"He's an exile." Gover sidled up to Decker, his small fists clenching and unclenching. "I saw him approaching on the whale and had him brought to you. You threw him off the Raft. Now he's back. And he's a miner…"

"So?" Decker demanded.

"Make the bastard walk the beam."

Stray emotions chased like shadows across Decker's complex, worn face. The man was tired, Rees realized suddenly; tired of the unexpected complexity of his role, tired of the blood, the endless privations, the suffering…

Tired, And looking for a few minutes' diversion.

"So you'd have him over the side, eh?"

Gover nodded, eyes still fixed on Rees.

Decker murmured, "Shame you weren't so brave while the miners were in the sky." Gover flinched. A cruel smile surfaced through Decker's tiredness. "AH right, Gover. I agree with your judgment. But with one proviso."

"What?"

"No beam. There's been enough cowardly killing this shift. No. Let him die the way a man is meant to. Hand to hand." Gover's eyes widened, shocked. Decker stepped back, leaving Rees and Gover facing each other. A small crowd gathered around them, a ring of bloodstained faces eager for diversion.

"More bloody games, Decker?"

"Shut up, Pallis."

From the corner of his eye Rees saw the two heavies — Plath and Seel — clamp the tree-pilot's arms tight.

Rees looked into Gover's twisted, frightened face. "Decker, I've come a long way," he said. "And I've something to tell you… something more important than you can dream."

Decker raised his eyebrows. "Really? I'll be fascinated to hear about it… later. First, you fight."

Gover crouched, hands spread like claws.

It seemed he had no choice. Rees raised his arms, tried to think himself into the fight. Once he could have taken Gover with one arm behind his back. But — after so many shifts with the Boneys and riding the whale — now he wasn't sure…

Gover seemed to sense his doubt; his fear seemed to evaporate, and his posture adjusted subtly, became more aggressive. "Come on, mine rat." He stepped toward Rees.

Rees groaned inwardly. He didn't have time for this. Come on, think; hadn't he learned anything on his journey? How would a Boney handle this? He remembered the whale-spears lancing through the air with deadly accuracy—

"Watch it, Gover," someone called. "He's got a weapon."

Rees found the half-bottle still in his hand… and an idea blossomed. "What, this? All right, Gover — hand to hand. Just you and me." He closed his eyes, felt the pull of the Raft and Platform play on the gravitational sense embedded in his stomach — then he hurled the glass as hard as he could, not quite vertically. It sparkled through the starlit air.

Gover showed his teeth; they were even and brown.

Rees stepped forward. Time seemed to slow, and the world around him froze; the only motion was the twinkling of the glass in the air above him. Everything became bright and vivid, as if illuminated by some powerful lantern within his eyes. Detail overwhelmed him, sharp and gritty: he counted the beads of sweat on Gover's brow, saw how the apprentice's nostrils flared white as he breathed. Rees's throat tightened and he felt the blood pump in his neck; and all the while the half-bottle, small and graceful, was orbiting perfectly through the complex gravitational field…

Until, at last, it dipped back toward the deck. And slammed into Gover's back.

Gover went down howling. For some seconds he writhed on the deck, the blood pooling over the metal around him. Then, at last, he was still, and the blood ceased to flow.

For long moments nobody moved, Decker, Pallis and the rest forming a shocked tableau.

Rees knelt. Gover's back had been transformed into a mash of blood and torn cloth. Rees forced his hands into the wound and dug out the glass, then he stood holding aloft the grisly trophy, Gover's blood trickling down his arm.

Decker scratched his head. "By the Bones…" He half-laughed.

Rees felt a cold, hard anger course through him. "I know what you're thinking," he told Decker quietly. "You don't expect the likes of me to fight dirty. I cheated; I didn't follow the rules. Right?"

Decker nodded uncertainly.

"Well, this isn't a bloody game!" Rees screamed, spraying Decker's face with spittle. "I wasn't going to let this fool kill me, not before I make you hear what I've got to say.

"Decker, you'll destroy me if you want to. But if you want any chance of saving your people you'll hear me out." He brandished the glass in Decker's face. "Has this earned me the right to be heard? Has it?"

Decker's mask of scars was impassive. He said quietly, "You'd better take this one home, tree-pilot. Get him cleaned up." With one last, narrow glare, he turned away.

Rees dropped the glass. Abruptly his fatigue crashed down. The deck seemed to quiver, and now it was rising to meet his face—

Arms around his shoulders and waist. He raised his head blearily. "Pallis. Thanks… I had to do it, you see. You understand that, don't you?"

The tree-pilot would not meet his eyes; he stared at Rees's bloody hands and shuddered.

12

The Belt was a shabby toy hanging in the air above Pallis. Two plate craft hovered between Pallis's tree and the Belt; every few minutes they emitted puffs of steam and spurted a few yards through the clouds. Miners glared down from the craft across the intervening yards at the tree.

The craft were motes of iron in a vast pit of red-lit air. But, Pallis reflected with a sigh, they marked a wall as solid as any of wood or metal. He stood by the trunk of his tree and stared up at the sentries, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. "Well, it's no use hanging about here," he said. "We'll have to go in."

Jaen's broad face was smudged with soot from the fire bowls. "Pallis, you're crazy. They're obviously not going to let us past." She waved a muscular arm at the miners. "The Raft and the Belt are at war, for goodness' sake!"

"The trouble with having you Science rejects as apprentice woodsmen is that you argue at every damn thing. Why the hell can't you just do as you're told?"

Jaen's broad face split into a grin. "Would you rather have Gover back, pilot? You shouldn't complain if the revolution's brought you such a high caliber of staff."

Pallis straightened up and dusted off his hands. "All right, high caliber; we need to work. Let's get these bowls stoked."

She frowned. "You're serious? We're going on?"

"You heard what Rees said… What we have to tell these miners is possibly the most important news since the Ship arrived in the Nebula in the first place. And we're going to make those damn miners listen whether they like it or not. If that means we let them blast us out of the sky, then we accept it. And another tree will come, and that will be destroyed too; and then another, and another, until finally these damn fool mine rats work out that we really do want to talk to them."

Throughout his awkward speech Jaen had kept her head down, fiddling with the kindling in a fire bowl; now she looked up. "I suppose you're right." She bit her lip. "I just wish—"

"What?"

"I just wish it wasn't Rees who had come back from the dead to save the human race. That little mine rat was pompous enough as he was…"

Pallis laughed. "Fill your bowl, apprentice."

Jaen set to work. Pallis took a silent pleasure in working with her. She was a good woodsman, fast and efficient; somehow she knew what to do without being told, and without getting in his damn way…

The blanket of smoke gathered beneath the platform of foliage. The tree rotated faster and surged up at the Belt, the air rushing through its foliage evoking sharp, homely scents in Pallis's nostrils. The sentry craft were immobile shadows against the red sky. Pallis braced his legs against the trunk of his tree, the strength of the wood a comforting base below him, and cupped his hands to his mouth. "Miners!"