The Net shuddered in her grip, its coarse fibers abrading her palms; the sharp pain jolted her rudely back to the here and now. She sighed, gathering her strength, as weariness closed around her again.

“Dura! Dura!”

The childish voice, thin and scared, came drifting to her from a few mansheights away. Gripping the Net with one hand, she twisted to see Farr, her little brother, suspended in the Air like a discarded fragment of cloth and flesh. He was Waving toward her.

When Farr reached her, Dura enfolded him in her free arm, helping him wrap his arms and legs around the security of the Net’s ropes. He was breathing hard and trembling, and she could see the short hairs which coated his scalp pulsing as superfluid surged through them.

“I was thrown off,” he gasped between gulps of Air. “I lost my piglet.”

“So I see. Are you okay?”

“I think so.” He stared up at her, his eyes wide and empty, and he raked his gaze across the sky as if searching for the source of this betrayal of his safety. “This is terrible, isn’t it, Dura? Are we going to die?”

She ran her fingers casually through his stiff hair. “No,” she said, with a conviction she could never have mustered for herself alone. “No, we won’t die. But we are in danger. Now come on, we should get to work. We need to get the Net taken apart, folded up, before the next instability hits us and wrecks it.” She pointed to a small, open-looking knot. “There. Undo that. As quick as you can.”

He buried his trembling fingers in the knot and began prizing out lengths of rope. “How long before the next ripple?”

“Long enough to finish the job,” she said firmly. For confirmation, with her own fingers still dragging at the stubborn knots, she glanced upflux — Northward — to the source of the next ripple.