I ground my teeth viciously. "Tera?"

"I'm trying, too," her voice joined in. "The computer's frozen up."

"Then cut all power to that whole section," I snapped. "You can do that, can't you? One of you?"

"Working on it," Nicabar grunted.

"Computer's still frozen," Tera added tautly. "I can't see him-is he all right?"

"I don't know," I told her harshly. "And we won't know until we get him back-"

I broke off suddenly, my breath catching horribly in my throat. Concentrating first on Chort's fall, and then on getting the gravity shut down, it hadn't even occurred to me to wonder why Chort had fallen that far in the first place. Why Jones hadn't had the slack in the primary line properly taken up, or for that matter why he hadn't already begun reeling the Craea back into the wraparound.

But now, looking at the outside of the entryway for the first time since the accident, I could see why. Hanging limply over the sill of the hatchway beside the equally limp primary line was a vacsuited hand. Jones's hand.

Not moving.

"Revs, do you have a suit back there?" I called, cursing under my breath, trying to key the camera for a better look inside the entryway. No good; Jones had turned the overhead light off and the shadow was too intense for the camera to penetrate.

"No," he called back. "What's the-oh, d.a.m.n."

"Yeah," I bit out, my mind racing uselessly. With the entryway open to s.p.a.ce, the wraparound was totally isolated from the rest of the ship by the pressure doors at either end. I could close the hatch from the bridge; but the way Jones was lying, his hand would prevent it from sealing.

The only other way to get to him would be to depressurize one side of the ship so we could open the door. But we couldn't depressurize the sphere-there were only two vac suits left for the four of us still in here, and I wasn't about to trust the room or cabin doors to hold up against hard vacuum. And without a suit for Nicabar, we couldn't depressurize the engine room, either. My eyes flicked uselessly over the monitors, searching for inspiration- "He's moving," Nicabar called suddenly. "McKell-Chort's moving."I felt my hands tighten into fists. The Craea's body was starting to twitch, his limbs making small random movements like someone having a violent dream.

"Chort?" I called toward the microphone, "Chort, this is McKell. Snap out of it-we need you."

"I am here," Chort's voice came, sounding vague and tentative. "What happened?"

"Ship's gravity came on," I told him. "Never mind that now. Something's happened to Jones-he's not responding, and I think he's unconscious. Can you climb up your line and get to him?"

For a long moment he didn't reply. I was gazing at the monitor, wondering if he'd slipped back into unconsciousness, when suddenly he twitched again; and a second later he was pulling himself up the line with spiderlike agility.

Thirty seconds later he was in the wraparound, pulling Jones out of the way of the door. I was ready, keying for entryway seal and repressurization of the wraparound.

Two minutes later, we had them back in the ship.

THE EFFORT, AS it turned out, was for nothing.

"I'm sorry, McKell," Everett said with a tired sigh, pulling a thin blanket carefully over Jones's face. "Your man's been gone at least ten minutes.

There's nothing I can do."

I looked over at the body lying on the treatment table. The terminally sociable type, I'd dubbed him back at the s.p.a.ceport. He'd been terminal, all right. "It was the rebreather, then?"

"Definitely." Everett picked up the scrubber unit and peeled back the covering.

"Somewhere in here the system stopped scrubbing carbon dioxide out of the air and started putting carbon monoxide in. Slowly, certainly-he probably didn't even notice it was happening. Just drifted to sleep and slipped quietly away."

I gazed at the hardware cradled in those large hands. "Was it an accident?"

He gave me an odd look. "You work with air scrubbers all the time. Could something like this have happened by accident?"

"I suppose it's possible," I said, the image of that ma.s.sive search Ixil and I had spotted out in the Meima wilderness vivid in my memory. No, it hadn't been any accident. Not a chance in the world of that. But there was no sense panicking Everett, either.

"Hm," Everett said. For another moment he looked at the scrubber, then smoothed back the covering and put it aside. "I know you're not in the mood right now to count your blessings, but bear in mind that if Chort had died or broken his neck in that fall, we'd have lost both of them."

"Blessings like this I can do without," I said bitterly. "Have you looked at Chort yet?"

