The Icarus Hunt Part 24

"To delay the moment when his disappearance would be discovered. And to ensure we left Potosi afterward as quickly as we could, so that by the time anyone did notice we'd be long gone from the scene."

"But why would they take all his things with him?" Tera persisted. Clearly, this wasn't a scenario she was at all willing to accept. "He had a full camping setup: food and water packs, a roll-up mattress, even one of those little catalytic waste handlers."

"Where did he get all that?" I asked.

"I bought most of it for him during our stopover on Xathru," she said. "He'd planned to come out after the first stop, but after Jones's death we decided he should stay hidden a while longer."

"Ah," I said, remembering now all the bags she'd brought aboard at Xathru, and how annoyed she'd been that I'd cut her shopping spree short.

"But why would anyone bother to take all of it along?" she asked again.

"Perhaps they wanted to eliminate any evidence that he was ever here," Ixil said. "Their contact would have told them that your father had kept his presence aboard a secret. At this point it would be basically your word against theirs."

"If it ever even came to that," I added. "They may have something else planned for you down the line."

She tried glaring at me again, but her heart wasn't in it. "You're a real comfort to have around, McKell," she growled. "Both of you."

"Yes, well, we haven't exactly gotten what we signed up for, either," I countered. "What I want to know is why this ship is still flying. We've been half a grab away from them at least twice now. Why haven't they simply picked us up?"

She sighed. "I don't know."

"Perhaps it would help," Ixil suggested, "if we knew what exactly this mysterious cargo is."

For a long minute Tera remained silent, her eyes flicking between our faces, clearly trying to decide just how far she was willing to trust us. Or perhaps just trying to come up with a convincing lie. "All right," she said at last.

"The Icarus isn't carrying any cargo. The Icarus is the cargo."

She waved a hand around her. "This is what the team uncovered on Meima: twospheres, connected together, the larger one empty except for its radial gravity generator, the smaller one crammed with alien electronics."

"How alien?" Ixil asked.

"Very alien," she said grimly. "It was like nothing they'd ever seen before, with markings and notations that were also totally unknown. We still don't know whether it predates the Spiral civilizations, or is simply from outside known territory. That's why that old Worthram T-66 is aboard-it was the one the archaeologists already had hooked up to study the small sphere, and when they built the Icarus they just basically a.s.sembled the computer room around it."

"So that's where the spare gravity inside the outer hull came from," I said.

"I'd been planning to ask you how and why you'd set that up."

"We had nothing to do with it," Tera said. "And we have no idea what it's for.

All we know is that it runs about eighty-five percent Earth standard, and is completely self-adjusting, which is why it isn't fazed by the Icarus's own gravity generator."

She smiled wanly. "I understand it worked the same way on Meima. Even while it was sitting there in a full planetary gravitational field, you could still walk all the way around inside the sphere without falling off."

"Must have been quite an experience," I murmured.

"Half of them loved it; the other half couldn't stand it," she said. "Anyway, that's why they built the inner hull so far away from the outer one-all the metal seems to inhibit the sphere's gravity field somehow, but if you put the two hulls any closer together you get a terrible disorientation at the edges where the two grav fields intersect."

"And that's what the Patth are all hot and bothered over?" I asked. "The chance to get their hands on a new-style grav generator? Hardly seems worth committing murder for."

She shook her head. "I'm not sure the Patth even know about the grav generator,"

she said; and there was something in her voice that sent a shiver up my back.

"I.

said the team couldn't decipher the markings on anything in the two spheres.

But the grav generator wasn't the only thing still working. A lot of the electronics in the small sphere were on what appeared to be some kind of standby, and they were able to take a lot of readings. Waveform a.n.a.lyses, pattern operations- that sort of thing."

She took a deep breath. "They're not sure," she said quietly. "There's a lot they still don't understand. Most of it, actually. But from what they could decipher of the patterns and power levels and even the geometric shapes of some of the components... well, they think this whole thing could be a stardrive."

