The wormhole was an artifact, she told herself. And an artifact built by humans — by Ur-humans, perhaps, but by humans nonetheless. She should not cringe before a mere device.

She forced her eyes open.

The ship shuddered.

Dura cried, “Too fast! You’re going too fast, damn it; we’ll turn over if you don’t slow down… Are you crazy?”

The control levers were still buried inside Hork’s fleshy hands, but when he turned to her his wide face was empty, wondering. “It’s not me,” he said slowly. “I mean, it’s not the ship… we’re no longer propelling ourselves. Dura, we’re being drawn into the wormhole.” He stared at the little control console, as if seeking an answer there. “And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

Cris rode the turbulent Magfield almost automatically. He stared at the neutrino fount, fascinated, almost forgetting his own peril. The fount was a tower, dark, unimaginably massive, thrusting out of the turbulent mass of the Quantum Sea. As it rose into Mantle Air, the viscous purple Sea-stuff crusted over, shattering, the fragments spiraling upward around the dense-packed flux lines of the Magfield.

Here was stuff from deep in the heart of the Star — deeper than any Bell had gone, deeper perhaps even than Hork’s wooden ship would reach. Here was an expulsion of material from the immense, single nucleus that was the soul of the Star, from within the nebulous boundary between Sea and Core. The fount’s material was hyperonic; each hyperon was a huge cluster of quarks far more massive than any ordinary nucleon, and the hyperons were bound together by quark exchanges into complex, fractal masses. But as the material spewed up through the throat of the Pole its structure was collapsing, unable to sustain itself in the lower-density regime of the Mantle. The quark bags were breaking apart, releasing a flood of energy, and reforming as showers of nucleons; and the free nucleons — protons and neutrons — were congealing rapidly into chunks of cooling nuclear matter.

That deadly hail was now lancing through the Mantle, and would soon come streaming upward around the City. And he felt the energy released by that huge wave of hyperonic decay as it surged upward, the neutrinos sleeting through his body, hot and needle-sharp, on their way to the emptiness above the Crust.

Now, even as he watched, the spiraling paths of the charged chunks of freezing Core-matter seemed to be distorting — flattening — as if the Magfield itself were changing, in response to the disaster.

Suddenly Cris understood.

The Magfield was changing. The irruption of this immense freight of charged material from the Core had disrupted the field; the Sea-fount was like an electrical current, unimaginably strong, passing through the heart of the Star’s Magfield Pole, temporarily competing with the great magnetic engines at the Core of the Star itself. What he’d felt — the unexpected surges in the field — had been no more than distant echoes of that huge disturbance.

…But now another of those magnetic echoes hurtled up around him. This time his feet slipped from the board and he fell forward, crying out; the board slammed against his chest and thrust him upward toward the Crust. He clung to the board helplessly, his legs scrabbling across its smooth surface, as he rose faster than he could ever have Surfed. If he lost the board he was finished, he knew. His mind raced. Perhaps he would be thrown beyond the Crust, board and all! What then? Would his body collapse into cooling fragments in the emptiness beyond, just as the Core material froze in the Mantle?

As it happened, would he be aware?

But the upward surge subsided, as suddenly as it had come.

The board stabilized in the Air, Gasping, Cris dragged himself forward across the board; his chest ached from the pressure of the board in its flight. There was the City, far below him, but still close enough for him to make out detail — the Spine, the gaping cargo ports, the encrustation of Garden on its upper surface. He felt a surge of relief, and even a little shame; he couldn’t have been thrown so impossibly high after all.

Carefully, cautiously, he tucked his knees under him, rested his feet against the board, and stood up. The Magfield was quivering like a live thing under him, and he rocked the board against it, tilting his aching ankles; but, for the moment, the field was fairly stable. Predictable. He could Surf on it… and he was going to have to, if he was to make it through this.

He glanced around the sky. He was alone now; there was no sign of any of the other hundred Surfers. Again he felt a burst of triumph, accompanied by shame. Had he survived because he was the best? Or the luckiest, perhaps?

And, he reminded himself, he might join the rest in the anonymity of death yet, before this day was through.

The vortex lines around him writhed, tortured by instabilities, by impossible, ungainly forms which warped as they propagated, gathering energy. The end of the vortex lines — the boundary of the volume of Air in which there were no vortex lines — was rushing toward him, a wall of emptiness. In that region, he knew, the turbulence of the Air, lashed by the neutrino storm from the Core, was such that its superfluid properties had broken down. He wouldn’t be able to Surf; the friction would be impossible. Damn it, he wouldn’t be able to breathe. His capillaries would clog, his heart strain at the thickening Air…

He shook his head, tried to focus. He looked down. He had to get back to the City before the turbulence reached him. (That remote part of him prodded his mind over this. Why should he be any safer in the City than outside?) Again he shook his head, growling at himself. The City was the only place to go, safe or not. Therefore he would go there. But already the chunks of frozen Sea-stuff were hurtling up around the City. A graze from one of those…

Thinking about it was pointless. He spread his feet against the board, bent his legs, and thrust.

He Surfed as he’d never Surfed before — perhaps as nobody had Surfed before. He thrust at the board again and again, ramming its Corestuff web across the shaking Magfield. He soared between rippling vortex lines, ducking and swooping. Soon he was moving so quickly that the residual normal-fluid component of the Air whipped at his hair, his face. But still he accelerated, slamming his feet against the board until his soles ached.

There was something in the distance, a new factor in the chaos the sky had become. He risked a brief glance. He saw lines crossing the sky, lancing down through the Crust across the vortex lines, and penetrating the Core — blue-white beams which stirred the Core like spoons.

Now he was entering the inverted rain from the exploded Sea. The frozen Sea-fragments were irregular, solid chunks, two or three mansheights across. They tumbled upward through the Air around him, sharp edges sparkling, Sea-purple laced through their interior. The fragments had their own, whirling magnetic fields; ghostly flux-fingers plucked at Cris as they passed him. He followed a curving path, dipping down over the Pole toward the City; flexing his legs, his hips, his neck, he slalomed through the crumbling vortex lines, the Sea-fragments.

What sport! It was wonderful! He roared aloud, yelling out his exhilaration.

The City was ahead of him now. It seemed to balloon out of the Air, its Skin swelling before him, uneven, ugly, as if being inflated from within.

He was almost home.

By the blood of the Ur-humans, he thought. I might actually live through this. And if he did, what a tale he would have to tell. What a hero he would become…

But now the Magfield surged again, betraying him.

This time he fell back; his spine was slammed against his board. The breath was knocked out of him, and he tumbled off the board, vainly clutching for its rim.