — can you believe it? — and then you started to groan a bit, move around. Roch was all for finishing you off there and then, but I told him, ‘Not in my bar, you don’t’… Then Sheen showed up.”
Something like hope spread through Rees. “Sheen?”
“She knew I was due to leave on this ferry so I guess that gave her the idea to get you off the Belt.” Jame’s eyes slid past Rees. “Sheen is a decent woman. Maybe this was the only way she could think of to save you. But I’ll tell you, Roch was happy enough to send you out here. A slower, painful death for you; that’s what he thought he was settling for…”
“What? Where are you taking me?” Rees, confused, questioned Jame further; but the barman lapsed into silence, nursing his bottle.
Under Jame’s direction the little craft descended into the Nebula. The atmosphere became thicker, warmer, harder to breathe; it was like the air in a too-enclosed room. The Nebula grew dark; the enfeebled stars shone brightly against the gloom. Rees spent long hours at the lip of the plate, staring into the abyss below. In the darkness at the very heart of the Nebula Rees fancied he could see all the way to the Core, as if he were back in the Observatory.
There was no way of telling the time; Rees estimated several shifts had passed before Jame said abruptly, “You mustn’t judge us, you know.”
Rees looked up. “What?”
Jame was nursing a half-finished bottle; he lay awkwardly against the plate, eyes misty with drink. “We all have to survive. Right? And when the shipments of supplies from the Raft dried up, there was only one place to go for food…” He thumped his bottle against the plate and fixed Rees with a stare. “I opposed it, I can tell you. I said it was better that we should die than trade with such people. But it was a group decision. And I accept it.” He waggled a finger at Rees. “It was the choice of all of us, and I accept my share of the responsibility.”
Rees stared, baffled, and Jame seemed to sober a little. Then surprise, even wonder, spread across the barman’s face. “You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you?”
“Jamie, I haven’t the faintest idea. Nobody told us exiles a damn thing—”
Jame half-laughed, scratching his head. Then he glanced around the sky, picking out a few of the brighter stars, clearly judging the plate’s position. “Well, you’ll find out soon enough. We’re nearly there. Take a look, Rees. Below us, to my right somewhere—”
Rees turned onto his belly and thrust his face below the plate. At first he could see nothing in the direction Jame had indicated — then, squinting, he made out a small, dark speck of matter.
The hours wore on. Jame carefully adjusted the thrust from the jets. The speck grew to a ball the color of dried blood. At length Rees made out human figures standing on or crawling over all sides of the ball, as if glued there; judging from their size the sphere must have been perhaps thirty yards wide.
Jame joined him. With absent-minded companionship he passed Rees his bottle. “Here. Now, look, boy; what you have to remember if you want to last here more than a half-shift is that these are human beings just like you and me…”
They were nearing the surface now. The sphere-world was quite crowded with people, adults and children: they went naked, or wore ragged tunics, and were uniformly short, squat and well-muscled. One man stood under their little craft, watching their approach.
The surface of the worldlet was composed of sheets of something like dried cloth. Hair sprouted from it here and there. In one place the sheets were ripped, exposing the interior structure of the worldlet.
Rees saw the white of bone.
He took a shuddering pull at Jaine’s bottle.
The man below raised his head; his eyes met Rees’s, and the Boney raised his arms as if in welcome.
9
Jame brought the plate to a smooth landing on the crackling surface of the worldlet. Silently he set to work unlashing the batches of iron from the net.
Rees clung to the net and stared wildly around. The cramped horizon was made up of sheets of hairy, brownish material, stirring sluggishly. Again Rees saw the white of bone protruding through breaks in the surface.
He felt his bladder loosen. He closed his eyes and clamped down. Come on, Rees; you’ve faced greater perils than this, more immediate dangers…
But the Boneys were a myth from his childhood, sleep-time monsters to frighten recalcitrant children. Surely, in a universe which contained the cairn, machined interior of the Bridge, there was no room for such ugliness?
“Welcome,” a high, dry voice said. “So you’ve yet another guest for us, Jame?” The man Rees had seen from the air was standing over the plate now, accepting an armful of iron from Jame. A few conventional-looking food packages were stacked at the man’s feet. Briskly Jame bundled them onto the plate and fixed them to the net.