The Icarus Hunt

CHAPTER 5

THEY STRAGGLED IN over the next hour, Shawn and Nicabar clearly glad we weregetting under way, Tera just as clearly annoyed that we'd cut short what hadapparently been a successful shopping spree, at least judging from the numberof bags she hauled aboard. Chort didn't show any particular preference one way orthe other.

With the ever-looming threat of hue and cry from the Port Authority over thedeaths of my two assailants—and the associated threat that the port might besummarily shut down at any minute—I spent the entire time sweating as I fought upstream against bureaucratic inertia, trying to finish Jones's death reportand all the procedural preflight paperwork before the bodies were discovered.

To my surprise, we got cleared and headed out into space without any sign ofofficial outrage or panic over the charred remains I'd left at the loadingdock.

Perhaps the spot the Lumpy Brothers had picked for my interrogation had beenmore private than it had looked. Either that, or someone had done a veryefficient job of sweeping the whole incident under the rug.

I'd had short conversations with each of the crewers on the trip from Meima, but most of them had either concerned basic ship's business or were just casualchat. But now, with everything that had happened since then, I decided it wastime to skip past the surface and find out what exactly these people were madeof. If someone was out to get us I needed to know which ones I could trust notto buckle under pressure.

And so, as soon as we'd made our slice into hyperspace and were on our way, Ileft Ixil watching the bridge and headed aft.

The Icarus's engine room was just like the rest of the ship, only more so. Thesame odd arrangement of equipment and control systems was repeated back there, as if Salvador Dali had been in charge of the layout. In addition, though, thegeneral attempt elsewhere to keep the various cables and fluid conduits tuckedout of the way in the gap between the inner and outer hulls had seemingly beenabandoned here. They were everywhere: a bewildering, multicolored spaghettitangle that brushed against sleeves and shins and occasionally threatened toclothesline the unwary traveler.

And buried away at his control console near the middle of the sculpted chaoswas Revs Nicabar.

"Ah—McKell," he greeted me as I successfully negotiated past a final pair ofthick conduits leading to the large, shimmery Mobius strip that was the heartof the Icarus's stardrive. "Welcome to Medusa's Lair. Watch your head."

"And arms, legs, and throat," I added, pulling out a swivel stool from theside of his console and sitting down. "How's it flying?"

"Amazingly well, actually," he said. "Rather surprising, I know, consideringthat it looks like a refugee from a Doolian scrap heap. But whoever thedesignerwas, at least the builder had the sense to install some decent equipment."

"It's like that on the bridge, too," I said. "Good equipment, odd placement.

I'll make you a small wager that it was a working spacer who designed it, notsome so-called expert. Tell me, did you have any problems out in the port backthere?"

His eyes narrowed, just a bit, and I saw his gaze flick to the side of my headwhere the plasmic near miss had slightly singed my hair. I didn't think themarks showed; possibly I was wrong. "None at all," he said. "Of course, I wasonly outside a half hour or so—up till then I was sitting on the fuelersmakingsure they did their job properly. I take it there was some trouble I missedout on?"

"You might say that," I allowed. "Tell me about yourself, Revs."

I'd been hoping my sudden change of topic would spark a telling reaction. What got was equally informative: no reaction at all. "What do you want to know?" he countered calmly.

"Let's start with your background," I said. "Where you picked up your drivecertification, how long you've been flying, why you were at loose ends onMeima, and how you were hired for this trip."

"I learned drive-jocking in the service," he said. "EarthGuard Marines, stationed mostly out among the settlements in the Kappa Vega Sector. I was infor ten years, left six years ago to try my hand in the private sector."

"Odd timing," I said. "Considering that by then the Patth had alreadyswallowed up the lion's share of the Spiral's shipping."

"It was a gamble, but I'd had enough of military life by then and thought Icould make a go of it. Mostly, I was right." He shrugged. "As to the Icarus, Igot signed up more or less simultaneously with my resignation from my previousship."

"Oh?"

"Yes." His face hardened. "I'd just found out my freighter was actuallymask-shilling for the Patth."

I frowned. "That's a new one on me."

