"You don't have to go," Pallis said quickly.
Sheen's eyes sparkled with amusement.
Again Rees looked from one to the other. "I guess it would be for the best," he said. With mumbled farewells, he left.
Pallis handed Sheen a drink globe. "So he's carrying a torch for you."
"Adolescent lust," she said starkly.
Pallis grinned. "I can understand that. But Rees is no adolescent."
"I know that. He's become determined, and he's driving us all ahead of him. He's the savior of the world. But he's also a bloody idiot when he wants to be."
"I think he's jealous…"
"Is there something for him to be jealous of, tree-pilot?"
Pallis dropped his eyes without reply.
"So," she said briskly, "you're not travelling on the Bridge. That was the meaning of your gift to Rees, wasn't it?"
He nodded, turning to the space the cage had occupied.
"There's not much of my life left," he said slowly. "My place on that Bridge would be better to go to some youngster."
She reached forward and touched his knee; the feeling of her flesh was electric. "They'll only invite you to go if they think they need you."
He snorted. "Sheen, by the time those caged skitters have grown, my stiffening corpse will long since have been hurled over the Rim. And what use will I be without a tree to fly?" He pointed to the flying forest hidden by the cabin's roof. "My life is the forest up there. After the Bridge goes, the Raft will still be here, for a long time to come. And they're going to need their trees."
She nodded. "Well, I understand, even if I don't agree." She fixed him with her clear eyes. "I guess we can debate it after the Bridge has gone."
He gasped; then he reached out and took her hand. "What are you talking about? Surely you're not planning to stay too? Sheen, you're crazy—"
"Tree-pilot," she snapped, "I did not insult you on the quality of your decision." She let her hand rest in his. "As you said, the Raft is going to be here for a long time to come. And so is the Belt. It's going to be grim after the Bridge departs, taking away — all our hope. But someone will have to keep things turning. Someone will have to call the shift changes. And, like you, I find I don't want to leave behind my life."
He nodded. "Well, I won't say I agree—"
She said warningly, "Tree-pilot—"
"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.