The Grand Feast was sometimes compared to the annual Mardi Gras celebrations that still took place in various places on Earth and its colonies. Mardi Gras invariably lost.

I had used the hull cameras to take a quick look at the changes that had been made to the ship before we ever took to hypers.p.a.ce again. Chort was right: The disguise was far from perfect. On the other hand, he and his helpers had gotten enough of the plates in place to markedly change both our visual and radar signatures, which was hopefully all we would need to get to the ground without tripping alarms from the underworld to the Patth and back again.

Once we were on the ground, of course, it would be a different story. Someone who wandered in close for a good look would easily be able to see through the gaps to the distinctive joined spheres beneath. But I had a couple of ideas for dealing with that one; and anyway, getting to the ground was the first order of business.

After the near disaster at Utheno the situation at Palmary was decidedly anticlimactic. The official start of the Grand Feast was still three days away, but the hard-core party types were already clogging the s.p.a.ce lanes as they headed in to scope out the best celebration spots or just get a head start on the festivities. With our new silhouette, plus yet another of Ixil's fake IDs identifying us as the Sherman's Blunder, we sailed straight through the prelanding formalities. A harried-sounding controller directed me to a landing rectangle at the Bangrot s.p.a.ceport, a name that didn't even show up on my supposedly comprehensive listing, and instructed us to have a good time.

The reason for the lack of a listing was apparent as soon as I got within visual range of the coordinates I'd been given. The Bangrot s.p.a.ceport was nothing more than a large open area stretching across the southern ends of the twin cities Drobney and k'Barch, an area that looked to me like a former condemned building development. Apparently, the Grand Feast had grown so large they were now having to park s.p.a.ceships on every reasonably sized vacant lot they could find.

And the official celebration didn't even start for three more days. Give this whole thing a few years, and they might as well declare it a permanent party and be done with it.

One might have a.s.sumed that the Bangrot Expansion s.p.a.ceport would be only spa.r.s.ely settled, with the bulk of the s.p.a.ce still waiting for the arrival of the latecomers. But one would have been wrong. The place was crowded with ships, already crammed in practically nose to tail, with the narrow s.p.a.ces between themcrawling with activity. As far as this party was concerned, we were the latecomers.

I was also a little worried about what would happen to the definitions of "up"

and "down" inside the Icarus as we went deeper into the Palmary gravity field.

Tera had told us that on Meima the alien gravity generator in the large sphere had been able to cancel out all other gravitational effects, but that was before Cameron's techs had gotten in and started messing around. If it failed to overcome Palmary's gravitational attraction I was going to suddenly find myself lying on my back in my seat as I tried to pilot the ship to the ground. Or worse, our jury-rigged seating system might fail completely and I would find myself, my seat, and possibly my entire control board falling to the bottom of the sphere some twenty meters below.

That particular set of fears proved groundless. With the removal of the metal baffling that had been created by the inner hull, walls, and corridors, the alien generator had come back to full strength, and I didn't feel so much as a flicker of change in the gravity as I eased the Icarus down onto the undersized plot of ground we'd been a.s.signed.

"Now what?" Tera called to me from across the sphere, her voice echoing through the open s.p.a.ce as I keyed the ship's systems back to standby.

"I go scare us up some borandis," I said, craning my neck to look up at her, watching the top of her head as she got up from her seat at the computer and walked toward the wraparound.

"What about the rest of us?" Shawn called up from a quarter of the way around the sphere, at the natural bottom point of the ship. I'd stationed everyone else except Nicabar down there on the theory that there was no point in letting everyone fall to their deaths if the alien gravity failed. "I suppose we're all going to sit around here like we did before and just wait for you? Twiddling our thumbs or whatever?"

"You're welcome to twiddle whatever you want," I told him, walking down the curve toward them, "since you and Everett are staying in here where he can try to keep you quiet until I get back with the medicine."

