"Tell them to quit and seal the ship back up," I told him. "And get the bridge and drive preflights started. We're out of here as soon as I get back."

There was just the briefest pause. "What did Uncle Arthur say?"

"I never got to talk to Uncle Arthur," I told him. "And I'll explain as much as I can when I get there. Just get us ready to fly, all right?"

"Got it," he said. "We'll be ready when you are."

The Icarus was b.u.t.toned down, with no fuelers in sight, by the time I retracted the ramp and sealed the hatchway. Tera and Everett tried to collar me in the corridor, demanding to know what the rush was; I ordered them back to their stations in no uncertain terms and headed to the bridge.

Ixil was waiting for me there. "All set," he said, standing up andrelinquishing the control chair to me. "Nicabar is ready with the drive, the fuelers are paid off, and I've got lift permission from the tower."

"Good," I said, sliding into the chair and sounding the lift alert. "Let's get out of here."

We were off the ground, nearly out of Dorscind's World's atmosphere, and driving for the blackness of s.p.a.ce when he finally broke the silence. "Well?"

I leaned back in my seat. "Someone out there wants to get hold of the Icarus,"

I.

said. "They want it very badly."

He frowned. "Why?"

"I don't know why," I said, pulling Thompson's doc.u.ments out of my pocket and handing them over. "But I do know who."

He leafed through the papers, and stopped at the same place I had. Staring at the plain ID card with its operative number and ornate governmental seal and nothing else, the ferrets on his shoulders twitching with his astonishment. "I don't believe it," he said mechanically, looking up at me.

"I don't believe it either," I agreed grimly. "But it's true. We, my friend, are being chased by the Patth."

CHAPTER 7.

"BUT IT DOESN'T make sense," Ixil protested.

"On the contrary, it makes perfect sense," I countered. "It has to. We just don't know what that sense is yet, that's all."

Ixil muttered something in his own language, rubbing a fingertip along the corner of my locker. We had retired to my cabin as the most private place on the ship to talk after I'd gotten us into hypers.p.a.ce and turned the bridge over to Tera. Technically, it was Shawn's shift, with Chort on watch in the engine room, but given the shape Shawn had been in when I left earlier I wouldn't have trusted him to b.u.t.ter bread for me, let alone watch over a ship I was on.

And between then and now, I'd had time to do some serious thinking. "Look, it's very simple," I went on. "At least, the basics of it are. The archaeological dig on Meima found something big-that much is clear from the fact that Cameron himself came out there to take a look. They brought in the Icarus-"

"Wait a minute," Ixil put in. "How did they bring it in without the Port Authority having a record of it?"

"Probably in pieces," I said. "You've seen what this thing looks like-odds are Cameron flew it in in sections, along with some of his tech people to put it together, and maybe with the archaeological team helping with some of the gruntwork. They probably built it underground, which would explain why none of the normal incoming traffic noticed it on the surface."

"Then that ma.s.sive explosion Director Aymi-Mastr told you about was to blow the roof off one of those underground caverns and let the ship out."

"Right," I nodded. "Along with conveniently scrambling the s.p.a.ceport sensors so that its departure wouldn't be noticed. I'd give a lot to know what they added to the explosive or the dirt strata to pull that off-again, it was probably Cameron's techs who handled that one.""So why didn't they just leave then?"

I shook my head. "I don't know. Either they didn't have a crew put together yet, or else they wanted an official s.p.a.ceport stamp to add legitimacy to things."

"Or perhaps were planning to bring the entire archaeological group out together," Ixil suggested. "There's certainly plenty of extra carrying capacity aboard."

"Good point," I agreed, glancing over at the three-bunk tier. "And they couldn't all get on board and leave right then because they knew the authorities would come to investigate the explosion. Finding the site deserted would raise red flags from here to Thursday, which was exactly what they didn't want.

"Anyway, so the Icarus lifted up under cover of the cloud, maybe circled the planet once, and joined the line of incoming ships waiting clearance to land.

They put down, showed their forged Gamm Port Authority sealed-cargo license, and were in. The crew left the ship, planning to take off again in the morning with the whole crowd aboard and a genuine lift doc.u.ment that would get them back to Earth with no raised eyebrows from anyone."

"Except that something went wrong," Ixil said heavily. "The question is, what?"

"Somebody tumbled to the scheme, obviously," I said. "Not the Patth themselves, I don't think. Or if it was, they didn't realize right away the full significance of what Cameron's people had dug up-if they had, they'd have pushed the Ihmisits into locking down the port completely."

"The Lumpy Brothers or their friends, perhaps?"

