(Found) Can you help me name this book?

[10seven]

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I've read it, but can neither remember the title, the author, nor even the publisher!

The story is of a 'starship' that somehow comes to be marooned in an alternate universe 'bubble' - a miniuniverse around a lowlight star.

Curious to this universe are 'flying trees' which float continuously about the star much like helicopters.

Into this, the starship crew - probably descended from scientists - has slowly expanded the wreck into a floating town - suspended through use of the aforementioned flying trees.

The society is stratified, with a lower class working in the mines - which are made in asteroids orbiting closer to the star - and subject to far higher gravity.

Eventually it is learned that the universe is 'dying' and the protagonist escapes on a migratory lifeform - something like a spacefaring whale.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

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[nemogbr]

This sounds like RAFT by Stephen Baxter.

Synopsis
Stephen Baxter's highly acclaimed first novel and the beginning of his stunning Xeelee Sequence. A spaceship from Earth accidentally crossed through a hole in space-time to a universe where the force of gravity is one billion times as strong as the gravity we know. Somehow the crew survived, aided by the fact that they emerged into a cloud of gas surrounding a black hole, which provided a breathable atmosphere. Five hundred years later, their descendants still struggle for existence, divided into two main groups. The Miners live on the Belt, a ramshackle ring of dwellings orbiting the core of a dead star, which they excavate for raw materials. These can be traded for food from the Raft, a structure built from the wreckage of the ship, on which a small group of scientists preserve the ancient knowledge which makes survival possible. Rees is a Miner whose curiosity about his world makes him stow away on a flying tree -- just one of the many strange local lifeforms -- carrying trade between the Belt and the Raft. Accepted as an apprentice scientist, he learns that their world is dying, and that in order to live these survivors must contemplate a journey even more perilous and fantastic.

I quote the above from the Amazon website

I haven't been able to read it, although I have read TIMELIKE INFINITY, just haven't gotten round to this one for some reason.

 

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy]

I think we have a match here - well spotted, nemogbr! And welcome, 10seven.

 

[10seven]

a simple thanks couldn't completely convey.

But, 'thanks', all the same.

The effort is much appreciated

As well for the welcome