I pointed at Chort and Tera, the latter approaching the group from the other side. "You two and Nicabar, on the other hand, aren't going to have time to twiddle much of anything. I want the three of you to collect all the emergency lights we've got and start stringing them just inside the gaps in the shroud out there, with the lights shining outward. All nice and decorative for the Grand Feast, and with any luck the glare will keep everyone from seeing past them to the linked spheres underneath."

"Maybe we could also get hold of some colored transparent sheeting to cover them with," Tera suggested. "They'd look even more festive that way."

"Probably would," I agreed. "But I don't know how well they've got this temporary s.p.a.ceport equipped. I don't want anyone wandering too far afield hunting for anything that's not really vital."

"They've got tram systems leading from the port into each of the two city centers," Nicabar put in from the wraparound, apparently having arrived in time to hear this last exchange. "I spotted them on the monitors while you were putting us down. If they had time to set those up, they've surely got anoutfitters' shop or two in place. I can go check-it won't take me long."

"Forget it," Shawn growled before I could answer. "He never lets anyone go anywhere except him, remember? Just him."

"Shawn," Everett said warningly, putting a ma.s.sive hand on the kid's shoulder.

"Don't 'Shawn' me," Shawn snapped, angrily shrugging off the hand. "I'm not a child, you know."

"If you want to make a quick check, go ahead," I told Nicabar. "Just watch yourself, and be back in half an hour to help Tera and Chort with the lights."

"I will," Nicabar promised. "Don't worry-it's a zoo out there. I won't even be noticed." Turning, he disappeared back down the wraparound.

"What about him?" Tera asked, nodding toward Ixil, who was standing slightly off to the side keeping out of the conversation.

"He'll be in overall charge here," I told her, ignoring the glare Shawn was giving me, this particular bile probably a result of me proving him wrong by letting Nicabar go. Even at his best Shawn hated being proved wrong, and in the middle of borandis withdrawal he was a long way from his best. "He'll also be using Pix and Pax to keep an eye on things outside the ship."

"How do you plan to get it this time?" Tera asked. "The borandis, I mean."

I focused on her face. She was gazing evenly back at me, her expression not giving anything away.

But then, the fact that she didn't want her expression giving anything away spoke volumes all by itself. "Why, you feeling squeamish?" I countered. "I'll do whatever I have to. Leave it at that."

"Fine," she said, not taking offense. At least no visible offense. "I just want to remind you that we can't afford for you to get into any trouble. If you don't make it back, we don't lift."

"I'll make it back," I a.s.sured her, brushing past her and heading up toward the wraparound. "Don't worry about me," I added over my shoulder. "You just concentrate on getting those lights up and running."

The transition between the different gravity vectors of the sphere and the wraparound was as always a bit tricky to navigate, but I managed it without any serious loss of balance or dignity. Nicabar had already opened the hatchway and lowered the ladder the ten meters to the ground; checking to make sure my plasmic was riding loose in its holster, I stepped to the top of the ladder and looked down.

Nicabar had been right: It was indeed a zoo out there. The close packing of the parked ships was funneling the prospective merrymakers down the relatively narrow lanes between them, lanes they were further having to share with fueling trucks, the occasional token customs vehicle, and about a million little two- man runaround cars that were obviously intended to alleviate the pedestrian congestion but were only succeeding in making it worse.

All of which boiled down to about as ideal a situation as I could have asked for. Even if the Patth and their lumpy Iykami allies were out there looking for us, the sheer volume of people they would have to sift through ought to makethis as quick and clean as possible. Getting my bearings toward the nearest spur of the tram lines Nicabar had mentioned, I headed down the ladder and elbowed my way into the river of pedestrians.

My first thought had been to try to corral one of the cars for myself. But there weren't any unused ones in sight, so I set off on foot. Which was just as well, I quickly realized, as I saw how easily the cars were getting snarled up in the traffic flow. The tram spur wasn't that far away, and I could use the exercise.

And the time to do some hard thinking.

