"Look closely, right here," he said, pointing at a spot about midway along the rectangular cross-sectioned handle. "See the black streak?"

I leaned forward. It was there, all right: a faint black vertical mark, with a wider and fainter echo beside it as if a charcoal line had been smeared. "Let me guess," I said, leaning back again. "A mark from the rubber edge of your cabin door?"

"Very good," he said, lifting the wrench up by the cloth for a closer look of his own. "Those doors. .h.i.t pretty hard when the buffer doesn't engage. My a.s.sumption is he hit the release pad, then shoved this into the gap when it opened."

And it was still moving as the door hit it; hence, the smeared streak. "That would have left enough of an opening for the bottles, but not enough to get hisarm through," I pointed out. "Probably why they weren't farther from the door.

Unless he was hoping someone would kick them on the way in or out."

"That wouldn't have done him any good," Ixil reminded me. "You have to ignite the mixture, remember?"

"None of this does him any good," I growled, mentally giving the whole thing up as hopeless. There was some vital information we didn't yet have-I was sure of it. And until we found out what it was all we were going to accomplish by chasing our meager data around was to make ourselves dizzy.

Apparently, Ixil had figured that out, too. "As you suggested in an earlier conversation, it all makes perfect sense," he said, starting to wrap up the wrench again. "We just don't yet know what that sense is."

I nodded to the wrench. "You planning to check it for fingerprints?"

"I was thinking of it," he agreed. "Knowing the Icarus, though, I suspect we'll need to use it before we ever get within hailing distance of a proper fingerprinting expert."

"Knowing the Icarus, I'd say you were right," I agreed. "So what now?"

"I thought I'd see about fixing my door," he said, tucking the wrench under

one.

arm and snapping his fingers as he reached for the remains of his sandwich.

The two ferrets came at his call, scampering up his body to his shoulders. "Your door, rather, since your outer pad's on my cabin now. I can take the pad off the empty Number Two cabin on the top deck and replace the whole thing."

"What if we want to get in there?" I asked.

"What for?" he asked reasonably. "Anyway, we can always move a pad from one of the other cabins temporarily if we need to."

"Point," I conceded. "Okay, go ahead."

"Right. I'll see you later." Stuffing another large corner of his sandwich into his mouth, he headed out.

For a couple of minutes, ignoring my own resolve not to waste time and effort doing so, I chased our meager data around in a couple more circles. It didn't get me anywhere.

And then, behind me out in the corridor, I heard the steady tread of approaching footsteps. Two pairs, from the sound of it, neither of them Ixil's.

It was probably something totally innocent, of course. But I'd had enough unpleasant surprises for one day, and I wasn't interested in having any more of them. Folding my arms across my chest, I slid my right hand out of sight beneath my jacket and got a grip on my plasmic, then swiveled my seat around to face the open doorway.

The first in line was Tera, stalking onto the bridge like she owned it.

"McKell," she said in terse greeting. There was nothing the slightest bit friendly about her expression. "We need to talk to you."

Before I could reply, the other half of the "we" stepped into sight behind her: Nicabar, looking even less friendly than she did. Not a good sign. "Come in,"

I.

said mildly, ignoring the fact that they were already in. "Revs, aren't you supposed to be on duty in the engine room?"

"Yes," he said, his eyes flicking once to my folded arms. If he suspected Iwas holding my gun, he didn't comment on it. "I asked Chort to watch things for a few minutes."

Strictly speaking, that was a violation of the Mercantile Code, me being the captain and not being informed and all. But so far this trip I'd been fairly casual about the duty roster, and there didn't seem much point in complaining about it now. "Fine. What can I do for you?"

Tera glanced at Nicabar, who glanced in turn out into the corridor and then unlocked the release, letting the door slide shut beside him. "You can start with some honesty," Tera said as they both looked back at me. "This Mr.

Antoniewicz whose name scares off customs inspectors. Who exactly is he?"

It was a trap, of course. And with someone else, it might have worked. But Tera didn't have the facial control or sheer chutzpah to pull it off. "You already know the answer," I said. I shifted my gaze to Nicabar. "Or rather, you know it.