He grunted. "Chort says he's fine and unhurt and refuses to be looked at. If you want me to run a check on him, you'll have to make it an order."

"No, that's all right," I told him. I'd never heard anything about the Craean culture being a particularly stoic one. If Chort said he was all right, he probably was.

But whether he would stay that way was now open to serious question. With thatphony murder charge someone had apparently succeeded in scaring Cameron off the Icarus, and the guilt-by-a.s.sociation bit had nearly bounced me, as well. Now, Jones had been rather more permanently removed from the crew list, and Chort had come within a hair of joining him.

And all this less than eight hours into the trip. The universe was spending the Icarus's quota of bad luck with a lavish hand.

"A pity, too," Everett commented into my musings. "Jones being the mechanic, I mean. He might have been the only one on board who could have tracked down what went wrong with the grav generator. Now we may never know what happened."

"Probably," I agreed, putting the heaviness of true conviction into my voice.

If Everett-or anyone else, for that matter-thought I was just going to chalk any of this up to mysterious accident and let it go at that, I had no intention of disillusioning them. "That's usually how it goes with this sort of thing," I added. "You never really find out what went wrong."

He nodded in commiseration. "So what happens now?"

I looked over at Jones's body again. "We take him to port and turn him over to the authorities," I said. "Then we keep going."

"Without a mechanic?" Everett frowned. "A ship this size needs all eight certificates, you know."

"That's okay," I a.s.sured him, backing out the door. "Nicabar can cover for the few hours it'll take to get to port. After that, I know where we can pick up another mechanic. Cheap."

He made some puzzled-sounding reply, but I was already in the corridor and didn't stop to hear it. Cameron's course plan had put our first fueling stop at Trottsen, seventy-two more hours away. But a relatively minor vector change would take us instead to Xathru, only nine hours from here, where Ixil and the Stormy Banks were due to deliver Brother John's illegal cargo. We needed a replacement mechanic, after all, and Ixil would fit the bill perfectly.

Besides which, I suddenly very much wanted to have Ixil at my side. Or perhaps more precisely, to have him watching my back.

CHAPTER 4.

THE PARQUET DOCKYARD on Xathru was like a thousand other medium-sized s.p.a.ceports scattered across the Spiral: primitive compared to Qattara Axial or one of the other InterSpiral-cla.s.s ports, but still two steps above small regional hubs like the one we'd taken off from on Meima. The Parquet's landing pits were cradle-shaped instead of simply flat, smoothly contoured to accommodate a variety of standard ship designs.

Of course, no one in his right mind would have antic.i.p.ated the Icarus's lopsided shape, so even with half its bulk below ground level the floors still sloped upward. But at least here the entryway ladder could be reconfigured as a short ramp with a rise of maybe two meters instead of the ten-meter climb we had had without it. Progress.

Nicabar volunteered to help Everett take Jones's body to the Port Authority, where the various death forms would have to be filled out. I ran through the basic landing procedure, promised the tower that I would file my own set of accident report forms before we left, then grabbed one of the little runaroundcars scattered randomly between the docking rectangles and headed out to the StarrComm building looming like a giant mushroom at the southern boundary of the port.

Like most StarrComm facilities, this one was reasonably crowded. But also as usual, the high costs involved with interstellar communication led to generally short conversations, with the result that it was only about five minutes before my name was called and I was directed down one of the corridors to my designated booth. I closed the door behind me, made sure it was privacy-sealed, and after only a slight hesitation keyed for a full vid connect. It was ten times as expensive as vidless, but I had Cameron's thousand-commark advance money and was feeling extravagant.

Besides, reactions were so much more interesting when face and body language were there in addition to words and tone. And unless I missed my guess, the coming reaction was going to be one for the books. Feeding one of Cameron's hundred-commark bills into the slot, I keyed in Brother John's private number.

Somewhere on Xathru, StarrComm's fifty-kilometer-square star-connect array spat a signal across the light-years toward an identical array on whichever world it was where Brother John sat in the middle of his noxious little spiderweb. I didn't know which world it was, or even whether it was the same world each time or if he continually moved around like a touring road show.

