Whatever method you use, the best place to launch stuff into orbit is from the equator, or as close to it as you can get (which is why NASA chose southern Florida for its spaceport and the SU had to settle for the delights of Kazakhstan).  The Earth, just through rotating, gives you a free energy boost to help lob your payload above the atmosphere, and that means you can lob more, or use less fuel, than you could if you launched from further up or down the curve towards the poles.

One space-launch concern — in which I am delighted to say we have some investment — is taking advantage of this by using two huge ships, a command-and-control vessel and the rocket-carrying ship itself to send payloads up from the oceans on the equator.  The time before last that I was in Scotland I got to clamber over the launch ship while it was in dry dock in Greenock, on the Clyde.  It was just techy heaven.  These are real ships, built for an entirely pragmatic, unromantic, unsentimental, return-hungry consortium, but they are just such a fabulous, Thunderbirds-style idea I'd have been seriously tempted to recommend investing in them just for the sheer mad beauty of the project.  Happily, it looks like a good business deal, too.

But you never know.  The ships will only be able to handle stuff up to a certain size.  To be on the safe side, we're also the major investor in the Shimani Aerospace Corporation's Pejantan Island project, which — if all goes according to plan — by 2004 will be sending state-of-the-art rockets roaring into space with their valuable satellite cargoes.

This was heavy engineering, cutting-edge technology and serious science.  The budget was jaw-dropping.  So were the returns if we'd all got our sums right, but the point was that the bigger the project and the bigger the budget the easier it is to hide things in both of them.

Like this little item here: a tracking station in Fenua Ua.

Now, why Fenua Ua?  I looked up a map of the Pacific.  Why not Nauru, or Kiribati, or even the fucking Galapagos?

Sipping my coffee somewhere around Grantham, I used the mobile and the lap-top's modem to do some more long-range Web searching.  Eventually, as the train sped through the night, picking up speed after Doncaster, deep in some otherwise entirely ignorable PR nonsense (which just goes to show you never know where something useful will turn up), I found a little video clip of Kirita Shinizagi, chief executive officer of the Shimani Aerospace Corporation, visiting Fenua Ua earlier this year and inspecting the site for the new tracking station.

Next stop York, the guard's voice said over the speakers, while my head was somewhere between London, Tokyo, Fenua Ua and Pejantan Island.

I disconnected the mobile from the computer.  The phone rang.  Hazleton's number came up on the display.  I hesitated two, three rings before answering.

'Hello?'

'Kathryn?'

'Mr Hazleton.'

'Kathryn, I was so sorry to hear about Freddy.'

'Thank you.  Will you be able to make the funeral, Mr Hazleton?'

'Sadly, no.  Kathryn, are you able to think straight?  Or are you too distraught?  If this is a bad time to talk about things, I can always wait.'

'I think I can still string two thoughts together, Mr Hazleton.  What was it you wanted to talk about?'

'I wondered how you felt you'd got on in Thulahn.  I was going to ask before, but of course we were rather overtaken by events when you realised that Freddy was in hospital.  We never did finish that conversation.'

'No, we didn't.  I recall that at the time I was about to ask you if you'd had any hand in suggesting to the Prince that he ask me to marry him.'

'You were?  I don't understand, Kathryn.  Why would I want to interfere in your private life?'

'That's all right, Mr Hazleton.  I've had more time to think since then.  The question no longer applies.'

'I see.  I confess I wasn't entirely sure I'd heard you right when you told me that at the time.  However, I've spoken to Suvinder since, and yes, he was, and is, very serious about it.  I understand you turned him down.  That's very sad.  Of course it's entirely your decision and you must do as you see fit, but the Prince did sound very dejected.'

'He's a better man than I thought he was at first, Mr Hazleton.  I've come to like him.  But I don't love him.'

'Ah, well.  There we are, then.  This has, as you can imagine, all become rather more complicated because of that development.  Are you still thinking of the proposition Jebbet and Tommy put to you?'

'Yes.'

'Good.  The amount of power invested in whoever takes up the post there would be very considerable.  You might have decided not to become Queen of Thulahn, Kathryn, but you could still be something like the President.  What do you think?  Have you had any thoughts?  Or would it now be too awkward with Suvinder there?'

'Oh, I've had thoughts, Mr Hazleton.'

'You're being very cryptic, Kathryn.  Is there somebody there with you?  Can't you talk?'

'There's nobody here.  I can talk.  I'm still thinking very seriously about taking up the post in Thulahn.'

'But you haven't come to a decision yet.'

'Not yet.'

'You couldn't give us a balance-of-probabilities assessment, even?  Which way you're leaning, as it were?'

'There are very strong reasons for going, and very strong ones for staying where I am.  It's too delicately balanced, so, no, I'm afraid I can't.  But once I've made my decision, I'll stick with it.'

'And when do you think that will be, Kathryn?'

'I think another few days should do the trick.'

'Well, we shall just have to be patient, shan't we, Kathryn?'

'Yes.  Sorry about that.'

'Of course, there is the other matter, isn't there?  I don't want to have to push you on that, too, but it has been a couple of weeks now…'

'You mean that B-movie you provided me with?'

'Yes.  I was wondering if you'd come to any decision on that, too.'

'Yes.  I have.'

Stephen.  We need to talk.  Call when you can.  Voice or this.

Uncle Freddy had a Viking's funeral.  His coffin was placed in an old motorboat, one of those polished wooden things with two tandem separate seating compartments and a stern deck that slopes in a curve all the way down to the water.  It had been filled with various flammable stuff and moored out in the centre of the lake where we'd fished a few weeks earlier.  A crowd of us — a big crowd, too, given that Freddy hadn't had many relatives — looked on.

One of his drinking cronies from the pub in Blysecrag village was an archer; he had one of those elaborate modern bows that looks much more complicated than any gun, with balancing weights sticking out apparently at random and all sorts of other bits and pieces.  He loaded up an arrow with a big, bulging head made of bound rags soaked in petrol, another drinking chum lit it, and then he shot it out towards the motorboat.  The arrow made a noise I will never forget as it curved up through the clear, cool air.  Uncle Freddy's pal was obviously very good or he'd done this before, because that one shot was all he needed.  The arrow slammed dramatically into the woodwork, the flames caught and spread and the boat was soon ablaze from end to end.

I stood watching it burn, thinking that there were probably all sorts of terribly British and very sensible rules and regulations about the proper disposal of bodies that were being flouted here.  Well, fuck them if they can't take a joke.  Freddy: the man who put the fun in funeral.

Uncle F left me a small landscape painting I'd once admired.  Not by anybody famous, and not valuable, just nice, and something to remember him by.  What do you give the girl who has everything?  Your undivided attention, of course.  So, having not bequeathed me the entire house and estate of Blysecrag, Freddy did the next best thing and left me something I would be able to pack in a bag and take away with me.