The Icarus Hunt

CHAPTER 15

IT WAS ONE thing, I discovered, to suggest disassembling an entire starship from the inside out. It was another thing entirely to actually set about doing it.

Still, it was quickly apparent that the very nature of the Icarus's odd design was going to work in our favor. On a normal starship all the bulkheads and decks were solidly riveted or welded together, with most of the various sections cast or molded to the specific fit required. Our bulkheads and decks, in contrast, were fastened together with the same connectors Cameron's people had used on the inner-hull plates, which made disassembly a fast and simple process.

Furthermore, all the interior framing had been created from the same meter-square plates: a single thickness for the inner hull and most of the walls, double or triple thickness for the decks and supporting bulkheads. In one of my rare moments alone with Tera I asked about that, and she confirmed my guess that Cameron's techs had designed it that way on purpose. Shaped or molded bulkhead sections might have raised eyebrows with Meima's customs inspectors, but simple meter-square building plates wouldn't even rate a yawn.

Ixil's inventory included only three of the connector tools, but since there was also a great deal of hauling to be done the limited number worked out just fine.

Cameron, bless him, had used high-strength but low-weight metal composites, which meant that even Shawn and Chort could lug the plates to the wraparound with relative ease. We rotated jobs every twenty minutes or so, with an eye toward not fatiguing any one set of muscles. As Ixil suggested at one point, there was likely to be more than enough muscle fatigue to go around.

For the first six hours we concentrated on simple disassembly, starting with the nonsupporting walls and moving on to bulkheads, shifting the plates into the wraparound and stacking them by the hatch. At that point, I decided we had enough material to start with Chort's exterior modification plan. We still had two shipboard suits—the third had been left behind on Xathru when we'd filed Jones's death report—and of course Chort had his own suit as well. Putting Tera and Nicabar into the smaller and larger sizes, respectively, I sent them outwith Chort, the welder, and two connector tools and crossed my fingers.

It worked out better than even my best level of cautious hope. Chort, itturned out, was quite competent with the welder, at least as skilled as Ixil if not ashade more so. The proper positioning of the plates was another worry I'd had; Tera solved that one by the three of them assembling an entire longitudinalsection and working it into place between the two spheres before Chort did anywelding. With two of the connector tools now outside, the four of us insideshifted jobs again from mass disassembly to the more delicate task of movingthe gear from the now nonexistent rooms to new quarters against the inside of thehull. The large sphere's gravitational level of .85 gee made the tasks oflifting and carrying marginally easier while still avoiding the missteps andinertial problems of low-gee environments.

The days settled into a steady if slightly frantic routine. Chort spent everywaking hour outside, clearly loving it, except for the brief periods when hehad to come in to have his rebreather recharged. Those of us who could fit intothe remaining suits—which was everyone except Everett—took our turns outside withhim, most of us not nearly as enthusiastic about the wide-open spaces as Chortwas. The rest of our time was divided between more disassembly, shifting thenecessary equipment to the inner hull and tossing the rest, or collapsing onour transplanted bunks in the near coma that had taken the place of normal sleep.

With the verbal sniping and general lack of sociability that had marked thetripup to this point I had braced myself for the escalation in overall tensionthat all this unscheduled exercise was bound to create. Once again—and this one wasreally to my surprise—it didn't happen. There was the occasional snapped wordor under-the-breath curse, but for the most part I found my fellow travelerssuddenly behaving far more like a seasoned crew than a random collection ofsemi-hostile strangers.

In retrospect, I suppose, I shouldn't have been so surprised by the suddentransformation. Before the Najiki near miss at Utheno we'd been little morethan interstellar truck drivers, doing a dull job for low pay, with nothing inparticular to look forward to after it was done, and with only the vaguethreat of a possible hijacking to make it even marginally interesting. Now, suddenly, we were on the cusp of history, with the chance to make a name for ourselvesand at the same time stick it hard to the Patth and their hated economic empire.