I see you've already given Tera your version; how about doing the same for me?"

"He's a dealer in death and misery," Nicabar said, his voice as dark as his expression. "He buys and sells drugs, guns, customs officials, governments, and people's lives."

His eyes bored into mine. "And we want to know what exactly your relationship is to his organization."

"Nice speech," I complimented him, stalling for time. I'd known from the start that the relative ease with which I'd obtained Shawn's borandis would inevitably generate speculation among the others as to how I'd pulled it off. But I hadn't expected that speculation to turn into full-blown suspicion so quickly or so bluntly. This could be very awkward indeed. "Did you work it up specially for this occasion? Or is it left over from the last ship you worked that had ties to Antoniewicz? Or the one before that, or the one before that?"

"What exactly are you implying?" Nicabar asked, his tone the unpleasant stillness of the air when there's a thunderstorm brewing in the distance.

"I'm saying that you and everyone else aboard the Icarus has worked for Antoniewicz at one time or another," I told him. "You had no choice.

Antoniewicz's fingers stretch into so many nooks and crannies across the Spiral it's practically impossible to engage in any business that doesn't touch something he's involved with."

"That's not the same," Tera protested.

"What, if you don't know what you're doing it doesn't count?" I scoffed.

"There's a very slippery slope beneath that kind of moral position."

"Speaking of slippery, you still haven't answered our question," Nicabar put in.

"I'm getting to it," I said. "I just wanted to make sure the answer was in the proper context. One of the ways Antoniewicz got a slice of so many pies was by buying up legitimate businesses, especially those in serious financial trouble.

I was a legitimate business. Thanks to the Patth shipping monopoly, I got into serious financial trouble. Antoniewicz bought me up. End of story."

"Not end of story," Nicabar said. "He didn't just buy your business. He bought you."

"Of course he did," I said, putting an edge of bitterness into my tone. "Ixiland I are the business."

"So you sold your soul," Nicabar said contemptuously. "For money."

"I prefer to think of it as having traded my pride for a little bottom-line integrity," I shot back. "Or do you think it would have been more honorable to have declared bankruptcy and left my creditors holding an empty bag. Well?"

"How much debt are we talking about here?" Tera asked.

"Five hundred thousand commarks," I told her. "And let me also say that I tried every single legitimate way to get the money before I finally gave up and let Antoniewicz's people bail us out." Which wasn't strictly true, of course. But there was no need to muddy the water here.

"What about now?" she asked.

"What about now?" I countered. "You think I wouldn't love to pay off the debt and be out from under his thumb? Antoniewicz has done this before, you know, and he's quite good at it. The way he's got things structured, we're going to be in servitude to him till about midway into the next century."

"There must be another way," she insisted.

I felt my forehead creasing. For someone who'd come in here ready to accuse me of being the sc.u.m of the Spiral, she seemed awfully concerned about my personal ensnarement in this web. Maybe even suspiciously concerned. "Such as?" I asked.

"You could turn him in," she said. "Go to one of the police or drug- enforcement agencies. Or even EarthGuard Military Intelligence-if he deals in weapons they're surely interested in him, too. You could offer to testify against him."

I sighed. "You still don't get it. Look, Tera, every police force in the Spiral has been trying to get their hands on Antoniewicz for at least twenty years.

EarthGuard, too, for all I know. The problem isn't evidence or even persuading suicidal fools to testify; the problem is finding him. No one knows where he is, and at the rate things are going, no one's going to figure it out anytime soon, either."

"But-"

"And furthermore, blowing the horn on him would end it for me permanently," I cut her off. "He's got my debt held with a bank on Onikki, under their charming debtors' prison laws. All he has to do is call it in, and I'll spend the next thirty years working it off at fifty commarks a day. Sorry, but I have other plans."

"Like spending the same thirty years working for Antoniewicz?" Nicabar said pointedly.

"The choices stink," I agreed. "But at least this way I'm not doing hard labor, and I still get to fly."