"It's the latest Patth twist to get around local protection ordinances," hesaid. "On some of these worlds twenty to forty percent of cargo tonnage has tobe carried by local shippers. So the Patth hire a ship on the sly, load it tothe gills with as much stuff as it can carry, and send it on in. It skews thenumbers, the Patth pocket the profits, and it pulls business away from thepeople the ordinances are supposed to protect." He shrugged. "Typical Patthconnivery."

"I take it you resigned in something of a huff?"

He grinned suddenly. "I don't know if 'huff' quite covers it, but I made damnsure I was loud enough for everyone in the taverno to hear what was happening.

Anyway, Borodin was there at the bar talking to someone else, and when Istompedout he followed and offered me this job."

He glanced around. "Though if I'd known what I was getting into, I might havelooked a little harder for something else."

He looked at me, his eyes suddenly cool. "My turn for a question. Do youalwayscarry a gun on board your own ship?"

I cocked an eyebrow. "I'm impressed. I didn't realize it was so obvious."

"Ten years in EarthGuard," he reminded me. "Do I get an answer?"

"Sure," I said. "Number one: It's not exactly my ship. Number two: I waskidnapped in port by a couple of alien lads who wanted our cargo."

"Interesting," he murmured. "And you suspect someone aboard of complicity withthem?"

"I can't imagine why anyone would be," I said. It was a perfectly truestatement, even if it wasn't precisely an answer to his question.

"No, of course not," he agreed in a tone that implied he'd heard both thewords I'd said and the words I hadn't said and would be mulling them over later onhis own. "In which case, I presume this visit is for the purpose of judgingwhether or not I'll be helping you circle the wagons if and when the shooting starts?"

I had to hand it to him, the man was sharp. "Very good," I said approvingly.

"I hereby withdraw all the unkind thoughts I've had toward EarthGuard Marinesover the years. Most of them, anyway."

"Thanks," Nicabar said dryly. "The answer's a qualified yes. I've dealt withmyshare of pirates and hijackers, and I don't like them much. You can count onme to help fight them off. But."

He leveled a finger at my chest. "My support and my presence are conditionalon the cargo being totally legit. If I find out we're running drugs or guns orthat we're mask-shilling for the Patth, I'm out at the next port. Clear?"

"Clear," I said firmly, hoping I sounded heartily on his side on this one. Ifhe ever found out about my connection with Brother John, I was going to have somefancy verbal dancing to do. "But I don't think you have anything to worryabout on any of those scores. Borodin told me the cargo had been cleared throughcustoms on Gamm, and one would assume they were reasonably thorough."

"Borodin told me that, too," Nicabar said darkly. "But then, Borodin's nothere, is he?"

"No, he's not," I conceded. "And before you ask, I don't know why."

"I didn't think you did." He peered at me thoughtfully. "If you ever find out, I

presume you'll tell me."

"Of course," I said, as if it went without saying, as I stood up. "I've got toget back to the bridge. See you later."

I made my way back through the wiring undergrowth, wishing irreverently for amachete, and ducked through the aft airlock hatch into the wraparound. Nicabarwas sharp, all right. Maybe a little too sharp. Perhaps his lack of reactionto my story about being jumped was because he already knew all about it.

In which case, unfortunately, I ran immediately and solidly into the questionof why he hadn't then done something to keep the Icarus from leaving Xathru.

Unless the Lumpy Brothers were just hunting cargoes at random, maybe working strictlyon their own.

But that one didn't wash at all. They'd known me by sight and name, and they'dknown I'd come in from Meima. And they sure as hell hadn't bought those coronaweapons off a gun-shop rack.

I was halfway through the wraparound, still turning all the questions over inmymind, when I heard a dull, metallic thud.

I stopped dead in my tracks, listening hard. My first thought was that we hadanother pressure ridge or crack; but that wasn't at all what the noise hadsounded like. It had been more like two pieces of metal clanking hollowlyagainst each other.

And near as I could tell, it had come from someplace immediately ahead of me.

I unglued myself from the deck and hurried ahead, ducking through the forwardairlock and into the main sphere, all my senses alert for trouble. No one wasvisible in the corridor, and aside from the galley/dayroom three rooms aheadon my right all the doors were closed. I paused again, listening hard, but therewas nothing but the normal hum of shipboard activity.