We had the chance for immortality—and, even more importantly, for possiblyserious riches—and that simultaneous group grab for the brass ring was drawing usfirmlytogether.

Of course, lurking behind the chance to make history was the darker knowledgethat if the Patth caught up with us even our own personal histories wouldprettywell be over. That was undoubtedly part of the cooperation, too.

But whatever the reason, the progress the first four days was nothing short ofremarkable. So much so that midway through the fifth day I pulled Everett andIxil off the work crews and sent them aft to the engine room to startrecalibrating the equipment that the Najiki ion attack had scrambled. Then, with Chort, Nicabar, and Shawn working outside, I took Tera over to her computerand settled in for a crash course in Alien Stardrive 101.

The class didn't take nearly as long as I'd hoped it would. "That's it?" Iasked as the last page of data scrolled to the top of the computer display. "That'sall they found?"

"Be thankful we have even this much," she countered tartly. But there wereworrylines creasing her forehead, too. Perhaps, like me, she was starting torealize just how much of a long shot this whole scheme really was. "The idea wasn't tosit there on Meima until they had the whole thing figured out to fivedecimals, you know. The minute they realized what they had, they shot that message offto Dad. This isn't much more than the five weeks it took to get the Icarus partsshipped in and put together."

"I suppose," I conceded, scowling at the meter-square opening into the sphere, a

disguised access panel that Tera had luckily known how to open. "And theynever got more than a couple of meters inside?"

"No," she said. "They were afraid of crossing circuits or damaging somethingelse along the way. You can see for yourself what a maze of conduits and loosewires it is in there."

I stretched flat along the hull beside the hole and shined a light in. She wasright: It was a jungle in there. "Reminds me of the engine room," I said, playing the light around some more. It looked like there were panels ofglowinglights on what little I could see of the wall through the wiring. "I wonder ifit was planned that way or if all the cable ties just fell apart over theyears.

You said there was another access from the other side of the sphere?"

"Yes, behind the secondary breaker panel in the engine room," she said. "Theyput hinges on the breaker panel so that it swings right out."

"Has it got a better view than this one?"

"Not really." She gestured toward the access hole. "They tried sending inprobes, but the umbilicals kept getting caught on the wiring and Dr. Chou wasafraid they'd tear something trying to get them loose. They had one self- guidedprobe that got in a little farther, but something confused its sensors and itfroze up completely."

"Well, we're not going to get anywhere without a complete idea of what's inthere," I said.

"I hope you're not suggesting one of us go inside," she said darkly. "If theprobes couldn't make it through, you certainly won't."

"I like to think I'm a bit more competent at working my way through tangledwiring than someone tugging blindly on a probe control," I told her. "As ithappens, though, I was thinking of starting with someone slightly smaller."

She frowned. "Who?"

I nodded in the direction of the engine room. "Go get Ixil," I said, "and I'll show you."

Ixil wasn't any more enthusiastic about my idea than Tera was. "I don't know, Jordan," he said, stroking Pax's head uneasily as he crouched on his leftforearm and hand. "Every design of Stardrive I've ever heard of has had ahalf-dozen high-voltage sites and shock capacitors associated with it. If Paxtouches one of those, it'll kill him."

"He goes through power conduits all the time," I reminded him. "How does heavoid insulation breaks and short circuits there?"

"He knows what to look for with our stuff," Ixil said. "This is an unknownalien design, with an entirely different set of cues. For that matter, even thelower-voltage lines may have lost their insulation over the years. You and Iare big enough to survive a minor shock like that. Pax isn't."

"I know," I said. "And I wish there were another way. But there isn't. We haveto see what's in there; and Pix and Pax are the only eyes we've got."

"Except ours," Ixil said. "Why don't I go instead?"

"No," Tera said, a fraction of a second before I could get the word outmyself.

"Not a chance."

"But I could see what's there," he persisted. "There are cues I know how toread that Pax hasn't got the basic intelligence to pick up on. If I go just alittle way in, far enough to see past the initial tangle, I could brief him onwhatever I find and then let him go in. It would give him a better chance."