I looked at Ixil. "What kind of stardrive?" I asked carefully.

"A fast one," she said. "A very fast one. From the readings, they think it could be as much as twenty times faster than the Patth Talariac."

"And that," Ixil said softly, "is worth committing murder over."

CHAPTER.

13WE LEFT TERA to get back to her sleep, or at least what sleep she would be able to manage after that immensely cheering conversation, and reconvened our private council of war on the Icarus's bridge. Shawn, who'd been on duty, had voiced no objection at all to being relieved, heading off toward his cabin and bunk with a sort of dragging step that suggested he still wasn't fully recovered from his recent bout with Cole's disease. Or from straight borandis addiction, as the case might be.

But while the bridge provided all the privacy we could want, or at least all we were likely to get on the Icarus, it didn't offer anything in the way of either inspiration or answers.

"Hard though this may be to believe," I commented to Ixil as I watched his ferrets climb nose first down his legs and scamper off to their corridor and bulkhead sentry duties, "I think this whole thing is more confused now than it was before we talked to Tera."

"I don't see how," Ixil said. "Instead of having a mysterious murderer/saboteur aboard the Icarus, we now only have a mysterious murderer."

"Oh, that's a great help," I said sarcastically.

"And we've also eliminated Tera as a suspect," he continued, ignoring the sarcasm. "Which leaves us only Chort, Nicabar, Shawn, and Everett. That should count for something."

"Only if everything she told us was true," I cautioned him. "Don't forget that photo Uncle Arthur sent was not exactly definitive. She could simply be a very accomplished liar with a gift for improvisation."

"Really," he said, his polite voice edging as close to sarcasm as Kalixiri ever got. "And does the large sphere's gravitational field come under the liar talent or the improvisational talent?"

"Fine, then," I growled, giving up. "Tera's as pure as the driven snow. Just bear in mind that even if she is who she says she is, her goals here may not coincide completely with ours."

"Granted," he said. "So where does the extra confusion come in?"

"It comes in the same place Cameron went out," I said. "With all due respect, I.

don't think much of your kidnapping theory. If they knew enough to get in here and s.n.a.t.c.h him, why didn't they grab the Icarus while they were at it?"

"Maybe they don't know its actual significance," Ixil said. "Maybe they still think the prize is in the cargo hold and didn't think they had time to get to it right then."

"Then why let us leave the planet?" I countered. "Anyway, they have to have at least an idea of what it is they're chasing. You don't offer hundred-grand finder's fees completely on speculation."

"That doesn't necessarily follow," he said. "Maybe all they know is that the Icarus is carrying something Cameron desperately wants to get to Earth, which they want to take a look at simply on general principles. Perhaps that was what the anonymous gem-smuggling tip was all about, to give them an excuse to get into the cargo hold."

I ran that one a couple of times around in my mind. It was not, I decided, asridiculous as it seemed at first blush. "If so, they've got terrible coordination problems," I pointed out. "The Najik let us go without even blinking an eye."

"So did Director Aymi-Mastr on Meima," Ixil said. "I don't think the Patth have quite made up their minds just how public they're willing to make their involvement with this."

"It's certainly public enough at the top levels," I reminded him darkly. "Half the governments in this region have already been threatened with sanctions if they don't find and deliver us."

"True, but that's not the same thing as working directly with local administrators and customs agents," he pointed out. "Top-level governmental officials can usually be trusted not to leak that kind of information, especially when it's something that might cause economic panic among their people."

I scowled at my displays. "So where does that leave us?" He shrugged. "At least we're not as much in the dark as most of the people looking for us," he said.

"Whatever the Patth themselves know or don't know, they most certainly haven't given the details to any of their searchers. If they knew what we were actually sitting on here, there wouldn't be a government in the Spiral who would give us up to them."

