"But I respect your decision. And—" He felt the heat rise to his face again. "And I'm glad you'll still be here."

She smiled and moved her face closer to his. "What are you trying to say, tree-pilot?"

"Maybe we can keep each other company."

She reached up, took a curl of his beard, and tugged it gently. "Yes. Maybe we can."

14

A cage of scaffolding obscured the Bridge's clean lines. Crew members crawled over the scaffolding fixing steam jets to the Bridge's hull. Rees, with Hollerbach and Grye, walked around the perimeter of the work area. Rees eyed the project with a critical eye. "We're too slow, damn it."

Grye twisted his hands together. "Rees, I'm forced to say that your detailed understanding of this project is woefully lacking. Come—" He beckoned. "Let me show you how much progress we have made." He slapped a plump hand against the wooden cage surrounding the Bridge; it was a rectangular box securely fastened to the deck, and it supported three broad hoops which wrapped around the Bridge itself. "We can't take chances with this," Grye said. "The last stage in the launch process will be the cutting away of the Bridge from the deck. When that is done, all that will support the Bridge will be this scaffolding. A mistake made here could cause catastrophic—"

"I know, I know," Rees said, irritated. "But the fact is we're running out of time…"

They came to the Bridge's open port. Under the supervision of Jaen and another Scientist, two burly workmen were manhandling an instrument out of the Observatory. The instrument — a mass spectrometer, Rees recognized — was dented and scratched, and its power lead terminated in a melted stump. The spectrometer was placed with several others in an eerie group some yards from the Bridge; the discarded instruments turned blinded sensors to the sky.

Hollerbach shuddered. "And this is something I certainly hesitate over," he said, his voice strained. "We face an awful dilemma. Every instrument we vandalize and throw out gives us floor space and air for another four or five people. But can we afford to leave behind this telescope, that spectrometer? Is this device a mere luxury — or, in the unknown environs of our destination, will we leave ourselves blind in some key spectrum?"

Rees suppressed a sigh. Hesitation, delays, obfus-cations, more delays… Obviously the Scientists could not metamorphose into men of action in mere hours — and he sympathized with the dilemmas they were trying to resolve — but he wished they could learn to establish and stick to priorities.

Now they came to a group of Scientists probing cautiously at a food machine. The huge device loomed over them, its outlets like stilled mouths. Rees knew that the machine was too large to carry into the Bridge's interior, and so it — and a second companion machine — would, rather absurdly, have to be lodged close to the port in the Bridge's outer corridor.

Grye and Hollerbach both made to speak, but Rees held up his hands. "No," he said acidly. "Let me go into the reasons why we can't possibly rush this particular process. We've calculated that if strict rationing is imposed during the flight two machines should satisfy our needs. This one even has an air filtration and oxygenation unit built into it, we've discovered…"

"Yes," Grye said eagerly, "but that calculation depends on a key assumption: that the machines will work at full efficiency inside the Bridge. And we don't know enough about their power supply to be sure. We know this machine's power source is built into it somehow — unlike the Bridge instruments, which shared a single unit by way of cables — and we even suspect, from the old manuals, that it's based on a microscopic black hole — but we're not sure. What if it requires starlight as a source of replenishment? What if it produces volumes of some noxious gas which, in the confines of the Bridge, will suffocate us all?"

Rees said, "We have to test and be sure, I accept that. If the efficiency of the machine goes down by just ten per cent — then that's fifty more people we have to leave behind."

Grye nodded. "Then you see—"

"I see that these decisions take time. But time is what we just don't have, damn it…" Pressure built inside him: a pressure which, he knew, would not be relieved until, for better or worse, the Bridge was launched.

Walking on, they met Gord. The mine engineer and Nead, who was working as his assistant, were carrying a steam jet unit to the Bridge. Gord nodded briskly. "Gentlemen."

Rees studied the little mine engineer, his worries momentarily lifting. Gord had returned to his old efficient, bustling, slightly prickly self; he was barely recognizable as the shadow Rees had found on the Boneys' worldlet "You're doing well, Gord."

Gord scratched his bald pate. "We're progessing," he said lightly. "I'll say no more than that; but, yes, we're progressing."

Hollerbach leaned forward, hands folded behind his back. "What about this control system problem?"

Gord nodded cautiously. "Rees, are you up to date on this one? To direct the Bridge's fall — to change its orbit — we need some way to control the steam jets we'll have fixed to the hull; but we don't want to make any breaches in the hull through which to pass our control lines. We don't even know if we can make breaches, come to that.

"Now it looks as if we can use components from the cannibalized Moles. Some of their motor units operate on an action-at-a-distance principle. I'm just a simple engineer; maybe you Scientists understand the ins and outs of it. But what it boils down to is that we may be able to operate the jets from inside the Bridge with a series of switches which won't need any physical connection to the jets at all. We're about to run tests on the extent to which the hull material blocks the signals."

Hollerbach smiled. "I'm impressed. Was this your idea?"

"Ah…" Gord scratched his cheek. "We did get a little guidance from a Mole brain. Once you ask the right questions — and get past its complaints about 'massive sensor dysfunction' — it's surprising how…" His voice tailed away and his eyes widened.

"Rees." The vast voice came from behind Rees; the Scientist stiffened. "I thought I'd find you hanging around here."

Rees turned and lifted his face up to Roch's. The huge miner's eyes were, as ever, red-rimmed with inchoate anger; his fists opened and closed like pistons. Grye whimpered softly and edged behind Hollerbach. "I have work to do, Roch," Rees said calmly. "So must you; I suggest you return to it."

"Work?" Roch's filth-rimmed nostrils flared and he waved a fist at the Bridge. "Like hell will I work so you and your pox-ridden friends can fly off in this fancy thing."

Hollerbach said sternly, "Sir, the lists of passengers have not yet been published; and until they are it is up to all of us—"

"They don't need to be published. We all know who'll be on that trip… and it won't be the likes of me. Rees, I should have sucked your brains out of your skull while I had the chance down on the kernel." Roch held up a rope-like finger, "I'll be back," he growled. "And when I find I'm not on that list I'm going to make damn sure you're not either." He stabbed the finger at Grye. "And the same goes for you!"

Grye turned ash white and trembled convulsively.

Roch stalked off. Gord hefted his jet and said wryly, "Good to know that in this time of upheaval some things have stayed exactly the same. Come on, Nead; let's get this thing mounted."

Rees faced Hollerbach and Grye. He jabbed a thumb over his shoulder toward the departed Roch. "That's why we are running out of time," he said. "The political situation on this Raft — no, damn it, the human situation — is deteriorating fast. The whole thing is unstable. Everyone knows that a 'list' is being drawn up… and most people have a good idea who'll be on it. How long can we expect people to work toward a goal most of them cannot share? A second uprising would be catastrophic. We would descend into anarchy—"