The Icarus Hunt Part 18

Behind the gokra the rest of the Najik had filed in, with a silent Chort bringing up the rear. "But you're not here for a history lesson anyway," I added, pulling my ID folder from inside my jacket and surrept.i.tiously sliding the map inside it. "Here's my ID."I handed it to him, mentally crossing my fingers. If I'd guessed wrong, it wasn't even going to take until the Najik started calling in console numbers for me to be in big trouble.

He took the folder and opened it. The multiple eyes twitched in unison as he saw the map nestled inside; twitched again as he spotted the note I'd written on it.

For a long minute he just stared at it. Once again I was suddenly conscious of the weight of my plasmic against my ribs, knowing full well that opening fire in such a confined s.p.a.ce against ten armed opponents would be a quick way of committing suicide. Beside me, Shawn seemed to have stopped breathing, and I could sense a similar tension in Tera on his other side.

Then, almost delicately, the gokra closed the folder without even looking behind the map at my actual ID and handed it back to me. "Thank you," he said, almost primly. "We won't be long."

And they weren't. They wandered up and down the various corridors, glanced around the engine room and bridge, casually examined the curving metal of the cargo compartment and confirmed there was no entry hatch, and made a copy of Cameron's fake Gamm sealed-cargo license to take for their files. Nicabar returned while they were poking around; I told him to get dried off and then get the thrusters ready to go. At one point, almost as an afterthought, the gokra also presented me with the bill for our fueling, explaining that he'd taken it from the ground crew when he arrived and found them waiting for my return. He didn't seem surprised that I paid the bill in cash, or that there were five extra hundred-commark bills in the stack I gave him. And that was it. Ten minutes after they'd come in out of the rain, they were out in it again, striding briskly toward the slideways and headed home.

"All right, I give up," Tera murmured from my side as she and I stood in the wraparound and watched them go. "Who is Mr. Antoniewicz, and why won't he be happy if they find anything?"

I grimaced. I hadn't thought she would be able to read the note from her angle as I'd scribbled it on the map. "He's just someone I know," I said evasively.

"He has a certain amount of influence around the Spiral."

"I'd say he has a great deal of influence," she said, eyeing me in a way I didn't much care for. "You know him personally or professionally?"

"I've done some business with his people," I said. A movement outside caught my eye: Everett, our last crewman still unaccounted for, had appeared around the bow of one of the nearby ships and was plodding our way, his big feet kicking up impressive splashes with each step. He looked tired; he must have worn himself out looking for Shawn. Not surprising, really, given that he probably considered it his fault the kid had gotten away in the first place. "Here comes Everett,"

I.

added to Tera, hoping to forestall any further questions, as I dug out the fake ca.s.sette. "Tell him to check Shawn and see if he needs another dose yet-here's the borandis. As soon as he's aboard, seal the hatch and get to the computer room."

I left her there and headed to the bridge, feeling both cautiously relieved and cautiously pleased with myself. I'd been right: Brother John's grudgingadmiration for the Najik had indeed been based on the fact that the Antoniewicz organization was able to do business with them. Clearly, our customs gokra was in on the deal, and dropping Antoniewicz's name had been enough to wave him off us. I still didn't know why the Icarus had been fingered for a search, but as soon as we were out of Potosi s.p.a.ce that wouldn't matter.

a.s.suming we did get out of Potosi s.p.a.ce, of course. If the gokra had merely taken the extra cash in order to add attempted bribery to the charges against me, he should be rounding the corner any minute with that army battalion I'd been expecting earlier.

But for once, my pessimism proved unfounded. We got clearance to lift, the port's grav beams lifted us smoothly out and up, and within a few minutes we were once again in s.p.a.ce. I had cut us into hypers.p.a.ce and was doing a quick check of the systems when the door opened and Everett came in. "We safely away?"

he asked.

"Unless the hull decides to collapse, we are," I told him.

He made a face. "Considering the way things have been going, that's not very funny."

"I suppose not," I conceded. "Sorry. How's Shawn doing?"

"Seems to be recovering," he said. "Fortunately, the reversible Cole's disease symptoms begin long before the irreversible damage kicks in. And the borandis dependence itself is more or less reversible at any point. Rather like scurvy in that respect."

"That's handy," I said. "How much of his current trouble is related to the dependence and how much to the disease?"

He shook his head, peering at the displays. "I don't know. The two problems intermix so tightly it takes a specialist to disentangle them. We're going to Morsh Pon next?"

"Yes," I said. "After that little run-in back there, I thought it might be nice to refuel someplace where they don't bother at all with customs formalities."

"If you live to get back out," he said dubiously. "I've heard stories about that world-bands of pirates and smugglers roaming the streets looking for trouble."

"We'll be all right," I told him with a confidence I didn't much feel myself.

"I'll make you a small wager that it won't be as bad as you think."

"Um," Everett said noncommittally, still looking doubtful. "Still, you're the captain; power of life and death over your crew, and all that. Speaking of which-the crew, I mean-I haven't seen Ixil since before we landed on Potosi."

"Neither have I," I said. "But I'm sure he's all right."

