The Icarus Hunt Part 8

But that one didn't wash at all. They'd known me by sight and name, and they'd known I'd come in from Meima. And they sure as h.e.l.l hadn't bought those corona weapons off a gun-shop rack.

I was halfway through the wraparound, still turning all the questions over in my mind, when I heard a dull, metallic thud.

I stopped dead in my tracks, listening hard. My first thought was that we had another pressure ridge or crack; but that wasn't at all what the noise had sounded like. It had been more like two pieces of metal clanking hollowly against each other.

And near as I could tell, it had come from someplace immediately ahead of me.

I unglued myself from the deck and hurried ahead, ducking through the forward airlock and into the main sphere, all my senses alert for trouble. No one was visible in the corridor, and aside from the galley/dayroom three rooms ahead on my right all the doors were closed. I paused again, listening hard, but there was nothing but the normal hum of shipboard activity.

The first door ahead on my right was the computer room. I stepped up to it and tapped the release pad with my left hand, my right poised ready to grab for my plasmic if necessary. The door slid open-Tera was seated at the computer, holding a hand pressed against the side of her head. "What?" she snapped crossly, glaring at me.

"Just checking on you," I said, glancing around the room. No one else was there, and nothing seemed out of place. "I thought I heard a noise."

"That was my head banging against the bulkhead," she growled. "I dropped a datadisk and ran into the wall when I leaned over to get it. Is that all right with you?"

"No problem," I said hastily, backing out rapidly and letting the door close on her scowl. This was twice now, counting my spectacularly unnecessary floor dive back in that Meima hotel room, where I'd overreacted and made something of a fool of myself.

The difference was that Ixil was already used to that sort of thing from me.

Tera wasn't, and my face was hot as I glowered my way forward.

Ixil was seated in the restraint chair when I reached the bridge, Pix and Pax nosing curiously around the bases of the various consoles in their rodent way.

"How was Nicabar?" he asked.

"Smart, competent, and apparently on our side," I told him. "Tera, unfortunately, probably now thinks I'm an idiot. Did you hear a metallic clunking noise a couple of minutes ago?"

"Not from here, no," he said, snapping his fingers twice. The two ferrets abandoned their exploration in response to the signal, scampering up his legs and onto his shoulders. "They didn't hear anything, either," he added. "Could it have been a pressure ridge forming?"

"No, it wasn't anything like that," I said. "Tera told me she'd b.u.mped her head on the bulkhead. But that's not what it sounded like to me."

"Perhaps it was Shawn across the corridor from her in the electronics workshop,"

Ixil suggested as the ferrets headed down his legs to the deck again. "He said he was going to be tearing apart and cleaning one of the spare trim regulators."

"He came here? Or did he use the intercom?"

"He came here," Ixil said. "He wanted to ask you to run a decision/diagnostic on the regulators already on-line, not wanting to have one of the spares torn apart if there was any chance we might need it."

"Unfortunately, this ship has all the decision-making capabilities of a politician up for reelection," I said. "Tera's computer back there is just this side of utterly useless."

"Yes, he mentioned that," Ixil agreed. "I did what I could in the way of a diagnostic, then told him to go ahead."

"Fine," I said, pulling out the console's swivel stool. I sat down facing Ixil, keeping the door visible at the corner of my eye. "I presume you took the opportunity to find out a little about him?"

"Of course," he said, as if there would be any doubt. "An interesting young man, though he strikes me as something of the rebellious type. He's quite well traveled-he went on several survey-match trips while in tech school, including one that followed Captain Dak'ario's famous journey across the Spiral threehundred years ago."

"Sounds like a flimsy excuse to get out of real cla.s.ses." I sniffed. "Which school was it?"

"Amdrigal Technical Inst.i.tute on New Rome," he said. "Graduated fifth in his cla.s.s, or so he says."

"Impressive, if true," I admitted grudgingly. "What was he doing on Meima?"

"He was out of work," Ixil said. "Why, he wouldn't say-he went rather evasive every time I tried to move us back to that topic. He did say that he was sitting in a taverno wearing his cla.s.s jacket and being picked on by some kids from a rival school when he caught Cameron's eye."

"Borodin, please, at least in public," I cautioned him. "That's the name everyone else aboard knows him by."

"Right. Sorry." He paused, an odd expression flitting across his face.

"There's one other thing that may or may not mean anything. Have you noticed Shawn seems to have a rather peculiar odor about him?"