The first door ahead on my right was the computer room. I stepped up to it andtapped the release pad with my left hand, my right poised ready to grab for myplasmic if necessary. The door slid open—

Tera was seated at the computer, holding a hand pressed against the side ofher head. "What?" she snapped crossly, glaring at me.

"Just checking on you," I said, glancing around the room. No one else wasthere, and nothing seemed out of place. "I thought I heard a noise."

"That was my head banging against the bulkhead," she growled. "I dropped adatadisk and ran into the wall when I leaned over to get it. Is that all rightwith you?"

"No problem," I said hastily, backing out rapidly and letting the door closeon her scowl. This was twice now, counting my spectacularly unnecessary floordive back in that Meima hotel room, where I'd overreacted and made something of afool of myself.

The difference was that Ixil was already used to that sort of thing from me.

Tera wasn't, and my face was hot as I glowered my way forward.

Ixil was seated in the restraint chair when I reached the bridge, Pix and Paxnosing curiously around the bases of the various consoles in their rodent way.

"How was Nicabar?" he asked.

"Smart, competent, and apparently on our side," I told him. "Tera, unfortunately, probably now thinks I'm an idiot. Did you hear a metallicclunking noise a couple of minutes ago?"

"Not from here, no," he said, snapping his fingers twice. The two ferretsabandoned their exploration in response to the signal, scampering up his legsand onto his shoulders. "They didn't hear anything, either," he added. "Couldit have been a pressure ridge forming?"

"No, it wasn't anything like that," I said. "Tera told me she'd bumped herhead on the bulkhead. But that's not what it sounded like to me."

"Perhaps it was Shawn across the corridor from her in the electronicsworkshop,"

Ixil suggested as the ferrets headed down his legs to the deck again. "He saidhe was going to be tearing apart and cleaning one of the spare trimregulators."

"He came here? Or did he use the intercom?"

"He came here," Ixil said. "He wanted to ask you to run a decision/diagnosticon the regulators already on-line, not wanting to have one of the spares tornapartif there was any chance we might need it."

"Unfortunately, this ship has all the decision-making capabilities of apolitician up for reelection," I said. "Tera's computer back there is justthis side of utterly useless."

"Yes, he mentioned that," Ixil agreed. "I did what I could in the way of adiagnostic, then told him to go ahead."

"Fine," I said, pulling out the console's swivel stool. I sat down facingIxil, keeping the door visible at the corner of my eye. "I presume you took theopportunity to find out a little about him?"

"Of course," he said, as if there would be any doubt. "An interesting youngman, though he strikes me as something of the rebellious type. He's quite welltraveled—he went on several survey-match trips while in tech school, includingone that followed Captain Dak'ario's famous journey across the Spiral three hundred years ago."

"Sounds like a flimsy excuse to get out of real classes." I sniffed. "Whichschool was it?"

"Amdrigal Technical Institute on New Rome," he said. "Graduated fifth in hisclass, or so he says."

"Impressive, if true," I admitted grudgingly. "What was he doing on Meima?"

"He was out of work," Ixil said. "Why, he wouldn't say—he went rather evasiveevery time I tried to move us back to that topic. He did say that he wassittingin a taverno wearing his class jacket and being picked on by some kids from arival school when he caught Cameron's eye."

"Borodin, please, at least in public," I cautioned him. "That's the nameeveryone else aboard knows him by."

"Right. Sorry." He paused, an odd expression flitting across his face.

"There's one other thing that may or may not mean anything. Have you noticed Shawnseems to have a rather peculiar odor about him?"

I frowned. My first reaction was to think that that was possibly the strangestcomment Ixil had ever made, certainly in recent memory. But Ixil was anonhuman, with access to a pair of even more nonhuman outriders, and all of them haddifferent sensory ranges from mine. "No, I hadn't," I said.

"It's quite subtle," he said. "But it's definitely there. My initial thoughtwas that it might be related to a possible medical problem, the odor coming eitherfrom the illness itself or induced by medication."

I felt my throat tighten. "Or it could be coming from some other kind of drug.

The illegal type, maybe?"

"Could be," Ixil said. "Not standard happyjam, I don't think, but there areanynumber of variations I'm not familiar with." He shrugged. "Then again, itcould also be a result of something exotic he had for lunch in the port."