"Possibly," I agreed, "though I'm still not sure how they fit into this. But whoever it was, and however they tumbled to it, they were interested enough to raid the dig, grab everyone in sight, and send the Ihmisits hunting for anyone who may have slipped through the net."

"Like Cameron?"

"Like Cameron," I nodded. "And so there he was, alone on Meima, with the authorities on his tail, a hot ship locked away behind a fence where he couldn't get at it, and no one to fly it even if he could."

Ixil shook his head. "Not a situation I'd want to find myself in."

"The way things are going, you may get your chance at it yet," I warned.

"Still, Arno Cameron didn't build a mult.i.trillion-commark industrial empire by lying down and giving up when things got tough. He started going through the periphery tavernos, probably very systematically, looking for enough s.p.a.cers at loose ends to put together a new crew."

"And to all appearances he succeeded," Ixil said. "Which leads immediately to the question of why he didn't fly out with you."

"That one's got me stumped, too," I conceded. "Clearly, they hadn't caught him yet-Director Aymi-Mastr and her frog-eyed heavies grabbing me on the way into the port proved that much. He may have decided that trying to walk through a relatively narrow port gate under the gaze of a pair of Ihmis door wardens would be pushing his luck too far."

"Even if staying behind meant they would eventually run him down?""He might have decided that giving the Icarus a head start was worth that risk."

I grimaced. "Which he may now have lost. Unlike the Lumpy Brothers, our generous Patth agent with the stack of hundreds knew the Icarus's name."

"Possibly," Ixil said. "On the other hand, we presume they had the rest of the group already in custody. Perhaps one of them finally talked." He paused, his eyes narrowing in thought. "There is, of course, another possible explanation for Cameron's absence, given the accidents that have happened on board.

Perhaps one of the s.p.a.cers he hired was not the innocent out-of-work drifter he seemed.

Particularly now that we know that the Patth do have non-Patth agents on retainer."

"That thought has spent a lot of time twirling around my brain, too," I acknowledged. "The problem is, why hasn't he done anything recently? If he's trying to damage the crew or slow down the ship, why haven't there been more such accidents?"

"Be careful what you wish for," Ixil warned.

"I'm not wishing for it," I a.s.sured him fervently. "I'm just trying to understand it. Okay, he killed Jones and shook up Chort a little, but that was about it. He certainly wasn't busy throwing wrenches in the gears while we were on Xathru and Dorscind's World."

"He didn't call in the authorities at either place, either," Ixil agreed. "As I.

see it, there are two other possibilities we haven't yet addressed. First, that the attack on Jones was personal to Jones. Once he was dead, the perpetrator stopped perpetrating because his job was finished."

"But why pick on Jones?" I countered. "No one aboard knew anyone else prior to boarding."

"So we a.s.sume," Ixil said. "That may turn out not to be the case. Second, and possibly more intriguing, the attack on Jones may have been staged by Jones himself."

I frowned. "To what end?"

"To the end of allowing him to jump ship without any attached suspicion," Ixil said. "Think about it. If the carbon monoxide hadn't killed him, you would certainly have put him off the ship on Xathru for a complete medical check.

That would have left him with names and complete descriptions of you and the rest of the crew, details of the Icarus itself, and very possibly the itinerary Cameron had planned for the trip to Earth. And he would have had complete freedom of movement."

"The itinerary wouldn't have done him any good," I said mechanically. This angle had never even occurred to me. "We're already way off Cameron's plan, and will be staying that way as long as the docking-fee bribe money holds out. You're suggesting he just miscalculated, then?"

"I don't know." Ixil paused. "There is, of course, one other possibility we haven't touched on. Did you think to search Jones's body before it was taken off the ship?"

A tight knot formed in the center of my stomach. "No, I didn't," I said. "It never even occurred to me.""It's possible whoever killed him did so in order to use his body as a receptacle for pa.s.sing information," Ixil suggested. "Hard data, perhaps, such as photos or schematics that couldn't easily be sent via phone."

"But why bother?" I asked. "They all had complete freedom of movement on Xathru.

Why not just deliver it in person?"

"Perhaps the murderer didn't want to risk being seen in the company of the wrong people."

I mulled that one over. "Which would imply we were dealing with a genuine professional here."

Ixil nodded. "Yes. It would."

I hissed thoughtfully between my teeth. There were indeed people out there, I knew, who would go to such lengths to complete a mission. But to have one of them just happen to be aboard the Icarus was pushing the bounds of credibility way beyond even their normal elasticity range. "Again, though, if someone wanted the Icarus badly enough to slip that kind of professional aboard, why haven't we been stopped already?"

