'Waiting to do what?'
Rafe chuckled. 'How're you going to hunt a Cobra? You going to hitch-hike?
Or use a big stick? You'll need a ship. Hunt like with like. Get to the wreckplace at Tionisla. I know just the vehicle you need. Don't speak to anyone. Just get to Tionisla.'
'But—'
'Au'voir, Alex!'
And Rafe Zetter spat for the last time before the holoFac faded.
Alex didn't flinch. Something whistled past his ear and struck the wall behind him.
The best way to see the wreckplace at Tionisla is to approach it from the Sun (a reasonably safe thing to do since Tionisla, being a Democracy has few pirates in its system). Tionisla itself is a bright yellow world, and the cemetery is always between the planet and its star. As you fly close, the whole strange graveyard seems to be expanding from the circle of the world behind.
The first thing you see is a shimmering, silver disc, a double spiral of tiny bright points. It slowly turns: it's a galaxy in miniature, with the same intense blur of light at its centre, because here is where the biggest tombs are to be found.
Come closer and soon you can see that the stars in this galaxy are markers, great lumps of metal, heavily inscribed with the words and symbols of a thousand religions. The cemetery is a bizarre and moving sight. The markers are rarely less than a thousand feet across. There are chrome-alloy crosses, titanium Stars of David, duralium henges, and all the strange symbolic shapes of the worlds, and the minds and the faiths that have come to die in this Star traveller's special place.
Tethered below this vast, rotating mausoleum is the dodecahedral shape of a
'Dodo' class space station, the home of the Cemetery Authorites. Here you go through security checks and get your visitor's visa. And as you stand in the queue, staring up through the translucent ceiling of the Customs Hall, you can see the battered, broken ships of many of the dead, still attached to the silent tomb that contains the body.
It's a good enough reason to come to Tionisla. There are pickings aplenty among the wrecks. The treasures of centuries might be revealed by pressing the right panel on the right cube of black, alien metal as it floats silently by.
Or maybe not treasure, just the tomb's defences…
A pit with a laser.
A robot guardian with knives where its hands should be.
A hyperspace vacuum that sucks you in and throws you out into another time.
You tread carefully among the wrecks in orbit about Tionisla. The creatures buried here — human and alien — had money enough to buy these prized resting places, and more than enough wealth to protect their property after death from the mercenary fingers of bounty hunters.
Formalities completed, his newly issued pilot's licence checked, Alex Ryder was given a small tour-ship, an oddly shaped and cumbersome vessel. He drifted quickly among the tombs, seeking the resting place of Starpilot Fleischer, following co-ordinates on the ship's cemetery plan.
He soon found what he was looking for. Whoever Fleischer had been, he was monstrously egocentric: his tomb was a great crystalline structure, a puff-ball of diamond-bright needles, literally hundreds of feet across. His body, dressed in the red uniform of an elite combateer, hovered in stasis at the centre of this great construct, illuminated by focused light from the sun.
Tethered to the simple monument of the grave next to this was the battered, blistered shape of a Cobra class ship, its insignia still proudly displayed, but all its vital equipment, its fuel-scoop, its extra cargo bays, its aft missile and laser banks removed.
Alex stared at it. It looked nothing like the Cobra that had destroyed his father's ship. That vessel had been bristling with all the extra things that good money could buy, to defend and to attack, and to make the trading game an easier prospect for the elite trader.
A light on the Cobra winked at him.
Alex blinked, then looked again. Sure enough, a small, red light was flashing on and off, a brief sequence of code.
LAND ON DOR PL
'Land on the dorsal plate'—That was clear enough.
Alex manoeuvred his tiny craft above the arrow shape of the Cobra, and touched it gently onto the heat-blistered hull. He looked around guiltily.
Touching monuments wasn't permitted and the cemetery was patrolled by Kraits, small and deadly security craft, with instructions to blast away any man, woman or child seen tampering with a mausoleum…
But the graveyard was huge, and the shadows of the great tombs transferred this miniature world of the dead into a place of hide-outs, and shifting, occasional safety.
An entry port opened, and a green light quickly blinked the message 'Come aboard'. Alex flew the tour-ship into the hull space and when he got the
'pressure green' signal stepped out and walked cautiously towards the main control area. He opened the sliding door and blinked for a moment at the bright control displays and scanners. Ahead of him, the main screen was wide, and filled with a view of Fleischer's crystal tomb.
Silhouetted against the gleaming brightness of the crystal was the shape of a man, wearing full space suit. One hand rested on the navigation console, the other hovered above the laser button.
'I'm aboard,' Alex said, and walked up behind the silent pilot. The man made no movement, said nothing.
For a moment Alex stood beside him, staring out into the wreckplace, at the slowly shifting monuments, at the stars glimpsed in the background.
Then he turned to greet his host.
And nearly died of shock, taking a quick, horrified step backwards!
It was the drawn, mummified face of a corpse that half looked up at him from behind its visor, the rictus smile of death stretching wide across its lips.
'Do you think we should take him with us?' a voice asked from across the cabin. Alex started again with surprise and watched the figure which emerged from the shadows. 'As a sort of totem. A lucky charm.'
Alex tried to smile, but neither relief nor the new arrival's charming grin could relax him enough. Too much had happened too fast, and he stood rooted to the spot, watching as the woman came over to him.
She was quite small. Her skin was olive, her eyes dark. She wore her hair in a fashionable series of spikes, like a porcupine. Dressed in the light green coveralls that most traders sported, she seemed swamped by clothes.
Her hand-touch was cool and confident, and she kept the contact as she looked up at Alex Ryder, still smiling disarmingly.
'So you're the man that Rafe has chosen. Well, Alex. So far it seems that star-riding with you is at least going to be quiet. You do…er…' she frowned. 'You do have a speech function?' She turned him slightly and felt up his back for the switch. 'Or are you one of the early 'semaphore and gormless grin' models?'
'Sorry,' Alex said. 'You took me by surprise.'
'Oh God,' the woman said. 'Where's the off-switch? I think I prefer you silent…'
'Who are you?' Alex asked, irritated by her levity and keen to find out why Rafe Zetter had summoned him here? Where was the old man?
'Trader Fields', she said, and touched the heel of her right hand to her left shoulder by way of salute. 'My given name is Elyssia. Elyssia Fields.'
She smiled again. 'My brood mother's little joke. She discovered Greek mythology at age 9 when she was incubating her first cluster.'
Brood mother? Greek? Incubating clusters? That meant that Elyssia Fields was from Teorge, the so-called 'clone-world'. Alex struggled to remember what he'd been taught about Teorge… an inhabited world… settled by two colony ships that had proceeded to clone a select few of the crew and colonists, killing the others. For centuries Teorge had been a world apart, cut off from the normal flow of trade and commerce, and banned from sending representatives into space.
Elyssia Fields was clearly a fugitive.