Through her fingers she could see the encampment, a little knot of frantic detail and activity — jostling, terrified Air-pigs, scrambling people, the quivering Net — all embedded in the shuddering bulk of the Air. Farr with his struggling Air-piglet was a pathetic scrap, wriggling through the invisible flux tubes.

Dura tried to ignore the small, messy knot of humanity, to focus on the lines.

Normally the motion of the lines was stately, predictable — regular enough for the Human Beings to measure their lives by it, in fact. Overlaid on the eternal drift of the lines toward the Crust there were pulses of line-bunching: the tight, sharp crowdings that marked the days, and the slower, more complex second-order oscillations which humans used to count their months. In normal times it was easy for the Human Beings to avoid the slow creep of the lines; there was always plenty of time to dismantle the Net, repitch their little encampment in another corner of the empty sky.

Dura even knew what caused the lines’ stately pulsations, much good the knowledge did her: the Star had a companion, far beyond the Crust — a planet, a ball like the Star but smaller, lighter — which revolved, unseen, over their heads, pulling at the vortex lines as if with invisible fingers. And, of course, beyond the planet — the childish ideas returned to her unbidden, like fragments of her lingering sleep — beyond the planet were the stars of the Ur-humans, impossibly distant and forever invisible.

The drifting vortex lines were as stable and secure, in normal times, as the fingers of some friendly god; humans, Air-pigs and others moved freely between the lines, fearlessly and without any danger…

Except during a Glitch.

Now, across the frame of her spread fingers, the vortex array was shifting visibly as the superfluid Air sought to realign with the Star’s adjusted rotation. Instabilities — great parallel sets of ripples — already marched majestically along the length of the lines, bearing the news of the Star’s new awakening from Pole to magnetic Pole.