"That is indeed a key question," Ixil conceded. "I'm afraid, Jordan, that there are still too many missing pieces to this puzzle."

"The biggest of which is sitting back there in our cargo hold," I agreed grimly.

"I'm starting to think it's about time we had ourselves a close look at it."

Ixil rubbed his cheek. "I don't know," he said doubtfully. "I've looked over the schematics Tera pulled from the computer. There aren't any access panels shown at all."

"You've got a cutting torch in the mechanics shop, don't you?" I pointed out.

"An access hole is basically wherever we want to make one."

"I wasn't thinking so much about getting in as I was of covering up afterward the fact that we'd done so," Ixil said mildly. "If Jones didn't engineer his own accident-and to be honest, I really don't think he did-then whoever did is still aboard. We may not want to set up a situation where he would be able to get a look of his own into the hold."

Unfortunately, he was right. "All right," I said reluctantly. "We'll play along a while longer. But you might want to get your cutting equipment ready just the same. At some point I don't think we're going to be able to afford to continue flying blind."

"Perhaps," Ixil said. "How much of this are you planning to tell the others?"

"As little as possible," I said. "I've already told Tera I ran afoul of someone back there who had decided to make it his business to hijack the Icarus."

"Which is more or less true."

"Eminently true," I agreed. "I also mentioned the murder charge against Cameron to her, just to see what kind of reaction I'd get."

"And that was?"

"Protests of surprise, but no visible evidence of it," I told him. "Though I'm not sure where exactly that leaves us. I think that the rest of the details, including the fact that the Patth are involved, should be left out of thestory for the moment. We've got enough trouble as it is explaining why we're running under fake IDs and why no one should mention the name 'Icarus' in groundside conversations. There's no need to scare them, too."

"I agree," Ixil said, looking around and snapping his fingers twice. Pix and Pax scampered out from under my bunk and whatever they'd found to explore there and climbed up his legs and torso back to his shoulders. "I'll go up and..."

He trailed off, an odd look on his face. "What is it?" I asked.

"I don't know," he said slowly, the look still there. "Something's not quite right. I can't put my finger on it."

I was on my knees now, plasmic in hand, my full attention on the deck where the ferrets had emerged from beneath the bunk. Carefully, one hand on the edge of the bunk to steady myself, I leaned over and looked underneath.

Nothing. No one scrunched up in hiding, no mysterious packages ready to go boom in the quiet watches of the night, no indication of hidden bugs or bottles of poisonous spiders, no evidence of tampering at all. Just a plain metal deck with a plain metal hull beyond it.

I got back to my feet. "Nothing there," I reported, brushing off my knees with my free hand.

"Of course not," Ixil said, his face wrinkling in a different way. "We would certainly have seen and recognized anything obvious."

I knew that, of course. On the other hand, it wasn't his bunk in his cabin.

"So how un.o.bvious is it?" I asked.

"Very," he said, shaking his head. "It's rather like one of those ideas or memories that floats around the edge of your mind, but which you can't quite tease out into the open."

"Keep trying," I told him.

"I will," he promised, throwing one last frown at the bunk and turning toward the door. He was reaching for the release pad when, beside the middle bunk, the intercom crackled. "Captain McKell, this is Chort," the Craea's familiar voice whistled through the speaker, the rhythmic thuds and hums of the engine room in the background. "Is Mechanic Ixil there with you?"

I stepped around the bunks to the intercom and tapped the key. "Yes, he is," I told him. "Trouble?"

"Nothing serious, I don't think," Chort a.s.sured me. "But I am in need of his a.s.sistance. The readings indicate an intermittent fault in the Darryen modulator relay, with possible location in the power-feed couplings."

"Probably the connectors," Ixil rumbled from behind me. "Those go out all the time."

"So I understand," Chort agreed. "I thought perhaps you and your outriders could either confirm or deny that possibility before I wake Drive Specialist Nicabar and ask him to open the conduit."

"No problem," Ixil said, tapping the door-release pad. "I'll be right there."

He stepped into the corridor and headed for the aft ladder. "Thank you," Chort said as the door closed again. The intercom clicked off, and I was alone.

For a few minutes I stood there, listening to the various hums and clanks and throbbings, staring at my bunk and the wall behind it. I've never had anyparticular problems with the loneliness or unpleasant self-evaluation that for some people make solitude something to be avoided. For that matter, given that much of my human interaction lately had been with people like Brother John, solitude was in fact something to be actively sought out. I was tired, I'd been running low on sleep since even before that taverno run-in with Cameron, and under normal circ.u.mstances I would have been on my bunk and asleep in three minutes flat.