Tera shook her head. "I'm sorry, Ixil, but I can't let you do that. Dad wasabsolutely adamant that no one go inside until we got all the power sourcesand cables mapped out, for that very reason. It's Pix or Pax or no one at all."

Ixil lowered his eyes to the ferret, his mouth tight. "All right," he saidwith a resigned sigh. "What exactly do you want him to do?"

"We need to find a path through to the center of the sphere," I said. "Chortand Nicabar are a little fuzzy on the details of this exotic double-sphere designof theirs, but they both agree there should be a large resonance crystalsomewhere in the center, probably with a control panel either wrapped around it orsomewhere nearby. If they're right, and if we can either scope out thecontrols—or, better yet, connect it through to a control system out here—wemaybe able to activate it."

"If it's even still functional after all this time," Ixil muttered, puttingPax up on his shoulder.

"Well, something's drawing and using power in there," I reminded him. "Thoughwhere it's getting it from I haven't the foggiest idea. Warn him to watchwhere he puts his feet and nose, and to take his time. We're not in any specialhurryhere."

Ixil nodded, and for a moment he just stood there silently, communing with theoutriders. Then, taking a deep breath, he picked Pax up off his shoulder andset him down beside the opening. For a moment the ferret sniffed at the edge, hislittle nose wrinkling as if he didn't care for the smell of age in there.

Then, with what sounded almost like a reassuring squeak, he scrabbled over the edgeand disappeared.

Ixil was kneeling at the edge in an instant, plucking the light from my handand playing it inside. "Doesn't seem to be any gravity in there," he said, leaninghis face into the opening. "He's working his way along the wires the way hedoes in zero gee."

I looked at Tera. "I don't know," she said. "Though if the purpose of the gravfield out here is to make sure the center of the resonance cavity stays clear, there really wouldn't be any need for one in the smaller sphere."

Ixil grunted, and for another few minutes we stood or crouched there insilence.

Then, hunching his shoulders, Ixil straightened up again. "He's gone," hesaid, handing the light back to me. "Disappeared behind something that looked like amulticable coupler."

"He'll be fine," Tera said quietly, laying a hand soothingly on his arm. "Hedoes this sort of thing all the time, remember?"

Ixil grunted, clearly not in the mood to be soothed. "I'd better get back tothe engine room—there's still a lot of recalibration to be done, and Everettdoesn't know how to do most of the calculations on his own. You'll call me when he comes back?"

"Yes," I assured him. "Actually, Tera, you might want to go back there withhim and open the other access hole, the one you said was behind the breaker panel.

If Pax gets disoriented, it would be handy for him to have a second way out."

"Good idea," she said. "Come on, Ixil."

They climbed up the slight curve—it still made me vaguely dizzy to watchpeoplewalking around the hull in here—and disappeared through the open pressure doorinto the zero gee of the wraparound. With a sigh, I lay down on the hull againand shined my light into the opening. Pax was gone, all right, though IimaginedI could hear occasional scratching sounds as he maneuvered his way through themaze. Leaning partially over the hole, I stuck my head carefully in and playedthe light slowly around the inner surface.

I was halfway around in my sweep when I saw the gap.

I was still lying there studying it two minutes later when Tera returned.

"He's really not happy about this, is he?" she commented as she sat down cross- leggedbeside me. "He claims they're not pets, but I think he really—"

"Did Chou and his people take photos of what they could see from thisopening?"

I interrupted her.

She took a half second to switch gears. "I think so," she said. "At leastsome.

I hadn't pulled them up before because—"

"Pull them up now," I ordered, trying to keep my sudden apprehension out of myvoice. "Find me one that shows a gray trapezoid about half a meter across with about two dozen wires coming off gold connectors along its edges."

She was already at the computer, fingers playing across the keys. "What isit?" she asked tightly.

"Just find me the picture," I said tersely, getting up and stepping to herside.

Dr. Chou's people, it turned out, had taken a lot of pictures. It took Teranearly a minute to find the specific area I was looking for.