"Nice to have it narrowed down." Still, in all the years I'd known Ixil hisinstincts had never steered him wrong in this sort of thing. And there hadbeen the attitude change I'd noticed myself in Shawn earlier in the trip, a changethat could well have had something to do with drugs. "All right, we'll keep aneye on him. See if he smells the same tomorrow after a day of shipboard food."

"I will," he promised. "Speaking of tomorrow, I notice you've scheduled ournext fueling stop on Dorscind's World. I thought I might remind you that Dorscind'sWorld is not exactly a highlight of the average five-star tourist cruise."

"Which is precisely why I picked it," I told him. Pix and Pax had finishedtheir deck-level tour of the bridge now and had scampered out the door into thecorridor. I sent up a silent prayer that they wouldn't run across Everett; with his bulk, the big medic might step on them before he even noticed they wereunderfoot. "Paperwork accuracy has never been exactly a high priority with thePort Authority there, particularly if you're a few commarks heavy on thedockingfees. I figure that the eighty-two hours it'll take to get there should belongenough for us to create a new identity for the Icarus that'll be good enoughto pass muster."

"I'm sure we can put something together," he rumbled, eyeing me speculatively.

"Did your tangle with the Lumpy Brothers bother you that much?"

"More than you know," I assured him grimly. "You see, according to theschedule Cameron left me—the schedule he presumably filed with the Meima PortAuthority—the Icarus's first stop was going to be Trottsen. We weren'tsupposedto be on Xathru at all."

His squashed-iguana face hardened. "Yet the Lumpy Brothers knew you werethere."

"And called me by name," I nodded. "Granted, they may have tagged me when myturn was called at the StarrComm building—I had no reason at the time not togive my right name there. But why pick on me at all?"

Ixil nodded thoughtfully. "Can't be one of the crew," he murmured, half tohimself. "If someone here wanted the cargo, he would have simply stolen ithimself after everyone else left the ship."

"Depending on whether he could get through Cameron's security sealing," Isaid.

"But at the very least he would have made sure the Icarus didn't lift. And allhe needed to do to accomplish that was to phone the Port Authority with ananonymous report about a pair of crisped bodies lying next to a cul-de-sacloading dock."

Ixil cocked his head to the side. "In other words, he could have used the sametechnique that got you detained on Meima."

"Yes," I agreed. "And the fact that it didn't happen on Xathru implies to methat it wasn't someone aboard who pulled that stunt on Meima. But it doessuggest a reason why the Lumpy Brothers latched on to me but not on to anyoneelse aboard."

Ixil nodded. "The Meima Port Authority report had your name."

"Not only my name, but my name linked with Cameron's," I said. "Someone gothold of that near-arrest report and disseminated it to assorted associates acrossthe Spiral with instructions to be on the lookout for me. The Lumpy Brothers justhappened to get lucky."

"Or else backtracked your name to the Stormy Banks and looked up my flightschedule," Ixil suggested. "That might explain how they happened to be hangingaround the StarrComm building."

"I hadn't thought of that part," I acknowledged. "You're probably right."

"It also indicates our employer is probably still at large," Ixil continued, stroking his cheek thoughtfully. "I imagine he remembers all the rest of thenames of the people he hired on Meima, in which case the private alert oughtto have included their names as well."

"Good point," I said, grimacing. What had become of Cameron was still high onmylist of annoying loose ends. "Though that's not definitive—I doubt any of theothers had their names called over a loudspeaker in the market."

"Which leaves us only the question of who's behind all this," Ixil concluded.

"And how we smoke him or them out into the open."

"Maybe that's your only unanswered question," I said. "Personally, I'm alreadyon page two of that list. And as to who's pulling the strings in thebackground, I'm not at all sure we even want to go poking that direction. It seems to methat our job right now is to get the Icarus and its cargo to Earth, preferablywith it and us in one piece. Well, one piece each, anyway."

"You may be right." He hesitated. "You said you called Brother John to discussthis sudden change in plans. You didn't say whether or not you'd also spokenwith Uncle Arthur."

I grimaced. "No," I said. "I was hoping we could—oh, I don't know. Surprisehim, maybe?"

Even without the ferrets on his shoulders to do their twitching thing, I hadno trouble reading Ixil's reaction to that one. "I won't waste time by asking ifyou seriously believe that to be a good idea," he said. "I'll make you a smallwager: that he won't be any happier at your accepting this job than BrotherJohn was."

