Oscar smiled at the busy city as he experienced the emotional tide of the local gaiafield. Even that had a stridency which celebrated the stubbornness of the inhabitants. His u-shadow opened a channel to the planetary cybersphere, and called a onetime address code he'd been given eighty-six years earlier, on the day he emerged from the re-life clinic. To his surprise, it was answered immediately. 'Yes?

'I need to see you, Oscar said. 'I have a problem and I need help sorting it out.

'Who the fuck are you, and how did you steal this code?

'I am Oscar Monroe, and this code was given to me. Some time ago.

There was a long pause, though the channel remained open.

'If you are an impostor, you have once chance to walk away, and that chance is now.

'I know who I am, Oscar said.

'We'll know if you are.

'Good.

'Very well. Be at the Kime Sanctuary on top of Mount Herculaneum in one hour. One of us will meet you.

The channel went dead. Oscar grinned. He shouldn't be all fired up by this, he really shouldn't.

His u-shadow contacted a local hire company, and he rented a high-performance ingrav capsule. Given who he was going to meet, he didn't want to risk technology leakage by arriving in an ultradrive ship.

The capsule bounced him over to Mount Herculaneum in a semi-ballistic lob that took twenty-eight minutes. The last time he'd seen the colossal volcano was the day he died by crashing into its lower slopes. Today, his arrival was all a lot more comfortable. The capsule shot out of the upper atmosphere, and followed the planet's curvature south-west. He watched through the sensors as the Grand Triad rose up out of the horizon. They were still the biggest mountains to be found on an H-congruous world. On a planet with a standard gravity, they would have collapsed under their own weight, but here they had kept on growing as the magma pushed further and further upwards. Mount Herculaneum, the biggest, stood thirty-two kilometres high, its plateau summit rising high above Far Away's troposphere. Northwards, Mount Zeus topped out at seventeen kilometres. While south of Herculaneum, Mount Titan reached twenty-three kilometres high; it was the only one of the Triad to remain active.

Oscar's capsule rode a tight curve above the sea-like grasslands of the Aldrin Plains before it began to sink back down again. The view was magnificent, with the vast cone of Herculaneum spread out below him. Its plateau of grubby brown regolith was broken by twin calderas. Around that, naked rock dropped down to the glacier ring far below, before the lower slopes were finally smothered in pine forests and low meadowland. Luckily for him, Titan, was semi-active today. He looked down almost vertically into its glowing red crater, watching the slow-motion ripples spreading out across the huge lake of lava. Radiant white boulders spat upwards out of the inferno to traverse lazy arcs through the vacuum, spitting off orange sparks. Some of them were flung far enough to clear the crater wall and begin their long fall to oblivion.

His sight was inevitably drawn to the long funnel canyon between Zeus and Titan which led to the base of Herculaneum. Stakeout canyon, where the storm winds coming off the Hondu Ocean were funnelled into a rampaging blast of air, which the insane thrill seekers of the early Commonwealth used to fly their hypergliders along, allowing them to sail on winds so strong they'd push them out of the atmosphere and over Herculaneum. He'd never got to attempt that last part, because he crashed his hyperglider into Anna, so Wilson might stand a chance to reach the summit.

Even though he'd braced himself for some emotional shock-wave at seeing the site of his death, he felt nothing more than a mild curiosity. That must mean I'm perfectly adjusted to this new life. Right?

As he looked along the long rocky cleft in the ground, his exovision pulled up meteorological data and a file telling him that the winds now were never as strong as they had been a thousand years ago. Terraforming had successfully calmed Far Away's atmosphere. Hypergliding was just a legend now.

The capsule took him down to a big dome situated right on the eastern edge of Mount Herculaneum's plateau, where the cliffs of Aphrodite's Seat began their sheer eight kilometre fall.

There was a pressure field over the entrance to the dome's landing chamber, a big metal cave with enough room for twenty passenger capsules. It only had two resting inside, with another five ordinary capsules parked nearby.

Oscar stepped through the airlock pressure curtains into the dome's main arena, and paid his 20 FA$ entrance fee from a credit coin which Paula had given him. There were three low buildings inside, lined up behind Aphrodite's Seat. He went over to the first, which the dome's net labelled 'Crash Site'. A whole bunch of tourists were just exiting it, heading for the cafe next door, chatting excitedly. They never registered him, which he found amusing. It wasn't as if his face was any different now.

It was dark inside, with one wall open to the side of the dome above the cliffs. A narrow winding walkway was suspended three metres over the ground, with a pressure field below it, maintaining a vacuum over the actual regolith. There was also a stabilizer field generator running to preserve the wreckage of the hypergli-der. The once-elegant fuselage was crunched up into the side of a rock outcrop, with the plyplastic wings bent and snapped. Oscar remembered how elegant those wings had been fully extended, and sighed.

He walked slowly along the walkway until he was directly above the antique. His heart had slowed right down as he imagined his friend terrified and frantic as the craft skidded along the dusty plateau, slipping and twisting, completely out of control. The fate of an entire species dependent on the outcome, and the cliffs rushing towards him. Oscar frowned as he looked down. The hyperglider was actually upside down, which meant there had been an almighty flip at one point. He looked along the ground to the rim of Aphrodite's Seat, where someone in an ancient pressure suit was sitting.

It was a solido projection, Oscar realized as he came to the end of the walkway. Wilson Kime, his head visible in a not terribly authentic bubble helmet. Pressure suit rips repaired with some kind of epoxy, leaking blood into the regolith. The solido Wilson stared out over the Dessault Mountain Range to the east, where the snow-capped peaks diminished into the bright haze of the curving horizon. This was exactly what the real Wilson had seen, what so many people had died to give him; those which history knew, and still more unknown. Twelve hundred years ago this glorious panorama had provided the data to steer a giant storm into the Starflyer's ship, slaying the beast and liberating the Commonwealth. Today, here on that same spot, he could sit in the Saviour View cafe next door and buy doughnuts named after himself.

'Without you, we wouldn't be here.

Oscar started. There was a man standing behind him on the walkway, wearing a very dark toga suit.

Great secret agent I make; anyone can creep up on me.

'Excuse me? Oscar said.

The man smiled. He was very handsome, with a square jaw, dimpled chin, and a flatfish nose. Brown eyes were surrounded by laughter lines. When he opened his wide mouth, startlingly white teeth smiled out. 'I nearly got blown away by that burst of melancholy disappointment you let loose into the gaiafield, he said. 'It's understandable. He waved a hand round the darkened chamber. 'This travesty is all that exists to celebrate what you and Wilson achieved. But I promise you, we know and appreciate what you did. It is taught to all of our children.

'We?

The man bowed his head formally. 'The Knights Guardian. Welcome back to Far Away, Oscar Monroe. How can we help you?