But not about how I was going to acquire Shawn's borandis. Despite my somewhat melodramatic p.r.o.nouncement to Tera about doing whatever I had to, that part was actually going to be the least of my worries. With borandis a perfectly legal substance for at least a dozen of the species jostling against me, every pharmacy on the planet would have the stuff in stock, with few if any questions asked. No, the immediate and burning question right now was the same one that had been gnawing at me for quite a while: how to get the Icarus to Earth ahead of the Patth.

Along with the subsidiary question of whether that was even the smart thing for me to do.

Because lurking in the back of my mind was my most recent conversation with Ixil, and his half-joking question of whether I would be offering the Icarus to Brother John instead. Then, I'd a.s.sured him I had no intention of doing so; now, though, I wasn't nearly so sure it wasn't the best solution we had. It would keep the stargate in human hands-b.l.o.o.d.y hands, certainly, but human nevertheless-as well as giving me the kind of career boost someone in my position could usually only dream of. I might even get to meet the elusive Mr.

Antoniewicz, which would put me in exalted company indeed.

Cameron wouldn't be pleased by such a move, of course. Neither would Tera; and if Tera wasn't happy, Nicabar probably wouldn't be happy, either. The two of them seemed to have become quite chummy since that confrontation on the bridge regarding my shadier business a.s.sociations. Still, at this point, other people's happiness or lack thereof wasn't particularly high on my priority list. We'd covered barely a fifth of the distance from Meima to Earth, and already we'd had far too many close calls than I cared to think about. The others, believing that the Icarus was a superfast alien stardrive, undoubtedly still had their hopes pinned on using it to beat out the Patth net; Ixil and I, on the other hand, knew that hope was nonexistent.

On almost every level I could think of, the idea made sense. And Cameron and Tera would surely get over their pique eventually. Still, I reluctantly concluded, I wasn't quite ready to make such a decision. Not yet. Maybe once we were off Palmary.

The tram line, for all its obviously quick a.s.sembly, was still more comfortableand professional than transports I'd used on a lot of supposedly more advanced worlds. I arrived at the platform to find a pair of trams already waiting, one each heading in to the cities of Drobney and k'Barch. I picked the k'Barch one, reasoning that the place with a k'Tra name would probably have a more frenetic celebration level, and hence more cover for a man on the run.

Most of my fellow travelers had apparently come to a similar conclusion, though undoubtedly with different motivations. I let the traffic flow carry me in through the doors and to a standing point midway down one of the cars, jammed between a group of sweaty Narchners and a group of clean but equally aromatic Saffi.

We headed out. I had enough of a view out one of the side windows to see that Nicabar's a.s.sumption had been correct: Not only was there a good-sized outfitters' store at the junction of the two tram lines, but also a collection of restaurants, tavernos, and gawk-shops. Even StarrComm had gotten into the act, setting up a prefab satellite station so that s.p.a.cers who felt the need to get in touch with the outside universe wouldn't have to go to wherever their main building was in the twin-city area. Once again, I raised my estimate of how much money this Grand Feast must pour into the Palmary economy.

We rumbled our way to the end of the line, which from the look of things was relatively close to the middle of k'Barch and perilously near the epicenter of the upcoming celebrations. The earlier flow through the tram doors reversed itself, and a few chaotic minutes later I was maneuvering my way down a sidewalk that was only marginally less crowded than the inside of the tram had been.

About a block ahead, I could see the rustling display flag of a pharmacy, and I.

concentrated on making my way toward it.

I had reached the shop and was working my way sideways through the crowd toward the door, when something exploded against the back of my neck, plunging me into darkness.

CHAPTER 19.

