Now the tree's rotating branches bit into the air and it jerked upwards by a good yard. Pallis was almost shaken loose. A cloud of skitters came tumbling from the foliage; the tiny wheel-shaped creatures buzzed around his face and arms as they tried to regain the security of their parent.

Damn that boy—

With an angry, liquid movement of his arms he hauled himself through the foliage to the top side of the tree. The ragged blanket of smoke and steam hung a few yards above his head, attached tenuously to the branches by threads of smoke. The damp wood in at least half the fire bowls fixed to the branches had, he soon found, been consumed.

And Gover, his so-called assistant, was nowhere to be seen.

His toes wrapped around the foliage, Pallis drew himself to his full height. At fifty thousand shifts he was old by Nebula standards; but his stomach was still as flat and as hard as the trunk of one of his beloved fleet of trees, and most men would shy from the network of branch scars that covered his face, forearms and hands and flared red at moments of anger.

And this was one of those moments.

"Gover! By the Bones themselves, what do you think you are doing?"

A thin, clever face appeared above one of the bowls near the rim of the tree. Gover shook his way out of a nest of leaves and came scurrying across the platform of foliage, a pack bouncing against his narrow back.

Paliis stood with arms folded and biceps bunched. "Gover," he said softly, "I'll ask you again. What do you think you're doing?"

Gover shoved the back of his hand against his nose, pushing the nostrils out of shape; the hand came away glistening. "I'd finished," he mumbled.