Marco nodded. 'Quite so. It gives one an uneasy feeling around the ankles, akin to standing on a ledge a hundred storeys up -- a wide ledge perhaps, but a high one.'

'I begin to see what Kin meant when she wrote about the Spindles,' insistence on having a few thousand miles of planet beneath their feet,' said Silver. 'It is a mental anchor. The subconscious fears the endless drop towards the bottom of the Universe. Could our vague feeling be a shadow of the Spindle imperative?'

'It is said that they helped us evolve, so that is always possible. What do you think, Kin? Kin?'

'Hunh? Wassat?'

'Were you listening?'

'Sorry, I was looking at the scenery. Silver, what's that smudge down there? In what would be Central Europe.'

'I see it. That, I suspect, is where our ship crashed.'

They all looked. The smoke was a mere wisp at this distance.

'It looks like a pretty lifeless region,' said Silver, in tones of comfort.

'It is now,' said Kin bitterly.

Invisible a few miles below, its wings a blur of speed, the raven focused on the smoke. Behind its eyes, something went click.

The moon rose, full but reddish, underpowered. It illuminated a speeding landscape that was mainly forest. Here and there patches of land and a few orange lights indicated a settlement.

Marco called them to a halt after a long stretch of dark forest-roof had passed below.

'Marco, let's land,' said Kin wearily.

'Not until we have spied out the land!'

'That bit immediately below us looks unmatched, believe me.'

Silver landed first, on the reasonable assumption that wild animals would be unlikely to attack her. She switched off her suit and unzipped the helmet, then stood silently, nostrils dilating. After a minute she turned, sniffed again.

'It's OK,' she said. 'I smell wolves, but the scent is old. There are some boars about a mile hubward, and I think there's some beavers in that river about two miles towards the rim. No men.' She sniffed again, and hesitated.

"There is something else. Can't identify it, though. Odd. Vaguely insectile.'

They landed anyway. Kin was dozing in her suit, but concentrated just long enough to stop the belt from crashing her into the turf at the side of the hill. She switched off, and allowed herself to sink gently into the scented grass.

She awoke when Marco gently put a bowl of soup into her hands.

He and Silver had lit a fire. Orange flames shot up and illuminated the forest leaves thirty metres away, and made the camp a circle of comforting firelight. It glittered off the dumbwaiter.

'Who should know better than I that it is unsafe,' said the kung, seeing the questioning look in her face, 'but I'm human enough to say, what the hell. Silver has taken first watch. Then it's you. Better get some more sleep.'

Thanks. Uh, look, Marco, about that floating island--'

'We will not mention it. We will be over land most of the rest of the way to the hub.'

'We may find nothing.'

'Of course. But what is all life but a journeying towards the Centre?'

'I'm more worried about the belt power sources. Can we be sure they'll last out?'

'No, but there is a built in hysteresis effect. If the power sinks below a certain level it'll waft you gently to the ground.'

'Or the sea,' said Kin.

'Or the sea. But I know what is worrying you. It is the fear that your Company did all this. But why should they?'

'Because we can.'

'I don't understand.'

'No. But we could build dragons, we could create people in the vats as easily as we breed up extinct whales. The theory is all there, but we don't do it because of the Code. But it is possible. We could have built this disc, but no-one would dare do it in home space. Out here -- it's a different matter.'

Marco looked at her sadly. 'Silver convinced me,' he said. 'If I'm rational, I'm a kung. I'm glad I'm not human.'

Kin finished her soup and lay back. She felt warm and full. Marco had curled up with four Norse swords beside him, but she could dimly make out Silver sitting motionless higher up the hill. Always a comforting sight, she told herself. As long as the dumbwaiter works.

She did not dream.

Silver shook her awake before midnight. Kin yawned and staggered to her feet.

'Anything been happening?' she mumbled.

Silver considered. 'I think an owl hooted about an hour ago, and there were some bats. Apart from that, it has been pretty quiet.'

Silver lay down. Within a few minutes deep snores told Kin she was on her own.

The moon was high, but still too red. The stars had taken on that deep light that always comes around midnight. Grass, heavy with dew, rustled as she walked away from the dying fire.

Even now there was still some light on the sunset rim, a green glow that just managed to delineate the boundary between disc and sky. Moths hummed past her face, and there was a smell of crushed thyme.

Later, she wondered if she had dozed on her feet. But the moon was still up and the -- call it the west -- was still a line of faint luminosity. Yet the music came pouring down the hillside confidently, as though it had been there all the time.

It trilled, then soared into a few bars of evocative melody. Evocative of what, Kin could not decide -- perhaps of things that never were, but which ought to have been. It was distilled music.

The fire was a sullen eye between the two sleeping figures. Kin started to climb the bare hill, leaving darker footprints in the damp grass.

A picture came into her mind of the music as a living thing, coiling around the hill and disappearing into the hushed forest. She told herself she could always turn back if she wanted to, and walked on.

She saw the elf on a mossy stone at the top of the hill, outlined against the afterglow. It sat crosslegged, hunched over the pipes, intent upon the music.

Inside the woman who stood entranced, another Kin Arad, imprisoned in the corner of the mind, hammered on the consciousness: (It's an insect! Don't listen! It looks like a cross between a man and a cockchafer! Look at the antennae! Those things aren't ears!)

The music stopped abruptly.

'No--' said Kin.

The triangular head turned round. For a moment Kin looked into two narrow, glittering eyes that were greener than the light behind them. Then there was a hiss and a patter of feet over the turf. A little later, there was a rustle in the forest. Then the night closed in again, like velvet.

At dawn they rose above the forest and headed hub-wards, leaving long curling trails in the rising mists.

On the horizon a pillar of smoke loomed like the finger of judgement. It was so thick it cast a shadow.

'I don't know what effect it has on the natives, but it terrifies me,' said Kin. 'We should have blown up the ship in the air, Marco.'

'Their planet hit us,' he said testily. 'It is their responsibility.'

The forest gave way to fields, striped with crops. A distant man, walking behind a plough drawn by ant-sized oxen, fell on his knees as their shadow passed over him. From the boundaries of the field a dirt road ran through a cluster of turf huts, forded a river and disappeared under the trees.

'He didn't look like a whizz planetary technician,' said Kin.

'No,' said Marco. 'He looked shit-scared. But someone built this disc.'

Breakfast they had on a cliff top overlooking the sea. Marco watched it carefully. After a while he asked: 'Kin, if you were the disc master, how would you arrange for tides?'

'Easy. Have a water reservoir under the disc and occasionally allow extra water into the sea. Why?'

'This tide is bloody high. There are half-drowned trees down there. What is the matter? Are you being attacked ?'