In fact, perhaps the need to move the Raft had provided the glue which had held society together this far. Here was a project which would clearly benefit all.
Yes, it was all admirable — but if it was too slow it wouldn't mean a damn thing. The falling star was still miles overhead, arid there was no immediate danger of impact, but if pressure was maintained on the trees for too long the great plants would tire. Not only would they prove unable to drag the Raft anywhere — it was even conceivable that some might fail altogether, threatening the Raft's security in the air.
Damn it. He hung his head over the lip of the plate, trying to judge where the problem lay. The Rim wall of smoke looked solid enough; the distant stars cast a long shadow over the masked workers who labored at the base of the cliff of smoke.
Then the problem must be with the tethered trees themselves. There was a pilot, plus assistants, in each tree, and each of them was trying to maintain his own fence of smoke. Those small barriers were probably the most significant factor in influencing the movement of the individual trees. And, even from up here, Pallis could see how ragged and insubstantial some of those barriers were.
He thumped his fist into the deck of the craft. Damn it; the purges of the revolution, and the fevers and starvation that had followed, had left his corps of pilots as depleted of skilled people as most other sectors of Raft society. He remembered Raft translations of the past: the endless calculations, the shift-long briefings, the motion of the trees like components of a fine machine…
There had been time for none of that. Some of the newer pilots barely had the skill to keep from falling out of their trees. And building a lateral wall was one of the most difficult of a pilot's arts; it was like sculpting with smoke…
He spotted a group of trees whose barriers were particularly ragged. He pointed them out to Jame.
The barman grinned and yanked at his control cables.
Pallis tried to ignore the gale in his face, the stink of steam; he put aside his nostalgia for the stately grandeur of the trees. Beside him he heard Nead curse as his papers were blown like leaves. The plate swooped among the trees like some huge, unlikely skitter; Pallis couldn't help but flinch as branches shot past, mere feet from his face. At last the craft came to rest. From here those smoke barriers looked even more tenuous; Pallis watched, despairing, as raw pilots waved blankets at wisps of smoke.
He cupped his hands to his mouth. "You!"
Small faces turned up to him. One pilot tumbled backwards.
"Build up your bowls!" Pallis called angrily. "Get a decent amount of smoke. All you're doing with those damn blankets is blowing around two fifths of five per cent of bugger all…"
The pilots inched their way to their bowls and began feeding fresh kindling to the tiny flames.
Nead tugged at Pallis's sleeve. "Pilot. Should that be happening?"
Pallis looked. Two trees, wrapped in distorted blankets of smoke, were inclining blindly towards one another, their amateur pilots evidently absorbed in the minutiae of blankets and bowls.
"No, it bloody shouldn't be happening." Pallis spat. "Barman! Get us down there, and fast—"
The trees' first touch was almost tender: a rustle of foliage, a gentle kiss of snapping twigs. Then the first snag occurred, and the two platforms locked and shuddered. The crews of the trees gaped with sudden horror at each other.
The trees kept turning; now sections of rim were torn away and wooden shards rained through the air. A branch caught and with a scream like some animal's was torn away by the root. Now the trees began to roll into each other, in a vast, slow, noisy collision. The smooth platforms of foliage shattered. Fist-sized splinters sailed past the plate craft; Nead howled and covered his head.
Pallis glared down at the crews of the dying trees. "Get off there! The damn trees are finished. Get down your cables and save yourselves."
They stared up at him, frightened and confused. Pallis shouted on until at last he saw them slide down rippling cables to the deck.
The trees were now locked in a doomed embrace, their angular momenta mingling, their trunks orbiting in a whirl of foliage and branch stumps. Wall-sized sections of wood splintered away and the air was filled with the creak of rending timber; Pallis saw fire bowls go sailing through the air, and he prayed that the crews had had the foresight to douse their flames.
Soon little was left but the trunks, locked together by a tangle of twisted branches; now the trees' anchoring cables were torn loose like shoulders from sockets, and the freed trunks pirouetted with a strange grace, half tumbling.
At last the trunks crashed to the deck, exploding in a storm of fragments. Pallis saw men running for their lives from the rain of wood. For some minutes splinters fell, like a hail of ragged daggers; then, slowly, men began to creep back to the crash site, stepping over tree cables which lay like the limbs of a corpse among the ruins.
Silently Pallis motioned to Jame. "There's nothing we can do here; let's get on." The plate craft lifted and returned to its patrols.
For several more hours Pallis's plate skimmed about the flying forest. At the end of it Jame was muttering angrily, his face blackened by the rising smoke, and Pallis's throat was raw with shouting. At last Nead placed his sextant in his lap and sat back with a smile. "That's it," he said. "I think, anyway…"
"What's what?" Jame growled. "Is the Raft out from under the bloody star now?"
"No, not yet. But it's got enough momentum without further impulse from the trees. In a few hours it will drift to a halt far enough from the path of the star to be safe."
Pallis lay back in the netting of the plate and took a draught from a drink globe. "So we've made it."
Nead said dreamily, "It's not quite over for the Raft yet. When the star passes through the plane in which the Raft lies there will be a few interesting tidal effects."
Pallis shrugged. "Nothing the Raft hasn't endured before."
"It must be a fantastic sight, Pallis."
"Yes, it is," the pilot mused. He remembered watching cable shadows lengthen across the deck; at last the circumference of the star disc would touch the horizon, sending light flaring across the deck. And when the main disc had dropped below the Rim there would be an afterglow, what the Scientists call a corona…
Jame squinted into the sky. "How often does this happen, then? How often does the Raft get in the way of a falling star?"
Pallis shrugged. "Not often. Once or twice a generation. Often enough for us to have built up skills to deal with it."
"But you need the Scientists — the likes of this one—" Jame jerked a thumb at Nead " — to work out what to do."
"Well, of course." Nead sounded amused. "You can't do these things by sticking a wet finger into the wind."
"But a lot of the Scientists are going to bugger off, on this Bridge thing."