"If you're expecting me to cover that bet, you can forget it," I said sourly, the proverbial admonition against trying to serve two masters running throughmymind. No, Uncle Arthur would definitely not be happy with me over this one.

And the longer I put off calling him, the unhappier he was likely to get. "Oh, allright," I sighed. "I'll call him as soon as we hit Dorscind's World."

"That's the spirit," he said, with all the cheerful enthusiasm of someone whowould probably find himself unavoidably busy tightening bolts on the Icaruswhile I was sweating it out under Uncle Arthur's basilisk glare in a StarrCommbooth. "What's our plan until then?"

"To create a new identity for the Icarus, and to keep an eye on our backs," Isaid. Across at the bridge door, the two ferrets reappeared and headedstraightup Ixil's legs. "As far as I'm concerned, we still don't have a satisfactoryexplanation of what happened to Jones and Chort—"

The ferrets reached Ixil's shoulders; and abruptly, he made a quick doubleslashing motion across his throat with his fingertips. "—makes the best applebrandy anywhere in the Spiral," I said, shifting verbal gears as smoothly as Icould manage. The voice of someone speaking, I knew, could be heard wellbefore the actual words could be made out, as could the sharp break of that voicebeingsuddenly cut off. "In fact, I'd put it up against anything made on Taurus oreven Earth—"

I caught a movement from the corner of my eye; at the same time Ixil turnedhis head in that direction and nodded courteously. "Good evening, Tera," he said, breaking into my improvised babbling. "What can we do for you?"

I turned to face the door. Tera was standing in the doorway, a slight frown onher face as she took in Ixil seated in the restraint chair with me on the swivel stool. "You can get yourself out of that chair, that's what," she said. "Theclock on the wall—and Mercantile regs—say it's time for a shift change. It'smyturn for the bridge."

I frowned at my watch. Preoccupied with everything else that was happening, Ihadn't even thought about that. "You're right," I acknowledged. "Sorry—I'm notused to flying a ship where there are real shift changes and everything."

"Which I presume also explains why your mechanic's in the control chairinstead of you," she countered. "You, Ixil, need to take over for Nicabar in theengineroom; and you, McKell, need to hit the sack."

"I'm fine," I insisted, getting to my feet. In that moment, though, I realizedthat she was right. Overall lack of sleep plus general tension level hadcombined with the Lumpy Brothers incident and my still-sore leg to suddenlythrow a haze of wooziness over the universe. "On the other hand, maybe itwould be a good idea to go under for a couple of hours," I amended.

"Make it eight of them and you've got a deal," she said, jerking a thumb backdown the corridor. "Go on—I'll let you know if there's any trouble. You're inone of the cabins on the lower level, right?"

"Right," I said. "Number Eight."

"Fine," she said, settling herself into the chair Ixil had just vacated.

"Pleasant dreams."

I stepped out the door and clanked my way down the bare-metal rungs of theladder to the lower deck. The central corridor—as with the mid-deck, there wasonly one—was deserted. No big surprise, since aside from storage and recyclingequipment there were only two sleeping cabins down here, mine and the one Ixilhad moved into. A quiet part of the ship, where the rhythmic humming of thevarious machines would be quite conducive to lulling a weary traveler tosleep.

But I wasn't going to sleep. Not yet. Instead, I walked the length of thecorridor to the aft ladder and headed back up to the mid deck, treading asquietly on the rungs as I could.

Ixil was nowhere in sight, having apparently already disappeared into thewraparound to relieve Nicabar in the engine room. At the forward end of thecorridor, I saw that Tera had rather pointedly closed the bridge door behindher. A girl who liked her privacy, I decided, though there might not beanythingmore to it than the natural reticence of a lone woman locked in a flying tincan with four unfamiliar men and two alien males. But whatever the reason, it wasgoing to make my current project that much safer.

The computer-room door was closed, too, but that was all right; near as Icould tell, none of the Icarus's doors locked. Taking one last look around to makesure I wasn't being observed, I opened the door and went inside, closing itbehind me.

