It was signed "Alexander Borodin."

My first thought was that Cameron really needed to cut back on those melodramas and star-thrillers he was watching in the evenings after work. My second was that this was one h.e.l.l of a hot potato for him to have dropped into my lap on no notice whatsoever.

"McKell?" a female voice called from behind me.

I turned to see Tera making her way uphill into the bridge. "Yes, what is it?"

"I wanted to check out the bridge," she said, glancing around the room. "I was kind of hoping the main computer might be stashed in here."

I frowned. "What are you talking about? Isn't it back in the computer room?"

"Yes, I guess it is," she said with a grimace. "I was hoping that piece of junk was the backup."

Those cold ferret feet started their wind sprints up my back again. The computer was very literally the nerve center of the entire ship. "Just how bad a piece of junk is it?" I asked carefully.

"Noah had a better one on the ark," she said flatly. "It's an old Worthram T- No decision-a.s.sist capabilities, no vocal interface, no nanosecond monitoring.

Programming like I haven't seen since high school, no autonomic functions or emergency command capabilities-shall I go on?"

"No, I get the picture," I said heavily. Compared to normal starship operation, we were starting out half-blind, half-deaf, and slightly muddled-rather like a stroke victim, actually. No wonder Cameron had decided to jump ship. "Can you handle it?"

She lifted her hands. "Like I said, it's an echo from a distant past, but Ishould be able to work it okay. It may take me a while to remember all the tricks." She nodded toward the letter in my hand. "What's that?"

"A note from the camp counselor," I told her, handing it over. "You were right; it seems we're going on this hike by ourselves."

She read it, her frown turning to a scowl as she did so. "Well, this is awkward, I must say," she said, handing it back. "He must have left this last night, before the s.p.a.ceport closed."

"Unless he managed to get in and out this morning," I suggested.

"Well, if he did, he must have been really traveling," she growled. "I know I got here about as fast as I could. So what do we do now?"

"We take the Icarus to Earth, of course," I told her. "That's what we agreed to.

Unless you have a date or something."

"Don't be cute," she growled. "What about our advance pay? He promised me a thousand commarks up front."

"It's all here," I a.s.sured her, patting the cash box. "As soon as I get the preflight started I'll go pa.s.s it out and let the rest know about the change in plans."

Her eyes lingered momentarily on the box, then shifted back to me. "You think they'll all stay?"

"I don't see why not," I said. "As far as I'm concerned, as long as I get paid, a job's a job. I'm not expecting any of the others to feel differently."

"Does that mean you're officially taking command of the ship and crew?"

I shrugged. "That's how the Mercantile Code lays it out. Command succession goes owner, employer, master, pilot. I'm the pilot."

"Yes, I know," she said. "I was just making sure. For the record."

"For the record, I hereby a.s.sume command of the Icarus," I said in my most official voice. "Satisfied?"

"Ecstatic," she said with just a trace of sarcasm.

"Good," I said. "Go on back to your station and start beating that T-66 into submission. I'll be along in a few minutes with your money."

She glanced at the cash box one last time, then nodded and left the bridge.

I set the box and papers on my lap and got to work on the preflight, trying to ignore the hard knot that had settled into my stomach. Cameron's note might have been overly dramatic, but it merely confirmed what I'd suspected ever since he'd invited himself over to my taverno table and offered me a job.

Somewhere out in the Meima wasteland, that archaeological team had stumbled onto something. Something big; something-if Cameron's rhetoric was even halfway to be believed-of serious importance.

And that same something was sitting forty meters behind me, sealed up inside the Icarus's cargo hold.

I just wished I knew what the h.e.l.l it was.

CHAPTER 3.

EVEN WITH THE clearance codes and papers Cameron had left with his note, I was fully expecting there to be trouble getting the Icarus off the ground. To mymild and cautiously disbelieving surprise, there wasn't. The tower gave us permission to lift, the landing-pad repulsor boost got us up off the ground and into range of the perimeter grav beams, and a few minutes later we were hauling for s.p.a.ce under our own power.

After Tera's revelation about the archaic computer system we'd been saddled with, I had been wondering just what kind of shape the drive would be in. But there, too, my pessimism turned out to be unnecessary, or at least premature.