Neither did InterSpiral Law Enforcement or any of the other more regional agencies working their various jurisdictions within the Spiral. They didn't know where he was, or where the records of his transactions were, or how to get hold of either him or them. Most every one of the beings working those agencies would give his upper right appendage to know those things. Brother John's influence stretched a long way across the stars, and he had ruined a lot of lives and angered a lot of people along the way.

Considering my current relationship with the man and his organization, I could only hope that none of those eager badgemen found him anytime soon.

The screen cleared, and a broken-nosed thug with perpetual scowl lines around his eyes and mouth peered out at me. "Yeah?" he grunted.

"This is Jordan McKell," I identified myself, as if anyone Brother John had answering the phone for him wouldn't know all of us indentured slaves by sight.

"I'd like to speak with Mr. Ryland, please."

The beetle brows seemed to twitch. "Yeah," he grunted again. "Hang on."

The screen went black. I made a small private wager with myself that Brother John would leave me hanging and sweating for at least a minute before he deigned to come on, despite the fact that fielding calls from people like me was one of his primary jobs, and also despite what this vid connect was costing me per quarter second.

I thought I'd lost my wager when the screen came back on after only twenty seconds. But no, he'd simply added an extra layer to the procedure. "Well, if itisn't Jordan McKell," a moon-faced man said in a playfully sarcastic voice, looking even more like a refugee from a mobster movie than the call screener had, his elegantly proper butler's outfit notwithstanding. "How nice of you to grace our vid screen with your presence."

"I'm amazingly delighted to see you, too," I said mildly. "Would Mr. Ryland like to hear some interesting news, or are we just taking this opportunity to help you brush up on your badinage?"

The housethug's eyes narrowed, no doubt trying to figure out what "badinage"

was and whether or not he'd just been insulted. "Mr. Ryland doesn't appreciate getting interesting news from employees on the fly," he bit out. The playful part had evaporated, but the sarcasm was still there. "In case you've forgotten, you have a cargo to deliver."

"Done and done," I told him. "Or it will be soon, if it isn't already."

He frowned again; but before he could speak, his face vanished from the screen as a different extension cut in.

And there, smiling cherubically at me, was Brother John. "h.e.l.lo, Jordan," he said smoothly. "And how are you?"

"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Ryland," I said. "I'm just fine. I'm pleased everyone over there is so cheerful today, too."

He smiled even more genially. To look at Johnston Scotto Ryland, you would think you were in the presence of a philanthropist or a priest or at the very least a former choirboy-hence, our private "Brother John" nickname for him. And I suspected that there were still people in the Spiral who were being taken in by that winning smile and clear-conscienced face and utterly sincere voice.

Especially the voice. "Why shouldn't we be happy?" he said, nothing in his manner giving the slightest hint of what was going on behind those dark and soulless eyes. "Business is booming, profits are up, and all my valued employees are working so wonderfully together."

The smile didn't change, but suddenly there was a chill in the air. "Except for you, Jordan, my lad. For some unknown reason you seem to have suddenly grown weary of our company."

"I don't know what could have given you that impression, Mr. Ryland," I protested, trying my own version of the innocent act.

"Don't you," he said, the temperature dropping a few more degrees. Apparently, innocence wasn't playing well today. "I'm told the Stormy Banks docked on Xathru not thirty minutes ago. And that you weren't on it."

"That's right, I wasn't," I agreed. "But Ixil was, and so was your merchandise.

That's the important part, isn't it?"

"All aspects of my arrangements are important," he countered. "When I instruct you to deliver a cargo, I expect you to deliver it. And I expect you to take it directly to its proper destination, without unscheduled and unnecessary stops along the way. That was our agreement; or do I have to bring up-again-the five hundred thousand in debts I bailed you and your partner out of?"

"No, sir," I sighed. Not that I was ever likely to forget his largesse in that matter, what with him reminding me about it every other a.s.signment. "But if Imay be so bold, I'd like to point out that another of your standing instructions is that we should maintain our facade of poor but honest cargo haulers."

"And how does that apply here?"