And when she did, my apprehension turned to full-blown certainty.

"Tera, you told me your dad left the ship at Potosi," I said. "How do youknow?

Did he leave a note?"

She shook her head, her neck twisted to look up at me. "No, nothing likethat," she said, a note of uncertain dread in her voice as she picked up on my ownmood. "I told you: He and his things were gone, and I couldn't find himanywhereon the ship."

"Right," I nodded. "Except that you didn't think to look inside the smallspherehere, did you?"

Her eyes widened, her throat muscles suddenly tense. "Oh, no," she breathed.

"He's not—oh, God."

"No, no, I can't see him," I hastened to assure her. "There's no—I mean—"

"No body?"

"No body," I confirmed. At least not one I could see, I carefully refrainedfrom saying. "What there is by that trapezoid is a gap in the wiring. A big gap, asif someone maneuvered his way through the thicket, creating a hole as hewent."

"It couldn't have been Pax?" she asked, her voice going even darker.

"It's man-sized," I told her gently. "Look, maybe he's just lying low inthere."

She shook her head, a short, choppy movement. "No, we've been doing work herebythe access panel off and on for the past couple of days. He'd have heard myvoice and come out." She swallowed. "If he could."

I looked back over at the hole, coming to the inevitable decision. "I'm goingin," I announced, taking a step that direction.

A step was all I got. Like a rattlesnake her hand darted out and grabbed myarm.

"No!" she snapped, holding on with a strength that surprised me. "No! If he'sdead, it means something in there killed him. We can't risk you, too."

"What, all this concern for a soul-dead smuggler?" I retorted. It wasn't anice thing to say, but at the moment I wasn't feeling particularly nice. "Maybehe's not dead in there—you ever think of that? Maybe he's injured, or unconscious, or paralyzed. Maybe he can't get to the opening, or can't even call out to you."

"If he went in while we were on Potosi, he's been in there eleven days," shesaid. Her voice sounded empty, but her grip on my arm hadn't slackened a bit.

"Any injury serious enough to prevent him from getting out on his own wouldhave killed him long before now."

"Unless he just got the injury," I shot back. I wasn't ready to give in, either.

"Maybe he got thrown around while I was dodging the ion beams off Utheno. Hecould still be alive."

She took a deep breath. "We'll wait for Pax to come out."

"We'll wait half an hour," I countered.

"One hour."

I started to protest, took another look at her face, and gave it up. "Onehour,"

I agreed.

She nodded, and for a long moment she stared down at the access hole. Then, reluctantly, she keyed off the computer photo we'd been looking at and satdown on the deck. "Tell me about yourself, McKell," she said.

I shrugged, sitting down on the deck beside her. "There's not very much totell."

"Of course there is," she said quietly. "You had hopes and plans and dreamsonce. Maybe you still do. What would you be doing now if you weren'tsmuggling?"

"Who knows?" I said. She didn't care about my hopes and dreams, of course. Iknew that. She was just casting around looking for some mindless chatter, something to distract herself from the mental image of her father floatingdead in there. "Once, I thought I might have a career in EarthGuard. That endedwhen I told a superior officer exactly what I thought of him."

"In public, I take it?"

"It was public enough to earn me a court-martial," I conceded. "Then I thoughtI might have a career in customs. I must have been a little too good at it, because someone framed me for taking bribes. Then I tried working for ashippingfirm, only I lost my temper again and slugged one of the partners."

"Strange," she murmured. "I wouldn't have taken you for the terminallyself-destructive type."

"Don't worry," I assured her. "I'm only self-destructive where potentiallypromising careers are concerned. When it comes to personal survival, I'm notnearly so incompetent."

"Maybe the problem is you're afraid of success," she suggested. "I've seen itoften enough in other people."

"That's not a particularly original diagnosis," I said. "Others of myacquaintance have suggested that from time to time. Of course, for theimmediate future my options for success of any sort are likely to be seriously limited."

"Until about midway into the next century, I believe you said."

"About that."