I CAME TO slowly, drifting back toward consciousness in gradual and tortured stages. There was a vague sensation of discomfort, which first coalesced into an overall chill and stiffness before zeroing in on a throbbing somewhere in the back of my head. There was something wrong with my arms, though I couldn't figure out exactly what. There was light somewhere, too, though as vague and undefined as the discomfort had originally been, and the distant thought occurred to me that if I turned my head maybe I could figure out where it was coming from. It took some time and effort to remember how that could be done, but finally I had it doped out. Feeling rather pleased with my accomplishment, I.

turned my head a little to the side.

And instantly came fully awake as a flare of pain burned through the back of my skull. Someone, apparently, was doing his best to rip my head off my spine with his bare hands. Clenching my teeth, I waited until the pain had mostly subsided;then, keeping my head as motionless as possible, I eased open my eyes.

I was sitting in a plain wooden armchair, unpadded, my head lolled forward with my chin resting on my chest. What was wrong with my arms was quickly apparent: both wrists were handcuffed to the chair arms on which they were resting.

Experimentally, I shifted my right foot a bit and found that they hadn't bothered to lock my feet in place as they had my arms. In the background I could hear the faint sounds of distant music; closer at hand, somewhere just in front of me, I could also hear the sounds of quiet alien conversation. Slowly, mindful of the trip-hammer waiting to resume work on the back of my skull, I carefully raised my head to look.

And immediately wished I hadn't. I was in a medium-sized room, plain and largely unfurnished, with a single light in the ceiling and a single closed door maybe four meters directly ahead of me. Seated behind a low wooden table midway between the door and me, my partially disa.s.sembled phone on the tabletop in front of them, were two more members of the lumpy Iykami Clan.

At the moment, though, they weren't paying any attention to the phone, nor to any of the rest of my pocket equipment that had been unceremoniously dumped out onto the table. My efforts at stealthy wakefulness to the contrary, they were looking straight at me.

And not, as near as I could tell from those alien faces, with particularly friendly expressions. They were more the sort of expressions worn by people who have orders to keep a prisoner alive and mostly well, but who are at the same time secretly longing for said prisoner to make trouble and thus provide them with an excuse to beat the living daylights out of him.

Cooperative type that I was, it seemed a shame to disappoint them. I came up on my feet, hunched forward for balance as I gripped the arms to hold the chair more or less in place against my back and rear. Their secret hopes notwithstanding, a sudden and clearly suicidal attack on my part was probably the last thing they were actually expecting; and the shock had just enough time to register on their faces as I took two quick steps forward and swung 180 degrees around, taking care not to let my chair get hung up on the edge of their table. With all the strength I could muster, I heaved myself and the chair as hard as I could squarely on top of them.

They saw it coming, of course. But seated with their legs under the table, there wasn't a single thing they could do about it. We all went down together in a confused and thunderous crash of splintering wood and alien curses. Still handcuffed to the chair, my movements were severely limited, but even so I was in a far better fighting position than my opponents. Flailing back and forth, hammering them with the chair and keeping them pinned beneath me, I lashed out with my feet, throwing kick after kick to head and torso and anything else I could reach. After what seemed like forever through the haze of pain from my head, they stopped moving. I gave them each another couple of kicks, just in case they were faking, then collapsed in a panting heap amid the carnage.

I didn't stay collapsed long, though. It had been a serious gamble on my part, taking them on just after waking up, but I hadn't had much choice in the matter.Two-to-one odds were as good as I was likely to get; and if I'd waited for them to call whoever was in charge with the news that the sacrificial Voodoo doll was awake and ready to have pins stuck in him, I'd never have left the room alive.

An unhappy ending that could still very easily happen. The brief fight had been anything but quiet, and the music I could hear in the distance meant that there was at least someone else in the immediate vicinity. My chair had suffered some damage in the fight, but enough of it had survived to keep me pinioned.

Rolling around awkwardly, keeping an ear c.o.c.ked for the inevitable reaction, I started checking my unconscious jailers for the keys to my handcuffs.

They were wearing the same sort of neo-Greek tunics as the two who'd jumped me on Xathru, and it didn't take long to find out that the limited pocket s.p.a.ce that came with the outfits included no handcuff keys. One had a belt pouch, similarly bereft of keys. Neither was carrying a weapon.