"I suppose I should be grateful for small favors," I said, trying to think of how exactly all this knowledge gave us an advantage. Offhand, I couldn't see any. "And that brings up another point. We might want to consider making ourselves a list of governments we'd be willing to surrender the Icarus to as a last resort, just to keep the Patth from getting it."

"We could," he said doubtfully. "The problem is finding someone who'd be less of a threat than the Patth themselves."

I c.o.c.ked an eyebrow. "You are joking."

"Not at all," he said, his face deadly serious. "As far as we know, the Patth have no real military other than their own defense forces."

"No, they subcontract the muscle jobs out to the Lumpies," I said sourly.

"Perhaps," Ixil said. "My point is that the Patth would use the Icarus stardrive to cement their stranglehold on civilian shipping. Someone else might instead put it to military uses."

I chewed a corner of my lip. A faster stardrive certainly wouldn't help in s.p.a.ce-normal combat, and of course there was no combat possible in hypers.p.a.ce.

It would make it easier to ferry troops, materiel, and warships around, but that wouldn't be that much of an advantage in the small brushfire conflicts that still flared up now and then. Unless we got into another of the huge regional wars that we all hoped were safely in the Spiral's past, the Icarus stardrive wouldn't gain an aggressor very much.

But then, maybe something like the Icarus stardrive was just the edge a potential aggressor was waiting for. Not a particularly pleasant thought.

"We still ought to make ourselves a surrender list," I said, getting up from the command chair and crossing to the plotting table. "Maybe try for a consortium of governments, just so no one's got a strict monopoly."

"Particularly a consortium that would allow the ship's crew to live," Ixilsaid.

"Preferably in something less confining than a small lonely cell somewhere."

"That one's at the top of my wish list, too," I a.s.sured him, keying the table on.

"It's always nice to have a common goal. Where exactly are we headed at the moment?"

"I don't know," I said, peering at the possibilities as they came up. "We're currently heading for Utheno, on the grounds that having a legitimate exit record from Potosi would make it easier to get in and out of another Najiki Archipelago world."

"Utheno is only, what, seventy-five hours away?"

"Seventy-three," I said. "And since that's only about half the Icarus's range, I.

also thought a stop there might throw off anyone who might be tracking our movements."

I waved at the table. "But now I'm starting to wonder if it would be better to not get within any single government's grasp more than once."

"Perhaps," Ixil said slowly. "Still, at this point, I'm not sure it really matters. The Patth have surely alerted everyone along our vector, and whether or not we've crossed paths with any particular government agency is probably more or less irrelevant."

"Do you think we should get off this vector, then?" I suggested. "Veer off to the side, circle around, and try to sneak up on Earth from behind?"

"No." He was definite. "The Patth aren't going to be fooled that easily- they'll have the word out anywhere the Icarus can get to. All that would do is increase the number of fueling stops we would have to make, which is where we're most vulnerable, and give the Patth more time to learn what exactly the Icarus looks like."

"And if they really do have Cameron, to get a complete crew list, too," I agreed glumly. "All right; Utheno it is."

"Utheno it is," Ixil agreed, snapping his fingers to recall his ferrets. "I'm going back to my cabin to get some sleep," he continued as they bounded up his legs and clawed their way to his shoulders. "I'd like to finish healing before we hit Utheno."

"Watch yourself," I warned. "Our murderer may not content himself with leaving his next batch of poison gas unmixed."

"I'll have Pix and Pax on alert," he a.s.sured me. "And there are a couple of door-guard tricks I know. You just watch yourself."

"What, me?" I said, snorting. "The only one we know can fly this monster? I'm the safest person aboard."

"Let's hope our murderer remembers that," Ixil said pointedly, standing up and heading for the door. "And doesn't have too inflated an opinion of his own piloting skills. I'll talk to you later."

He left, leaving the door locked open behind him. I confirmed the vector and timing to Utheno, then shut down the plotting table and returned to my command chair. And tried to think.

