Mark Savage left his bubble car on the last vacant slot in the lay-by and climbed a winding path through a thicket of small trees and gorse bushes up the long side of a ragged sandstone outcrop.
The only open natural feature in the district, it attracted family parties by the metric ton and there was a pinky haze where busy feet churned up the red dust. Above the tree line there was bare rock, patches of purple heather, fewer people, but enough to make him think he should have gone somewhere else.
Having come this far, he soldiered on, reached the top and leaned on a stone bollard on a plinth. A worn brass plate let into the top of the bollard showed a faintly etched map of the peninsula and a compass card to give a directional fix.
It was a clear still day. The sea was glass smooth. Due west, if the map told no lie, lay Anglesey, hidden by a bright shimmer on the horizon. South was ringed by the purple blur of the Welsh hills. North was the long translucent barrow of Wirral City. East as far as the eye could see was undulating farmland ribbed by long parallel concrete dykes for the automated cultivators and harvesters to run on.
He looked again at the sea. It was the only quarter where there was room to manoeuvre. For the rest Tool Man had gotten it buttoned down for his use. A sleek bell shape pushed out half a kilometre off shore and stabilised blowing air and spray and he remembered that even there, across the estuary and fringing the coast there were marine cultivation spreads supplying fish and edible algae.
The Vikings had called it Thor's Stone and if there had been one about in a cow horn helmet he would have been disgusted at the neat and tidy panorama. Not an isolated farmstead to burn, not a cow to drive off, not a church to pillage, no convent to whip a nun from. For his money it would be a dead loss and Savage shared his view.
It was a pilgrimage he had made on the second day of his four week rest period after a long absence from his home planet on a round trip that had taken him out through the beacons to the trading posts of the Rim. He remembered climbing around on Thor's Stone as a child and it had stayed in his head as a romantic wilderness. But it couldn't have been much different than it was now. Another proof, if he needed one, that it was a mistake to go back.
Movement from the north caught his eye. It was only a sudden glint, a tiny sparkle that was lost again against the long many coloured backdrop of the city. He watched for it to reappear, saw it cross the broad green belt that isolated the regional capital from the farming areas and judged it to be a small air car being driven hard and too low for the regular traffic lanes.
There was more activity. A long white tender had separated out from the background on the same course as the hedge hopper, but much higher.
He expected them to diverge. It was too much of a coincidence that the only two moving objects on the set should have the same objective. But as he watched he saw the bigger craft dive lower still keeping height on the leader but definitely on its tail.
It was a chase and it could only end one way. If the silvery air car stayed ahead long enough to reach Thor's Stone it would be doing well.
Others on the hill had seen what was going on. Mothers stopped picking heather and children stopped twisting each others arms to check out the action. There was a silent crowd of witnesses to see the air car land heavily twenty metres from the summit and a girl tumble out before it had stopped flexing on its hydraulic jacks.
She seemed uncertain which way to run, settled for up and reached the bollard as the long white tender made a more deliberate landfall farther down the hill. She was going barefoot, dressed in a white knee-length cotton smock with a couple of ties on the open left side. Marked in blue thread on the jut of the left breast, RH 16, and as she turned to watch the crew spill out of the tender. Savage could see it was all she was wearing.
Aged around twenty he would guess. Light brown hair, short and curly, broad oval face with a small straight nose, large mouth, eyebrows flared slightly to give a surprised look. Eyes almost all pupil.
She was gripping the rim of the bollard as though it was a sanctuary knocker and hardly seemed to have noticed him. It had been a solo run to a particular place without much logic. As though it had come into her head and she had carried it out blindly. As a hiding place, if that was what she wanted, it was no good at all.
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