The room looked exactly the way it had when I'd last seen it, except of coursethat Tera wasn't there. The Worthram T-66 computer dominated the space, pressingup against the aft bulkhead and covering much of the starboard wall as well.

Fastened to the forward bulkhead was a two-sectioned metal cabinet with the hard-copy printer on one side and a set of shelves crammed with referencematerial and datadisks on the other. Squeezed in between the two was thecomputer control desk where Tera fought to beat the archaic machine intosubmission.

And where, allegedly, she'd been sitting when she hit her head hard enough forme to hear from the wraparound.

I went over and sat down in the chair. It wasn't nearly as fancy as the one onthe bridge; but then, in emergency maneuvers it was far more important for thepilot to stay in his seat than the computer jock. Taking a deep breath, Ileaned forward and banged my head experimentally against the edge of the controlpanel.

Even granted that I was hearing it from a more personal angle, the thud didn'tsound anything like what I'd heard earlier. That one had definitely beenmetallic; this one sounded exactly like a skull whacked against a controlboard.

Rubbing thoughtfully at my forehead and the dull ache that had joined thechorus throughout my body, I looked slowly around the room. So there were twopossibilities. Either Tera had coincidentally hit her head against somethingat about the same time I'd heard that metal-on-metal sound, or else she waslying.

If the former, then I needed to look elsewhere; if the latter, there wassomething else in here that had in fact made the noise.

The problem was, what? Unlike Ixil's machine shop, there weren't any toolslyingaround or hanging on racks that might fall and clatter against the deck. Therewere plenty of cables and connectors, but they were for the most part lightand rubber-coated. The cabinet was plain metal, but it was bolted to the bulkhead.

Besides, if it had tipped over, it would have left a mess of manuals anddatadisks scattered on the deck which she wouldn't have had time to pick up.

The manuals themselves, it went without saying, couldn't possibly make such asound.

Unless, it suddenly occurred to me, one of the manuals wasn't what it seemed.

It took me the better part of ten minutes to pull each of the manuals off theshelf, examine it carefully, and put it back in its place. Ten wasted minutes.

None of them was anything other than it appeared, and none of them could havemade that noise.

Which left only one possibility. Whatever Tera had dropped, she was carryingit with her. A wrench, possibly, though what she would need a wrench for Icouldn't imagine.

Or a gun.

The mid-deck corridor was still deserted as I left the computer room and mademyway down the aft stairway. I was tired, my head was now competing with my legto see which could ache the most, and I had the annoying sense that I was chasingmy own tail. Even if Tera did have a weapon, that didn't necessarily mean shewas up to anything. Besides, it was still entirely possible that the noise hadcome from somewhere else. I didn't really believe it, but it was possible.

The Number Eight sleeping cabin was like the other seven aboard the Icarus: small and cramped, with a triple bunk against the inner hull and a triplelocker facing it from the corridor-side wall. An intercom was set into the inner hullbeside the triple bunk, with a meter of empty hull space on its other sidewhere a lounge seat or computer desk would have gone on a properly furnished ship.

Clearly the ship had been designed to carry a lot more passengers than werecurrently aboard; as it was, we all conveniently got a cabin to ourselves, with one on the upper deck as a spare. The privacy was useful in that it gave me afair amount of freedom of movement; not so useful in that it offered that samefreedom to everyone else, too.

The light switch was by the door. I punched it to nighttime dim, then crossedthe room and lay down on the bottom bunk. Unrolling the blanket over me, Islid my plasmic under the pillow, where it would be available if needed, and closedmy eyes. With unpleasant images of a frowning Uncle Arthur flickering behind my eyelids, I fell asleep.

I AWOKE SLOWLY, in slightly disoriented stages, vaguely aware that something was wrong but not exactly sure what. The light was still at the dim level I'd set, the door was still closed, and I was still alone in the cabin. The rhythmic drone of the environmental system was still vibrating gently through the air and hull around me. The deeper hum of the stardrive—

The deeper hum of the stardrive wasn't there.

The Icarus had stopped.

I had my boots and jacket on in fifteen seconds flat, almost forgetting to grab my plasmic in my rush to get out of the room. I hurried out into the corridor, went up the forward ladder like a cork out of a bottle, and charged into the bridge.

Seated in the restraint chair, Tera turned a mildly questioning eye in my direction. "I thought you were asleep," she said.