She was silent a moment. "What if I offered to buy you out of your indentureto that smuggling boss?"

I frowned at her. There was no humor in her face that I could detect. "Excuse me?"

"What if I offered to buy out your indenture?" she repeated. "I asked you thatonce, if you recall. You rather snidely countered by asking if I had a halfmillion in spare change on me."

I felt my face warm. "I didn't know who you were then."

"But now you do," she said. "And you also know—or you ought to if you don't—

that I have considerably more than a half-million commarks to play with."

A not-entirely-pleasant tingle ran through me. "And you're suggesting that bailing me out of my own pigheaded mismanagement would be worth that much toyou?" I asked, hearing a hint of harshness in my voice.

"Why not?" she asked. "I can certainly afford it."

"I'm sure you can," I said. This was not safe territory to be walking on. "TheCameron Group probably spends half a million a year just on memo slips. Which, if I may say so, is a hell of a better investment than I would be for you."

"Who said anything about you being an investment?" she asked.

"Process of elimination," I said. "I don't qualify as a recognized charity, and I'm too old to adopt."

Somewhere along in here I'd expected her to take offense. But either she wastoo busy worrying about her father to notice my ungrateful attitude, or she had ahigher annoyance threshold than I'd thought. "Perhaps it's a reward forbringingthe Icarus safely home," she said. "Payment for services rendered."

"Better wait until it's sitting safely on the ground before you go off theedgewith offers of payment," I warned. "Unless, of course, you think I'm likely toweaken before we get to Earth and figure this is the best way to lock in myloyalty."

"Or else I just want to give you a new chance," she said, still inexplicablyunruffled. "You don't belong with smugglers and criminals. You're not thetype."

It was worse than I'd thought. Now she was sensing nobility and honor anddecency in me. I had to nip this in the bud, and fast, before there wastrouble I couldn't talk my way out of. "Not to be insulting or anything," I said, "butthe high-society life you grew up with is not exactly the sort of backgroundyouneed for judging people in my line of work. I could tell you about a man witha choirboy face and manner who could order one of his thugs to rip your heartout and watch him do it without batting an eye."

"You seem awfully vehement about this," she commented.

"I don't want you to get hurt dabbling in things you don't understand, that'sall," I muttered. "More than that, I don't want me to get hurt. Stick withcorporate mergers or archaeological digs or whatever it is you do for yourfather, Elaina Tera Cameron. You'll live longer that way."

I frowned, an odd connection suddenly slapping me in the face. "Elaina TeraCameron," I repeated. "E.T.C. As in et cetera?"

She smiled wanly. "Very good," she complimented me. "Yes, it was my father'slittle joke. I was the fourth of the three children they'd planned on. But thefirst three were boys, and Mom had always wanted a girl. And Mom generally gotwhat she set her mind on."

"Hence, the et cetera?"

"She didn't even notice for four years," Tera said. "Not until I startedlearning to write and was putting my initials everywhere."

"I'll bet she was really pleased with your father."

"Actually, she was mostly just annoyed that she'd missed the joke. Especiallysince Dad was famous for that sort of wordplay."

"Nothing like that with your brothers' initials?"

She shrugged. "If there was, it was something so obscure none of us everfiguredit out. Dad certainly never let on about any jokes hidden there."

"Sounds like him," I said. "He's always had a reputation for playing his cards all the way inside his vest."

"Only when it was necessary," Tera insisted. "And he never hid them from hisfamily and close friends." She looked past me at the access hole. "Which justmakes this all the stranger. Why would he go in there without telling me?

Especially after forbidding anyone else to do so?"

"Maybe he was afraid I would come into the 'tweenhull area after him again," Isuggested.

"But why didn't he tell me?" she persisted. "There was a day and a halfbetween that incident and our landing on Potosi. If he thought he needed to hide outfrom you, there was plenty of time for us to talk it over."

"Unless he thought I might drop in on him unexpectedly," I said. "Remember, there was nowhere else on the ship he could hide."