But a couple of meters away on the floor where it had fallen at the table's collapse was my phone.

My imprisoning chair had gotten itself caught in a slight hollow formed by the bodies of the two Iykams, but a little rocking broke me free. I rolled up onto my knees, got to my feet, and picked my way through the debris to the phone.

At this range I could see the Iykams hadn't gotten any further in their disa.s.sembly of the device than merely pulling the back off, though why they'd even done that I didn't know. Perhaps they were hoping to tease a latent phone number or two out of the memory that they could use.

If so, they were out of luck. That was the phone I'd taken from James Fulbright on Dorscind's World, and there were no incriminating numbers connected with me anywhere in there, latent or otherwise.

Still, I was glad they'd kept the phone around long enough to try, since it had now put communication with the outside world in my hands. Easing onto my side on the floor within reach of the phone, I rolled the device onto its back. I was still in big trouble, but a quick call to Ixil would at least alert the others that the Patth were here and on the hunt. With one final glance at the door, I keyed it on and reached an outstretched finger toward the keypad. And paused.

There was something too easy about this. Something far too easy. Where were the alert reinforcements rushing in to save the day? Why were these two Iykams fiddling with my phone instead of someone in a properly equipped workroom? For that matter, why only two guards in the first place?

I keyed off the phone and turned it over again, angling it so that I could get a really good look at the exposed circuitry. And this time, knowing what to look for, it wasn't hard to spot.

My clever little playmates had wired a repeater chip into the transmitter line, on the upstream side of the encryption sticker. I couldn't read the fine print on the chip, but it almost didn't matter. With the simpler Mark VI chip they would be able to eavesdrop on any conversation I might have. With the moreadvanced Mark IX version and a properly equipped phone elsewhere in the city they'd not only be able to listen in but could also triangulate through the local phone system to get the location of the other end of the conversation.

I'd been wrong about the Voodoo pins; they intended to get hold of the Icarus the easy way.

I was willing to help out guards who wanted me to make trouble, but my cooperation with the enemy only went so far. Rolling back up to my knees, I left the phone where it was and headed toward where my plasmic lay next to my ID folder.

I was just leaning down to pick it up when the door slammed open.

I dropped the rest of the way to the floor, my outstretched hand s.n.a.t.c.hing up the weapon as I hit the ground hard enough to reignite the blazing pain in my head. Ignoring the red haze that had suddenly dropped in front of my eyes, I swiveled both my body and the plasmic to face the door.

It was, I had to admit, an impressive sight. Four Iykams stood in a semicircle just inside the doorway, each holding one of those nasty coronal-discharge weapons, their alert motionlessness giving them the appearance of transplanted gargoyles. Behind them, I could see a couple more of the ugly beasts outside the door, undoubtedly waiting eagerly for their chance at me.

And standing right in the middle of the doorway between the two groups was a gray-robed Patth.

"Don't bother with the weapon, Mr. McKell," he said. His voice was typical Patth, managing to mix sincere, contemptuous, and smarmy into a sound that was as distinctive in its own way as Chort's Craean whistling. "You don't seriously believe we would leave you a functional weapon, do you?"

"After that rather heavy-handed trick you tried with my phone, not really," I agreed. It was hard to aim properly with my gun hand cuffed to a chair arm, but insofar as I was able I pointed the plasmic squarely at the center of his torso.

"At least, not on purpose. You ever hear of a three-pop?"

There was a slight but noticeable rustling among the gargoyles. "I don't think so," the Patth said, adding a bit more amus.e.m.e.nt into the smarmy part of his vocal mix. "But I'm sure you're dying to tell me."

"An appropriate choice of words," I said approvingly. "A three-pop is a high-power capacitor wired internally into a plasmic's fire circuit, kept charged by the main power pack but otherwise independent of it. It holds enough juice for two to four shots." I squinted consideringly. "That means you and up to three of your toadies will die if any of you comes any closer. If you'd like to point out your least favorites among them, I'll see what I can do to oblige you."