"Why have we stopped?" I demanded.

Her eyebrows lifted a bit higher. "We've got another hull ridge," she said calmly. "Chort's getting ready to go out and fix it."

I scowled past her at the displays. Sure enough, the new camera I'd had Ixil and Shawn install in the wraparound showed two space-suited figures just sealing the pressure door behind them. One was obviously Chort; the other was just as obviously Ixil. "You should have called me," I growled.

"Why?" she countered. "There's nothing to this operation that the pilot needs to have a hand in. Besides, you're off-duty, remember? Go back to bed."

The radio speaker clicked. "We're ready, Tera," Ixil's voice said. "You can shut down the grav generator."

"Acknowledged," Tera said, flipping back the safety cover and turning the switch ninety degrees. "Shutting off gravity generator now."

She pushed the switch, and I went through the usual momentary disorientation before my stomach settled down. "Go back to bed," Tera repeated, her eyes on the monitors. "I'll call you if there's a problem."

"I'm sure you would," I said shortly. Once again, it seemed, I had managed to embarrass myself in front of this woman. This was getting to be a very bad habit. "I'll stay a bit."

"I don't need you," she said flatly, flicking a single glowering glance at me and then turning her attention back to the monitors. "More to the point, I don't want you. Go away."

"Do we know where the ridge is?" I asked, ignoring the order.

"Big sphere; starboard side," she said. "Chort thinks it's a small one."

"Let's hope he's right."

She didn't answer. For a few minutes we watched the monitors together in silence, anxious silence on my part, frosty silence on hers. I presumed that Ixil had made it his business to make sure the grav generator couldn't impulsively go on-line again; but I didn't know for sure, and I didn't want to ask him about it on an open radio channel. I tried to figure out how I would lock down the generator if it was up to me, but I didn't know enough about theintricacies of the system.

"You two been flying together long?" Tera broke into my thoughts.

I blinked at her in mild surprise. Casual conversation from Tera was somethingnew in my admittedly brief acquaintance with her. "Six years," I told her. "Itook him on about a year after I bought the Stormy Banks. I figured having apartner would help me run cargoes faster and more efficiently and bring inmore money."

"I take it it didn't work?"

"What makes you say that?" I countered, long experience with that questionputting automatic defensiveness into my voice.

"You're here, aren't you?" she said. "Sorry—I didn't mean that the way itsounded. With the Patth handling almost everything worth shipping these days, it's a wonder everyone else hasn't been driven out of business."

"Give them a few more years," I said sourly. "The way they're going, it won'tbe long before they have it all."

"At least everything legitimate," she said, giving me a sideways look. "You dorun legitimate cargoes, don't you, McKell?"

"Every single chance I get," I said, trying to put a touch of levity into mytone as I gazed at her profile, wishing I could read what was going on behindthose hazel eyes of hers. Had she talked to someone while we were on Xathru?

Heard something, perhaps, about my forced affiliation with Brother John andthe Antoniewicz organization? "What about you?" I asked, hoping to change thesubject. "How long have you been flying?"

"Not long," she said. "What do you do when you can't get legitimate work?"

So much for changing the subject. "Sometimes we're able to pick up intrasystemcargoes," I told her. "Occasionally we have to find temp jobs in whatever portwe're stuck in until something comes along. Mostly, we eat real light."

"You're not a big fan of the Patth, then, I take it?"

"No one who hauls cargo for a living is a fan of the Patth," I said darkly, myconversation with Nicabar flashing to mind. "Is this your subtle way ofsuggesting we might be carrying a Patth cargo?"

There were a lot of things, I knew, that a competent actress could do with herbody, voice, and expression. But the last time I checked, the red flush thatrose to briefly color Tera's cheeks wasn't one of them. "We'd better not be," she said, the studied casualness in her voice a sharp contrast to the emotionimplicit in that reddened skin. "Though I doubt we'll find out for sureanywherethis side of Earth."

"If even then," I pointed out. "Whoever Borodin's got working that end isn'tunder any obligation to let us watch while he cuts the cargo bay open."

"No, of course not," she murmured, almost as if talking to herself. "I wonderwhy he lied to us about coming along."

"Who, Borodin? What makes you think he did lie?"

