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the case and took custody of the figure.
    He examined the alien carving, then passed it to Jed who hefted it in his right hand. “A hundred thousand units,” he said in wonder.
    Lania took the figure and examined it, wondering what made this example of Hhar culture so valuable.
    As if reading her thoughts, Ed said, “The dealer wants it for his private collection. He collects carvings of alien races, ancient and modern.”
    She looked at him. “Is it worth what we went through, Ed?”
    He smiled. “He’ll certainly think so, Lania.”
    She wondered if it had been worth the fear and tension she’d experienced during the past few hours and decided that, on balance, it was. She would put the thirty thousand in her savings, towards the villa on Xaria by the ocean where her father had lost his life.
    “Lania,” Ed said, interrupting her thoughts, “summon the Poet and have it land in the square immediately.”
    “We’re leaving?” Jed asked.
    “We’re heading north to the crash-site,” Ed told him, “just as soon as I’ve checked if the Vetch left anything of the wreckage.”
    They followed him from the Hhar chamber and turned right along the atrium, following the scuffed trail in the dust left by the Vetch. It led down a flight of stairs to the basement and along a dim corridor. An open door gave onto a long room full of metal racks, most of which were empty. Only half a dozen plastic containers remained, and these had been emptied.
    Ed found a scrawled ticket, which might once have been attached to an artefact. He passed it to Lania. “Miramar,” she read.
    “The place where the wreckage of the starship was discovered,” Ed explained.
    “Well, the Vetch have been pretty thorough here,” she said.
    “Let us hope that they have been less conscientious at the site itself.”
    Some hope, Lania said to herself as she followed him from the basement room, but thought it best not to voice the opinion.
     
     
    T HE P ARADOXICAL P OET squatted on its ramjet haunches, in the full glare of the sun, as they emerged from the museum. For a fifty year-old ex-navy survey vessel, superannuated when Ed purchased it twenty years ago, it looked pretty good, and performed even better. Even though Lania was just its pilot, she always felt a surge of pride at the sight of the old junkpile. Its bodywork was excoriated by the void, its armour plating blasted by a million micro-meteorite hits – and dented by a hundred larger impacts – but it retained its dignity despite its manifest hard living, like a veteran soldier who had survived numerous campaigns, bloody but unbowed.
    Lania climbed to the flight-deck – the ship was so old that it still had ladders in place of elevators – slipped into the pilot’s sling and commanded her suit to meld with the ship’s smartcore nexus. Jed took the sling beside her and powered up the auxiliary drive.
    Ed took his seat to the rear of the flight-deck, lounging on a couch he’d bought at a mansion-clearance on Deneb IV. It was farcically old-fashioned and matched nothing on the flight-deck, even though he’d personalised the space with Lyran wall-hangings and artwork from across the Expansion.
    Ed gave her the co-ordinates of the crash-site and she relayed them to her smartsuit. She closed her eyes and became one with the Poet , no longer aware of herself as a separate entity with human cares and worries. Flying the ship was a soul-soothing drug that allowed her release from the more disturbing recollections of her past. Flying, she was truly happy.
    She opened her eyes as the ship lifted slowly, the surrounding jungle-covered buildings obscured by churning smoke and blasted debris. She turned the Poet north and eased it forward, and they moved slowly from the city.
    Soon, all evidence below them that humanity had once inhabited this planet was lost beneath the brilliant green cover of the jungle. Here and there, towering stalks erupted from the canopy, ending in heliotropic blooms