I frowned. My first reaction was to think that that was possibly the strangest comment Ixil had ever made, certainly in recent memory. But Ixil was a nonhuman, with access to a pair of even more nonhuman outriders, and all of them had different sensory ranges from mine. "No, I hadn't," I said.

"It's quite subtle," he said. "But it's definitely there. My initial thought was that it might be related to a possible medical problem, the odor coming either from the illness itself or induced by medication."

I felt my throat tighten. "Or it could be coming from some other kind of drug.

The illegal type, maybe?"

"Could be," Ixil said. "Not standard happyjam, I don't think, but there are any number of variations I'm not familiar with." He shrugged. "Then again, it could also be a result of something exotic he had for lunch in the port."

"Nice to have it narrowed down." Still, in all the years I'd known Ixil his instincts had never steered him wrong in this sort of thing. And there had been the att.i.tude change I'd noticed myself in Shawn earlier in the trip, a change that could well have had something to do with drugs. "All right, we'll keep an eye on him. See if he smells the same tomorrow after a day of shipboard food."

"I will," he promised. "Speaking of tomorrow, I notice you've scheduled our next fueling stop on Dorscind's World. I thought I might remind you that Dorscind's World is not exactly a highlight of the average five-star tourist cruise."

"Which is precisely why I picked it," I told him. Pix and Pax had finished their deck-level tour of the bridge now and had scampered out the door into the corridor. I sent up a silent prayer that they wouldn't run across Everett; with his bulk, the big medic might step on them before he even noticed they were underfoot. "Paperwork accuracy has never been exactly a high priority with the Port Authority there, particularly if you're a few commarks heavy on the docking fees. I figure that the eighty-two hours it'll take to get there should be long enough for us to create a new ident.i.ty for the Icarus that'll be good enough topa.s.s muster."

"I'm sure we can put something together," he rumbled, eyeing me speculatively.

"Did your tangle with the Lumpy Brothers bother you that much?"

"More than you know," I a.s.sured him grimly. "You see, according to the schedule Cameron left me-the schedule he presumably filed with the Meima Port Authority-the Icarus's first stop was going to be Trottsen. We weren't supposed to be on Xathru at all."

His squashed-iguana face hardened. "Yet the Lumpy Brothers knew you were there."

"And called me by name," I nodded. "Granted, they may have tagged me when my turn was called at the StarrComm building-I had no reason at the time not to give my right name there. But why pick on me at all?"

Ixil nodded thoughtfully. "Can't be one of the crew," he murmured, half to himself. "If someone here wanted the cargo, he would have simply stolen it himself after everyone else left the ship."

"Depending on whether he could get through Cameron's security sealing," I said.

"But at the very least he would have made sure the Icarus didn't lift. And all he needed to do to accomplish that was to phone the Port Authority with an anonymous report about a pair of crisped bodies lying next to a cul-de-sac loading dock."

Ixil c.o.c.ked his head to the side. "In other words, he could have used the same technique that got you detained on Meima."

"Yes," I agreed. "And the fact that it didn't happen on Xathru implies to me that it wasn't someone aboard who pulled that stunt on Meima. But it does suggest a reason why the Lumpy Brothers latched on to me but not on to anyone else aboard."

Ixil nodded. "The Meima Port Authority report had your name."

"Not only my name, but my name linked with Cameron's," I said. "Someone got hold of that near-arrest report and disseminated it to a.s.sorted a.s.sociates across the Spiral with instructions to be on the lookout for me. The Lumpy Brothers just happened to get lucky."

"Or else backtracked your name to the Stormy Banks and looked up my flight schedule," Ixil suggested. "That might explain how they happened to be hanging around the StarrComm building."

"I hadn't thought of that part," I acknowledged. "You're probably right."

"It also indicates our employer is probably still at large," Ixil continued, stroking his cheek thoughtfully. "I imagine he remembers all the rest of the names of the people he hired on Meima, in which case the private alert ought to have included their names as well."

"Good point," I said, grimacing. What had become of Cameron was still high on my list of annoying loose ends. "Though that's not definitive-I doubt any of the others had their names called over a loudspeaker in the market."

"Which leaves us only the question of who's behind all this," Ixil concluded.

"And how we smoke him or them out into the open."

"Maybe that's your only unanswered question," I said. "Personally, I'm already on page two of that list. And as to who's pulling the strings in the background, I'm not at all sure we even want to go poking that direction. It seems to me that our job right now is to get the Icarus and its cargo to Earth, preferably with it and us in one piece. Well, one piece each, anyway.""You may be right." He hesitated. "You said you called Brother John to discuss this sudden change in plans. You didn't say whether or not you'd also spoken with Uncle Arthur."