The four front Iykams had stopped looking like friendly little gargoyles. All four corona guns were up and aimed, held in taut-looking grips at the full extension of taut-looking arms. But for once I had the advantage, and they all knew it. Lying there four meters away from them, I was right on the edge of their kill zones, while they were well inside mine. Add to that the point that they couldn't afford to kill me-and the equally important point that none of them was especially eager to get killed, either-and we had the makings here of a good old-fashioned standoff.

And for a minute it looked as if I might actually get away with it. Verylittle of the Patth's face was visible in the shadow of that hood, but what I could see seemed to be in the throes of serious indecision as he weighed the merits of risking his personal skin against the reality that the Icarus still had a long way to go before we were home free. This was no professional bounty hunter, or even a standard flunky used to obeying orders without the luxury of being able to factor personal preference into the equation. Odds were this was a reasonably senior Patth citizen, pressed by necessity and desperation into this hunt for us.

But even as he hesitated a new voice from the outer room joined the discussion.

Another Patth voice, just as smarmy as the first, but carrying with it the unmistakable weight of authority. "Nonsense," he said. "He's bluffing. Enig, tell your fools to go get the weapon. We don't have time for this."

The Patth in the doorway grunted something and two of the Iykams stepped reluctantly forward, their corona guns rigidly pointed at me. I let them get within two steps, just in case someone decided to have second thoughts, then let my plasmic settle harmlessly to the floor. "You're right," I acknowledged.

"I'm bluffing."

"Bring him in here," the second voice ordered. There was no gloating in the tone that I could detect, nor any relief either. He'd made a decision, had issued an order and had it obeyed, and was not surprised by either the obedience or the fact that his decision had turned out to be right. Clearly, we had suddenly jumped a whole bunch of rungs upward on the Patth social ladder.

The Iykams hauled me to my feet and half pulled, half dragged me into the other room. This one was much nicer, nearly three times the size of my original cell and furnished better, with a couple of chairs and lamps scattered around. Near the wall to my left was a desk with a handful of monitors arranged along its front edge, and the other Patth seated behind it. The room was also swarming with Iykams, but you couldn't have everything.

"Not bad," I said, looking around as they led me to another plain wooden armchair that had been placed in front of the desk. Again, there seemed to be only one door leading out of the place, directly across the room from the door to my cell. Framed in the ceiling overhead was what at first glance looked like a skylight, but which on second glance proved to be only a standard light fixture designed to look that way. There were a couple of ventilation vents at ceiling and floor level, with decorative crosshatched gratings that looked flimsy enough to tear right off the wall. But through the holes in those same gratings I could see that the ductwork beyond was far too narrow for even someone as thin as Chort to fit through. A quick count of the Iykams came up with a total of eight. "Not bad at all," I added as my guards unfastened my handcuffs from the broken chair, shoved me down into the new one, and secured my wrists to the arms again. This time, I took particular note of which of them pocketed the keys. "If you kept your prisoners in a place like this instead of that converted stockroom back there you'd probably get better cooperation."

There was no comment from the other side of the desk. I finished my survey of the room in a leisurely fashion, then finally turned my full attention to the other Patth.If anything, my earlier hunch about his status had fallen short of the mark.

Instead of the usual unadorned gray worn in public by most Patth, his robe was instead gray with dark burnt-orange slash marks set into the sleeves and edge of the hood. This was one of the Patth elite diplomatic corps, possibly even the Palmary amba.s.sador himself. "I'm impressed," I said. "May I ask whom I have the honor of addressing?"

He regarded me another moment before answering. "You may call me Nask, Mr.

McKell. You have been a most troubling person, indeed."

"Thank you," I said, inclining my head slightly, ignoring the fresh swell of pain the motion induced. "You seem to think the game is over."