The thrusters roared solidly away, driving us steadily through the atmosphere toward the edge of Meima's gravity well, and with each of my periodic calls back to the engine room Nicabar a.s.sured me all was going just fine.

It wouldn't last, though. I knew it wouldn't last; and as the capacitors in the nose cone discharged into the cutter array and sliced us a link hole into hypers.p.a.ce, I warned myself that things were unlikely to continue running this smoothly. Somewhere along the way, we were going to run into some serious trouble.

Six hours out from Meima, we hit our first batch of it.

My first warning was a sudden, distant-sounding screech sifting into the bridge, sounding rather like a banshee a couple of towns over. I slapped the big red KILL b.u.t.ton, throwing a quick look at the monitors as I did so, and with another crack from the capacitors we were back in s.p.a.ce-normal.

"McKell?" Nicabar's voice came from the intercom. "You just drop us out?"

"Yes," I confirmed. "I think we've got a pressure crack. You reading any atmosphere loss?"

"Nothing showing on my board," he said. "Inner hull must still be solid. I didn't hear the screech, either-must be somewhere at your end of the ship."

"Probably," I agreed. "I'll roust Chort and have him take a look."

I called the EVA room, found that Chort was already suiting up, and headed aft.

One of the most annoying problems of hypers.p.a.ce travel was what the experts called parasynbaric force, what we nonexperts called simply hypers.p.a.ce pressure.

Ships traveling through hypers.p.a.ce were squeezed the whole way, the pressure level related through a complicated formula to the ship's ma.s.s, speed, and overall surface area. The earliest experimental hypers.p.a.ce craft had usually wound up flattened, and even now chances were good that a ship of any decent size would have to drop out at least once a trip to have its hull specialist take a look and possibly do some running repairs.

Considering what I'd seen of the Icarus's hull back on the ground, I was frankly surprised we'd made it as far as we had.

Tera and Everett were standing in the corridor outside the EVA room when I arrived, watching Jones help a vacsuited Chort run a final check on his equipment. "Well, that didn't take long," Tera commented. "Any idea where the problem is?"

"Probably somewhere here on the larger sphere," I said. "The computer didn't have any ideas?"

She shook her head. "Like I said, it's old and feeble. Nothing but macro sensors, and no predictive capability at all."

"Don't worry," Chort a.s.sured us, his whistly voice oddly muted by his helmet.

"That screech didn't sound bad. Regardless, I will find and fix it."

"Someone's going to have to go into the wraparound with him, too," Jones putin.

"I checked earlier, and there aren't any of the connections or lifeline-feeds of a standard airlock."

I'd noticed that, too. "You volunteering?" I asked him.

"Of course," he said, sounding surprised that it was even a question. "EVA a.s.sist is traditionally mechanic's privilege, you know."

"I'm not concerned with tradition nearly as much as I am whether we've got a suit aboard that'll fit you," I countered. "Tera, pull the computer inventory and see what we've got."

"I already checked," she said. "There are three suit/rebreather combos in Locker Fifteen. It didn't list sizes, though."

"I'll go look," Jones volunteered, checking one last seal on Chort's suit and squeezing past him. "That's lower level, Tera?"

"Right," she said. "Just forward of Cabin Seven."

"Got it." Jones eased past me and headed for the aft ladder.

"So how will he handle it?" Everett asked. "Go into the wraparound and feed Chort the lifeline from there?"

"Basically," I nodded. "There's a slot just outside the entryway where the secondary line can connect, but he'll want Jones feeding him the primary line as he goes along. Otherwise, it can get kinked or snarled on the maneuvering vents, and that eats up time."

"I've heard of snarled lines giving false readings on sensors, too," Tera put in. "He might wind up fixing a hull plate that didn't need it."

"That won't happen," Chort a.s.sured her. "I will know the damage when I reach it."

"I'm sure you will," Everett said, lumbering down the corridor toward the aft ladder. "I'll see if Jones can use a hand."

There were indeed three vac suits in the locker, one of which fit Jones just fine, and with Everett's help he was suited up in fifteen minutes. Five minutes after that he and Chort were in the wraparound, the airlock doors at both ends were sealed, and I was on the bridge with the hull monitor cameras extended on their pylons.

And we were set. "Ready here," I called into the intercom. "Revs, go ahead and shut down the gravity."