"I was offered a position as pilot on another ship for a one-time transport job," I explained. "A thousand commarks up front, with another two on delivery.

How could I turn that down and still pretend to be poor?"

That line of reasoning hadn't impressed Ixil very much back on Meima. It impressed Brother John even less. "You don't seriously expect me to buy that, do you?" he demanded, the cultured facade cracking just a bit.

"I hope so, sir, yes," I said. "Because that is why I did it."

For a long moment he studied my face, and I found myself holding my breath.

Brother John's tentacles stretched everywhere, even to backwater worlds like Xathru. A touch of a b.u.t.ton, a few pointed words, and I would probably not even make it out of the StarrComm building alive. A flurry of contingency plans, none of them very promising, began to chase each other through my mind.

And then, suddenly, he smiled again, the chill that had been frosting the screen vanishing into warm sunshine. "You're a sly one, Jordan-you really are," he said, his tone implying that all sins had graciously been forgiven. "All right; since you've gotten my cargo delivered on time, you may go ahead and take this other ship and cargo home. Consider it a vacation of sorts for all your service these past three years, eh?"

Considering what I'd already been through on the Icarus, this trip was not exactly turning out to be my idea of a good time. But compared to facing Brother John's vengeance, I decided I couldn't complain. "Thank you, Mr. Ryland," I said, giving him my best humble grat.i.tude look. "I'll let you know when I'll be available again."

"Of course you will," he said; and suddenly the warm sunshine vanished again into an icy winter's night. "Because you still owe us a considerable debt. And you know how Mr. Antoniewicz feels about employees who try to leave without paying off their debts."

Involuntarily, I shivered. Mr. Antoniewicz was the head of the whole organization, with a shadowy ident.i.ty that was even more carefully guarded than Brother John's. Rumor had it that there were already over a thousand warrants for his arrest across the Spiral, ranging from happyjam manufacture to ma.s.s murder to deliberately starting brush wars so that he could sell arms to both sides. The badgemen would probably give any two appendages to smoke him out of his lair. "Yes, sir," I told Brother John. "I wouldn't want to disappoint either of you."

"Good," he said. His smile shifted to somewhere in early April, glowing with springtime warmth but with the threat of winter chill still lurking in the wings. "Then I'll let you get back to your new ship. Good-bye, Jordan."

"Good-bye, Mr. Ryland," I said. He glanced up over the camera and nodded, and the vid went dead.

I sat there scowling at the blank screen for nearly a minute, trying to sort through the nuances of the conversation. Something here didn't feel quiteright, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what it was.

And I was painfully aware that that life of me phrasing could well turn out to be literally the case. If Brother John-or Mr. Antoniewicz above him-decided that I had outlived my usefulness or otherwise needed to be made an example of, he would hardly telegraph that decision by threatening me on an open vid connect.

No, he would smile kindly, just as he had there at the end, and then he would touch that b.u.t.ton and say those few pointed words, and I would quietly vanish.

A soft rustling of bills startled me out of my reverie: what was left of my hundred commarks feeding down into the change bin. I collected the bills and coins together, wondering if I should just go ahead and feed them back in. I could give Uncle Arthur a call...

With a sigh, I slid the bills loosely into my ID folder and dropped the coins into a side pocket. Uncle Arthur had been the conniving benefactor who'd worked so hard to get Ixil and me connected with Brother John in the first place, back when our soaring debts were threatening to land us in fraud court, and I just knew what he would say if I even suggested I might be in trouble with the organization.

Besides, it was unlikely that he would lift a finger to try to help me even if I.

did call him. In his own way, he was as much a reclusive figure as Mr.

Antoniewicz, and he had made it abundantly clear that he liked it that way. It would serve him right if he had to read about my death on the newsnets.

Overhead, the lights flickered twice, a gentle reminder that my call was finished and others were waiting their turn for the booth. Standing up, I pulled my plasmic from its holster nestled beneath my left armpit, checked the power pack and safety, then returned the weapon to concealment, making sure it was loose enough for a quick draw if necessary. Then, taking a deep breath, I unsealed the door and stepped out into the corridor.