"Of course there was," she said. "The Number Two cabin on the top deck, theone Jones used before he died. After Ixil took the release pad off to put on hisown door, it would have been a perfect place for him to hide. We were planning tomove him in there while we were on Potosi."

"With access in and out through the inner hull?" I asked, feeling my face warmand hoping it didn't show. Once again, an angle I'd missed completely. Thoughto be fair, by the time I knew we even had a stowaway he was already gone.

"If he needed to move around, yes," she said. "We couldn't very well take thechance of letting one of the others see him, could we? We had some of the hullconnectors gimmicked so that he could get quickly in and out."

"Ah," I said, feeling even more like Nobel prize material. I'd been throughthat whole 'tweenhull area from starboard to port, and it had never even occurredto me to check for loose or missing inner-hull connectors. "But he never took upresidence there?"

She shook her head. "We were planning to move him in while you were outhuntingfor Shawn's medicine. But then Shawn escaped, and we all had to go out andlook for him. Then with the trouble we had with customs, I didn't get a chance tolook for Dad until we were long gone from there."

"Is that why you were in the mechanics room when Everett found you?" I asked.

"You were actually there to pick up a connector tool?"

She smiled tightly. "You are sharp, aren't you?" she commented. "Yes, that'sexactly why I was there. When Everett charged in on me I thought we'd beenfound out, but he just told me Shawn was gone and charged back out again withoutasking any questions about what I was doing there."

She shrugged. "Then, of course, after you asked and I'd spun you the computerstory, I had to take the computer apart and pretend there was a genuine glitchsomewhere. Just as well I did, I suppose, given all the sand that had gottenin.

That was as big a surprise to me as it was to anyone else."

There was a faint and distant-sounding noise like metal scratching on metal, and I looked hopefully back at the access hole. But there was no sign of Pax.

Probably one of the group outside had banged the hull or something. "Maybe oneof the others did see him," I suggested slowly. "That might account for hisdeciding he needed somewhere else to hide."

"But then why hasn't that person said something?" Tera pointed out. "I mean, after that note he left you about how he wouldn't be coming along, don't youthink seeing him aboard would have been worth at least a passing comment?"

"It should have," I agreed. "Unless that someone had a reason for keeping itsecret. Maybe your father caught him doing something that—oh, damn."

Tera got it at the same time I did. "The poison you found in Ixil's room," shebreathed. "Of course. Dad was going down the corridor for some reason andspotted him setting that up."

Abruptly, her eyes widened. "Oh, my God. McKell—maybe he didn't go in therevoluntarily. Maybe he was... put there."

I got to my feet. "I'm going in," I told her, snagging my flashlight andstuffing it securely into my belt. "There should be a couple of medkits overwith the sick-bay stuff. Go get me one."

She set off across the curved surface at a fast run, her footsteps echoingeerily through the mostly empty space. I headed off in nearly the oppositedirection, across the broken landscape that was what was left of the Icarus'sinner hull, toward the two piles of equipment from the mechanics andelectronics shops. Sorting through the piles, I picked out a tool belt, an electronic- field detector, a couple of rolls of insulator tape, and a handful of small tools.

Tera was already waiting by the computer by the time I started back. "Here'sthe medkit," she said as I came up to her, holding out a large belt pack. "I putin a bottle of water and some emergency ration bars, too."

"Thanks," I said, resisting the urge to remind her that wrapping me inunnecessary bulk would only make my trip through the sphere more difficultthan it was promising to be already. But she was only trying to help, and Icouldn't see how a single water bottle was likely to be the deciding factor one way orthe other. I strapped the pack around my waist where it wouldn't block accessto my tools, and settled everything in place. "All right," I said as casually asI could manage. "I'll see you later."

"Good luck," she said quietly.

I threw her a frown, wondering if I was imagining the concern I heard in hervoice. But then I realized that the fear wasn't for me, or at least notprimarily for me. It was for her father.

Turning away from her, I lay down on the floor beside the access hole. Takinga deep breath, I got a grip on the edge and pulled myself in.