Our talk with Tera had been good. It had been enlightening and, a.s.suming always that everything she had told us was true, very useful as well.

The problem was that it had also swept away the whole fragile toothpick-house I'd worked so painstakingly to put together since Jones's murder. Before, I'd had a puzzle where the pieces didn't seem to fit together. Now, suddenly, notonly had she swept away the pieces, she'd swept away the d.a.m.n puzzle, too. The attacks on Jones and Chort, the sabotage to the cutting torch, the anonymous tips to the various customs and port authorities-every time lightning had struck I had carefully added the details to the rest of the mix, making sure to include the locations of all the possible suspects during that time. And while I didn't kid myself that I'd sorted it out into a neat package, at least I'd been getting a handle on it all.

Now, suddenly, everything had changed. Half the sabotage had been done by Tera and her father, a character I hadn't even known was on this particular stage of our little drama, and for reasons far less malevolent than their results would have suggested. And with that confession, my careful checklist of who had been where when went straight out the airlock. In fact, about all I had left to explain was the gem-smuggling tip to the Najik on Potosi and the poison-gas components and smashed release pad on Ixil's room. And, of course, Jones's murder.

And the d.a.m.nable part of it was that those were precisely the incidents that no one had any possible alibi for. Anyone aboard could have sabotaged Jones's rebreather prior to his accompanying Chort on his s.p.a.cewalk; and everyone was out on their own during the time Ixil's room was tampered with.

Everyone. Including Tera.

Because Ixil's opinions to the contrary, I still hadn't eliminated her as a suspect. Far from it. The photo Uncle Arthur had sent wasn't nearly definitive enough for me to accept her claimed ident.i.ty, and it was for sure that if the real Elaina Tera Cameron was running around the Spiral somewhere else we'd never hear about it here on the Icarus. True, she'd known about the hull's alien grav generator; but if she was actually one of the archaeologists or techs, she would have also known about that. Uncle Arthur had said the Ihmisits had rounded up the whole group, but without knowing his source for that information I was forced to consider it incomplete if not downright suspect. As to the rest of her story, I hadn't actually seen Cameron aboard the Icarus, and I sure couldn't confirm that he was the one I'd chased leisurely around the 'tweenhull area.

And I couldn't help noticing the interesting timing of the Patth infiltrating the Meima dig with a couple of Lumpies just when the Icarus was ready to fly.

It could be coincidence, or something in their own external intelligence had caught the roving Patth eye; but it could also be that they'd had an agent inside the dig itself. We had only Tera's word that she wasn't that agent.

But then, we had only everyone else's word for who they were, too. Tera had said Cameron had kept her presence on Meima close to the vest. Maybe he'd done the same with someone else as well, shielding this agent's presence even from his own daughter. It was the sort of double-blind stunt a man like Cameron might well have pulled; as Tera herself had said, you couldn't tell what you didn't know. Perhaps it was that second string to Cameron's bow who had been suborned by the Patth, or had simply decided he was tired of a tech's salary and that this was his big chance to retire in comfort.And if that was true, it might finally explain why we were still free. Either our traitor hadn't turned us in to the Patth yet because he was waiting for the price to go up, or else because he suspected another of Cameron's people was aboard and didn't want to show his hand until he'd figured out who it was.

So why was Jones murdered?

Had he known something damaging to the murderer? Or, conversely, had the murderer been afraid he might learn something that he, the murderer, couldn't afford for anyone else to know? It had to be something that a ship's mechanic might learn through his normal duties, or else the follow-up attack on Ixil didn't make any sense.

Unless the poison-gas threat had been just a smoke screen. Maybe all Mr. X had wanted to do was get rid of Jones, and had pulled the cyanide threat on Ixil to make it look like he had a grudge against anyone who tried to fill the mechanic post on the Icarus. After all, Ixil hadn't even come close to dying on that one.