"As Antoniewicz's wholly owned drink-fetcher."

I shrugged. "Like I said, the choices stink. If you've got any others, I'm listening."

"What if you could find someone to pay off the debt?" Tera asked.

"Like who?" I demanded. "If the banks wouldn't look at me before, they sure aren't going to start now. Unless one of you has half a million in spare change,it's not going to happen."

The corner of her mouth twitched. "It sounds like you've already given up."

"What I've done is accepted reality." I c.o.c.ked an eyebrow. "The question is, are you two prepared to do the same?"

Both of them frowned. "What do you mean?" Tera asked.

"I mean you have to decide whether you're going to rise above your finicky scruples and continue to fly with me," I said. I was taking a risk, I knew, bringing up the subject that way. But only a slight one-that was, after all, what they'd come here planning to confront me with in the first place.

Besides, if they could be blunt, so could I.

And Tera, at least, could certainly be blunt. "I would think it's a matter of whether you will be allowed to continue flying with us," she retorted.

"Afraid it doesn't work that way," I said, shaking my head. "I'm the pilot, hired for the job by Borodin. None of you has the position or rank to replace me."

"Under the circ.u.mstances, I doubt you'd have the gall to file a complaint,"

Nicabar pointed out.

"Oh, I might have the gall," I said. "But I wouldn't, mainly because there wouldn't be anything to gain. You and the Icarus would already be gone, taken by the hijackers I've already told you about."

"a.s.suming there was any truth to that story," Tera scoffed.

"Why would I make something like that up?"

"Maybe you're hoping to scare us all into jumping ship," she said. "Maybe you've got another crew lined up ready to move in when that happens, like you had Ixil ready when Jones got killed. Maybe you're the real hijacker."

"Then why didn't I move my crew in on Dorscind's World while you were all out sampling the sights?" I countered. "Why bother with any story at all?"

"And you don't know who these hijackers are?" Nicabar asked.

"All I know is that they're very well organized," I said. "And that for whatever reason, they think they want the Icarus."

"They 'think' they want it?"

"Well, I sure can't see any good reason for chasing us this way," I told him.

"Any cargo that would pa.s.s muster well enough on Gamm to earn a sealed-cargo license can't be all that exciting to anyone. Maybe it's the ship itself they want, though personally I find that even less plausible."

I looked back at Tera. "But whatever the reason, it boils down to the fact that you're stuck with me. You try finding a replacement pilot from this point on, and you'll never know whether it's someone the hijackers deliberately dangled in front of you, either one of their own or someone they've hired for the occasion.

Not until it's too late, anyway. Have you noticed that none of your cabin doors have locks?"

They exchanged glances. Unhappy glances; trapped-and-not-liking-it-at-all glances. But they were stuck, and they knew it. At the moment the only people they had even a hope of trusting were already aboard the Icarus. And it was for sure that none of them could fly this front-heavy fitter's nightmare.

"If this is supposed to make us feel better about trusting you, it isn't,"Nicabar said. "How do we know you aren't just sticking around hoping to get a better deal?"

"How do I know you won't sell out?" I countered. "Or that Tera won't, or any of the others? Answer: I don't. If there were better odds to be had anywhere else, I'd grab them. But there aren't. Not here, not now."

"So why should you care what happens to the Icarus?" Nicabar persisted. "Or to any of the rest of us?"

I looked him straight in the eye. "Because I took a contract to fly this ship to Earth. And that's what I intend to do."

"And we can believe that or not?"

I sighed, suddenly weary of this whole stupid game. "Believe whatever you want,"

I told him. "But if and when we make it to Earth I'll want a full apology."

It would be overly generous to say that he smiled. But some of the implied threat did seem to drain out of his face. I reflected briefly on his former career with the EarthGuard Marines, a career that wouldn't really have trained him how to read people. "I'll remember that," he promised.

"I may even expect a little groveling," I warned, shifting my attention back to Tera. "How about you? Willing to rub shoulders with the drink-fetchers a little longer, or are you going to jump ship at the next port?"