"Yes," he said hesitantly. "The reason I asked, you see, was that I tried checking on him and his cabin door wouldn't open."

"That's okay-I set it that way to make sure he had some privacy," I a.s.sured him.

"I just hope it didn't slam on your fingers."

"What do you mean?" Everett asked, looking puzzled. "It didn't slam. It didn't open at all."

I stared at him, a sudden chill running through me. "It didn't open a few centimeters and then shut again?"

"I told you: it didn't even budge," he insisted. "I thought maybe it had gotten jammed-"

I didn't wait to hear any more, jumping out of my seat and dodging past him to the ladder out in the corridor. I slid down it without touching any of therungs, my heart pounding suddenly in my throat. I reached Ixil's door and tried the release pad.

Everett was right. It didn't budge at all.

I had my mult.i.tool out and was unfastening the pad's cover by the time Everett caught up. "You think something's wrong?" he puffed as he came up beside me.

"There's something wrong with the door, anyway," I said, fighting hard to speak calmly, to keep my fear and rage out of my voice. If the saboteur had been here while Ixil was lying helpless... but maybe the control chip had simply burned out. With my fingers fumbling slightly in their hurry, I got the cover off.

The control chip hadn't simply burned out. The control chip wasn't there at all.

What was there looked like it had been attacked by a gorilla with a small sledgehammer.

Beside me, Everett gasped. "What in h.e.l.l's name-?"

"Our friend who wrecks cutting torches does doors, too," I snarled, dropping the cover on the deck and hurrying to the door to my own cabin. One glance was all I'd needed to know Ixil's release pad was going to need some major work, and I could replace it with the one from my door in a fraction of the time. "Go to the computer room and tell Tera to take the bridge," I called back over my shoulder as I set to work on the fasteners.

I had my release pad off and was starting on Ixil's when Everett returned, a first-aid kit clutched in his hand. "I thought we might need this," he said grimly, setting it down out of my way. "What can I do?"

"Hold this," I said, thrusting the damaged pad into his hands. A first-aid kit wasn't going to do a d.a.m.ned bit of good. Not now. Our saboteur had had plenty of time to make this one a leisurely killing. "What exactly happened after Shawn got loose?"

"He ran out of the ship," Everett said, rubbing at the side of his neck. "I'm afraid he got past me-"

"What about the others?" I cut him off. "Where were they when all this was happening?"

"Well..." He fumbled slightly. "I'm not exactly sure. The intercom still isn't working, so I had to go find them one by one. Chort was in his cabin, Nicabar was in the engine room, and I found Tera in the mechanics shop."

"And then?"

"We went outside to see if he was still in the area of the ship. He wasn't, or if he was we didn't see him, so we split up and went looking for him."

"You all left together?"

"Except Nicabar," he said. "The fuelers had arrived, and he stayed behind for a few minutes to get them started."

One of the door's control wires was too tangled to connect properly. I cut off the end, stripped it, and started wrapping it around its contact. "Whose brilliant idea was it not to tell me?"

"Mine, I'm afraid," he said, his voice wincing. "I thought it would just distract you, and you had enough to do at the time already."

I grunted. "Did you see any of the others while you were out hunting?"

"Of course not-we all went off in different directions," he said. "We kept in touch by phone, of course."

Which meant that any of them could easily have doubled back to the Icarus withmurder on his mind and no one would have been the wiser for it. He wouldn't even have had to dodge the fuelers, who would have been busy on the opposite side of the ship.

The last contact dropped into place, and I heard the faint transient hum as the system integrated. I touched the pad, and the door slid open.

The room was dark. Bracing myself for the worst, I reached inside and turned on the light.

Ixil was lying on the bunk just as I'd left him, Pix and Pax rousing themselves sleepily from beside him in response to the light. Cautiously, I moved forward, studying Ixil as I approached. There were no marks of violence on him, at least none that I could see from my angle.

And then, without warning, he inhaled sharply, like a sigh going in reverse, and his eyes fluttered open. "h.e.l.lo," he said, blinking up at me.

I stopped short. "You're not dead," I said stupidly.

Ixil's face registered mild surprise. "Were you expecting me to be?" he asked.

His eyes flicked around the room, paused briefly on Everett standing in the doorway behind me, then shifted down toward the deck. "What are those?" he added, extending a finger.

I followed the direction he was pointing. Sitting on the deck just inside the edge of the door were three objects. One was the missing control chip from the door release pad; the other two were small gla.s.s bottles the size and shape of those in the Icarus's limited pharmacopoeia.

I stepped over and picked them up. One of the bottles held a brown liquid, I noted, the other a fine whitish powder. Both bottles had safety-seal lids; both lids were still securely fastened. "What are they?" I asked Everett, handing them to him.

He frowned at the labels. "Well, this one is prindeclorian," he said, lifting the brown liquid. "It's a broad-spectrum viral inhibitor. The other one's qohumet, a parasite-control dust for feathered or scaled beings like our friend Chort. What they're doing here together I can't imagine."

"I can," Ixil said, his voice suddenly very thoughtful as he rose from the bunk and crossed over to Everett. "If you mix the two of them together and then set fire to the resulting mixture, you get something quite interesting."