She shrugged. "You saw that note he left. He had to have written it before theIhmisits closed the port down for the night."

I thought about Director Aymi-Mastr of the Meima Port Authority and thatmurder charge she'd talked about. "Unless he just had it here as a precaution," Isuggested. "Maybe he fully intended to join us, but circumstances preventedhim."

She snorted. "Right. A full bottle, or a warm bed. Circumstances."

"Or a small matter of murder," I said.

She looked at me, her eyes narrowing. "Murder?"

"That's right," I said. "I was told there was a warrant out for his arrest ona possible murder charge."

She shook her head. "Hard to believe," she said. "He seemed like such anormal, upstanding man."

"That's exactly what I said when they asked me about it," I said approvingly.

"Nice to know there's at least one thing we agree on."

"Well, now, wait a minute," she warned cautiously. "I never said I thought hedidn't do it, I just said it was hard to believe. I don't know anything aboutthe man."

"Sure, I understand," I assured her. In fact, I understood far more than sheprobably realized. Just as her involuntary blush when talking about the Patthhad given me a glimpse into her emotional state, so, too, had the completelack of any such coloring when I told her about Cameron's murder charge. And thatdespite her alleged total surprise at hearing such shocking news.

Maybe she'd already used up all of her emotional reactions for one day. Ormaybeshe hadn't been surprised by the murder charge for the simple reason thatshe'd already known all about it.

"Computer Specialist Tera?" Chort's whistly voice came over the speaker. "Ibelieve I'm finished here. Shall I check the rest of the hull?"

I was still watching Tera closely, which was why I caught the slight butunmistakable tightening of her facial muscles. Perhaps she was thinking alongthe same line that had suddenly occurred to me: that it had been just as Chorthad set off on a similar check of the cargo and engine hulls his last time outthat the accident with the grav generator had occurred.

If it was, in fact, an accident. Perhaps someone aboard didn't want anyonetaking a close look at the outside of the cargo sphere.

For a moment I was tempted to tell him to go ahead, just to see if ourtheoretical spoilsport still had his same access to switches or junction boxesor whatever. But only for a moment. Ixil was sharing the hot spot with Chort, and the spoilsport might decide he didn't like Ixil any more than he'd likedJones. I had no interest in risking Ixil's life or health, at least not then.

Certainly not over a theory that hadn't even occurred to me until five secondsago.

"This is McKell," I said toward the speaker before Tera could answer. "Don'tbother, Chort—we don't have time for it. You and Ixil just get back in andbutton up."

"Acknowledged," he whistled.

"That was my job," Tera reminded me, throwing a brief glare in my direction.

But to my hypersensitive eye, the glare didn't seem to have the kind of firebehind it that I would have expected. Maybe she and I had indeed been thinking alongthe same lines, or maybe her chip-shoulder act was starting to wear a littlethin. "You're off-duty, remember?"

"Right," I said. "I keep forgetting. You can handle things here?"

She didn't even bother to answer that one, just gave me a look that saidvolumes all by itself and turned back to the monitors. Properly chastened, I floatedout of the bridge, maneuvered down the ladder well, and returned to my cabin. Iwas once again stripping off my jacket when the warning tone sounded and gravity came back on.

For a long time after that I just lay in my bunk, staring at the closed doorin the dim light, as I ran that last conversation through endless repeats in mymind. Tera was an enigma, and in general I hated enigmas. In my experience, theynearly always spelled trouble.

Unless I had been reading her words and her reactions all wrong. Or, worse, had somehow imagined them entirely. It certainly wouldn't be the first time I hadoh-so-cleverly Sherlocked myself straight down a blind alley.

But I hadn't imagined the mishap with the grav generator or Jones's death. Ihadn't imagined my brief detention on Meima, or the Lumpy Brothers, or theirunreasonably advanced hand weaponry.

And I certainly hadn't imagined Arno Cameron, amateur archaeologist and headof one of the largest and most influential industrial combines in the Spiral, sitting in a grimy Vyssiluyan taverno and all but begging me to fly the Icarusto Earth for him.

No, the facts were there, at least some of them. What they meant, though, Ididn't have the foggiest idea.

But a small group of unclearly related facts can chase each other around asingle overtired brain for only so long. Eventually, I fell asleep.