"Right," Nicabar acknowledged from the engine room, and I felt the sudden stomach-twisting disorientation as the Icarus's grav generator went off-line.

I.

double-checked the airlock status and keyed for the suit radios. "It's all yours, Chort. Let him out easy, Jones."

Given that Jones had a Craea at the other end of his line, my automatic warning was probably both unnecessary and even a bit ridiculous. Before the outer hatch was even all the way open Chort was out on the hull, pausing briefly to snap his secondary line into the connector slot and heading nimbly across the wraparound, using his hull-hooks and stickypads as if he'd been born in zero gee.

"Mind if I watch?" a voice asked from the doorway behind me.

I turned my head. Shawn was floating just outside the door, gazing past me at the monitors, an intense but oddly calm look on his face. "No, come on in," I invited."Thanks," he said, maneuvering his way into the room and coming to a stop hovering beside my chair. "There aren't any monitors in the electronics shop, and I've never seen a Craea s.p.a.cewalk before."

"It's definitely a sight to behold," I agreed, trying not to frown as I studied his profile. The twitchy, nervous, sarcastic kid who'd been such a pain in the neck while we were waiting outside the Icarus had apparently been kidnapped sometime in the last six hours and replaced by this near-perfect copy. "How are you doing?"

He smiled, a little shamefacedly. "You mean how come I'm not acting like a jerk?"

"Not exactly the way I would have put it," I said. "But as long as you bring it up...?"

"Yeah, I know," he said, his lip twisting. "That's another reason I wanted to talk to you, to apologize for all that. I was... well, nervous, I guess. You have to admit this is a really strange situation, and I don't do well with strange situations. Especially early in the morning."

"I have trouble with mornings sometimes myself," I said, turning back to the monitors. "Don't worry about it."

"Thanks. He's really good, isn't he?"

I nodded. Chort was moving slowly along the edge of the cowling that covered the intersection of the two spheres, his faceplate bare centimeters above the hull as he glided over the surface. Here and there he would stop for a moment, touching something with his long fingers and occasionally selecting one of the squeeze tubes from the collection clamped to his forearms. I thought about getting on the radio and asking what he was doing, but decided against it. He clearly knew his business, and there didn't seem any point in distracting him with a lot of questions. I made a mental note to pick up a set of zoomable hull cameras at our next stop.

The whistle from the radio speaker was so unexpected that Shawn and I both jumped, a movement that the zero gee magnified embarra.s.singly. "There it is,"

Chort said as I grabbed my restraint straps and pulled myself firmly down into the chair again. "A small pressure ridge only. Easily repaired."

He set to work with his squeeze tubes again. "I'll never understand about that stuff," Shawn commented. "If it's so good at fixing hull cracks and ridges, why not coat the whole hull with it?"

"Good question," I agreed, throwing him another surrept.i.tious glance. Calm, friendly, and now even making intelligent conversation. I made another mental note, this one to restrict all my future interactions with him until after he'd had his morning coffee or whatever.

If Chort was a representative example of Craean s.p.a.cewalking ability, it was no wonder they were so much in demand. In less than ten minutes he'd sealed the ridge, tracked two jaglines radiating from that spot, and fixed them as well.

"All secure," he announced. "I will check the rest of the sphere, but I believe this is the only problem."

"Sounds good," I said. "Before you go any farther forward, you might as well go aft and run a quick check on the cargo and engine sections."

"Acknowledged," Chort said, turning around and heading back over the side ofthe cargo sphere. He paused once, moved down the side toward the wraparound- And suddenly, with another stomach-wrenching disorientation, I fell down hard into my chair.

Shawn yelped in surprise and pain as he dropped like a rock to the deck beside me. But I hardly noticed. Incredibly, impossibly, the Icarus's gravity field had gone back on.

And as I watched in helpless horror, Chort slammed against the side of the cargo sphere, caromed off the wraparound, and disappeared off the monitor screen.

"Revs!" I barked toward the intercom, twisting the camera control hard over.

"Turn it off!"

"I didn't turn it on," he protested.

"I don't give a d.a.m.n who turned it on!" I snarled. I had Chort on the screen now, hanging limply like a puppet on a string at the end of his secondary line at the bottom of the artificial "down" the Icarus's gravity generator had imposed on this small bubble of s.p.a.ce. "Just shut it down."

"I can't," he bit back. "The control's not responding."