The cold chill was starting up again. I knew that tone Ixil was using. Knew it far too well. "And that is?" I prompted.

He took the bottles from Everett and gazed at the labels. "Cyanide gas."

"ALL RIGHT, THEN, try this," I suggested, scowling at the bridge displays.

There wasn't anything there worth scowling at-they were looking just fine-but I was feeling the need to scowl at something. "They were put there as a warning to us."

"To us?" Ixil asked pointedly from the swivel stool across from me, the words mangled by the enormous sandwich he seemed to be trying to line-feed into his mouth. Kalixiri healing comas were unarguably useful things, but they did comewith a certain physical cost. That was already Ixil's second such sandwich, and he would probably demolish a third before his hunger even started to abate.

"All right, fine: it was a warning to you," I said, scowling some more. "The question is, why bother? What did our saboteur have to gain by slapping a red flag across our noses? Sorry-across your nose?"

"If it was the saboteur," he said, breaking off a small piece of the sandwich and leaning over to give it to Pax. Both ferrets were on the floor: Pax crouching where he could see the corridor outside the open bridge door, Pix circling the room by the inner hull listening for any eavesdroppers who might wander in from that direction. Ixil and I had already made sure that the intercom system, conveniently reactivated sometime during or immediately after my borandis search, couldn't be used against us again. "Maybe it was someone trying to warn us there's a saboteur aboard."

"If it was, he should learn how to compose letters," I said sourly. "Let's try it from a different angle. Who else aboard might know about that trick with the qohumet and whatever?"

"Prindeclorian," he said around another bite of sandwich. "Hard to tell, unfortunately. It was a favorite of armchair revolutionaries twenty years ago, along with a host of other common-chemical concoctions, and it received a fair amount of word-of-mouth publicity. But it never really caught on, mainly because you either need a small area to contaminate or a large supply of the necessary chemicals."

"And because the fact that you have to set it on fire limits its subterfuge value?"

"Definitely," he agreed. "Most people seeing a bright yellow flame spewing a cloud of greenish smoke won't stick around to see what the smoke might do to them."

"Unless the person in question is in a Kalixiri coma in a cabin the size of a large shoe box," I concluded with a grimace. "You suppose there are other equally handy chemicals aboard?"

Ixil paused to chew. "I imagine almost anything in sick bay would be lethal in a high enough dose," he said when he got his mouth clear again. "Unless you want to throw all of it overboard, there's not much we can do about it."

"That might not be such a bad idea," I growled. "I'm starting to wonder if the only reason you're alive is that Shawn's escape interrupted our would-be killer in his work."

Ixil paused in the act of taking another bite. "Excuse me? I thought your current theory was that the saboteur released Shawn so that he could chase everyone else out of the ship while he came back and did his dirty work."

"That was the old theory," I told him. "This is the new theory. He'd gotten your door open, but then heard the commotion on the mid deck and decided he'd better be found someplace else when they came looking for him. Not wanting to be caught with his pockets full of chemicals, he stashed them inside the room for safekeeping, hied himself off to someplace innocent, and just never got a chance to come back."

"And also put the control chip inside the room so that he wouldn't be able to open the door again himself?"

I glared at him. "That's right, let yourself get mired down in facts. Nevermind the simple elegance of the theory."

"My apologies," Ixil said, an odd look on his face as he set the remains of his sandwich on the nav table. "An idea. I'll be right back."

He left. I started another systems check, just for something to do, and did some more glaring at the various instruments. Unfortunately, he was right: If the saboteur planned to come back later, why take out the control chip? Not to mention the rest of the damage he'd done to the release pad.

Unless that had happened since we'd returned. Maybe he'd tried to come back early and found the ship surrounded by Najik customs officers. He wouldn't have had a chance to act after that until the Najik had come and gone, while the rest of us were busy getting the Icarus ready to fly.

But why smash the pad at that point? What did it gain him?

Unless he'd already gotten into the cabin and wanted to make sure no one was able to get in to interrupt him. With the inside release pad intact, he would have had no trouble leaving whenever he wanted to.

So what had he done in there?

There was a clumping of heavy footsteps, and Ixil reappeared, carrying a large object wrapped in a folded cloth in his hand. "Have you checked with Pix and Pax since you woke up?" I asked. "I'm wondering if they might have seen someone else in there with you."

"Yes, I have; and no, they didn't," he said, sitting down again. He set the object in his lap and started to unwrap it. "Except for seeing you come in for the ship's schematics, of course. On the other hand, they were both asleep much of the time, so I can't absolutely state that no one else got in."

Dead end. "You need to train them to sleep one at a time."

"If I'd been more alert before I went under I would have tried," he said.

"Though it might not have worked. Instructions like that often get lost when I don't have any neural contact with them for a few hours and can't reinforce the orders."

I gestured toward the object in his hand. "What's that?"

"Exhibit A." He pulled back the last fold of cloth, and I found myself looking at what had to be the biggest universal wrench on the ship, the kind used for unbolting thruster casings.

"Ah," I said. "And the significance of it is...?"