I grimaced. "No," I said. "I was hoping we could-oh, I don't know. Surprise him, maybe?"

Even without the ferrets on his shoulders to do their twitching thing, I had no trouble reading Ixil's reaction to that one. "I won't waste time by asking if you seriously believe that to be a good idea," he said. "I'll make you a small wager: that he won't be any happier at your accepting this job than Brother John was."

"If you're expecting me to cover that bet, you can forget it," I said sourly, the proverbial admonition against trying to serve two masters running through my mind. No, Uncle Arthur would definitely not be happy with me over this one.

And the longer I put off calling him, the unhappier he was likely to get. "Oh, all right," I sighed. "I'll call him as soon as we hit Dorscind's World."

"That's the spirit," he said, with all the cheerful enthusiasm of someone who would probably find himself unavoidably busy tightening bolts on the Icarus while I was sweating it out under Uncle Arthur's basilisk glare in a StarrComm booth. "What's our plan until then?"

"To create a new ident.i.ty for the Icarus, and to keep an eye on our backs," I said. Across at the bridge door, the two ferrets reappeared and headed straight up Ixil's legs. "As far as I'm concerned, we still don't have a satisfactory explanation of what happened to Jones and Chort-"

The ferrets reached Ixil's shoulders; and abruptly, he made a quick double slashing motion across his throat with his fingertips. "-makes the best apple brandy anywhere in the Spiral," I said, shifting verbal gears as smoothly as I could manage. The voice of someone speaking, I knew, could be heard well before the actual words could be made out, as could the sharp break of that voice being suddenly cut off. "In fact, I'd put it up against anything made on Taurus or even Earth-"

I caught a movement from the corner of my eye; at the same time Ixil turned his head in that direction and nodded courteously. "Good evening, Tera," he said, breaking into my improvised babbling. "What can we do for you?"

I turned to face the door. Tera was standing in the doorway, a slight frown on her face as she took in Ixil seated in the restraint chair with me on the swivel stool. "You can get yourself out of that chair, that's what," she said. "The clock on the wall-and Mercantile regs-say it's time for a shift change. It's my turn for the bridge."

I frowned at my watch. Preoccupied with everything else that was happening, I hadn't even thought about that. "You're right," I acknowledged. "Sorry-I'm not used to flying a ship where there are real shift changes and everything."

"Which I presume also explains why your mechanic's in the control chair instead of you," she countered. "You, Ixil, need to take over for Nicabar in the engine room; and you, McKell, need to hit the sack.""I'm fine," I insisted, getting to my feet. In that moment, though, I realized that she was right. Overall lack of sleep plus general tension level had combined with the Lumpy Brothers incident and my still-sore leg to suddenly throw a haze of wooziness over the universe. "On the other hand, maybe it would be a good idea to go under for a couple of hours," I amended.

"Make it eight of them and you've got a deal," she said, jerking a thumb back down the corridor. "Go on-I'll let you know if there's any trouble. You're in one of the cabins on the lower level, right?"

"Right," I said. "Number Eight."

"Fine," she said, settling herself into the chair Ixil had just vacated.

"Pleasant dreams."

I stepped out the door and clanked my way down the bare-metal rungs of the ladder to the lower deck. The central corridor-as with the mid-deck, there was only one-was deserted. No big surprise, since aside from storage and recycling equipment there were only two sleeping cabins down here, mine and the one Ixil had moved into. A quiet part of the ship, where the rhythmic humming of the various machines would be quite conducive to lulling a weary traveler to sleep.

But I wasn't going to sleep. Not yet. Instead, I walked the length of the corridor to the aft ladder and headed back up to the mid deck, treading as quietly on the rungs as I could.

Ixil was nowhere in sight, having apparently already disappeared into the wraparound to relieve Nicabar in the engine room. At the forward end of the corridor, I saw that Tera had rather pointedly closed the bridge door behind her. A girl who liked her privacy, I decided, though there might not be anything more to it than the natural reticence of a lone woman locked in a flying tin can with four unfamiliar men and two alien males. But whatever the reason, it was going to make my current project that much safer.

The computer-room door was closed, too, but that was all right; near as I could tell, none of the Icarus's doors locked. Taking one last look around to make sure I wasn't being observed, I opened the door and went inside, closing it behind me.

The room looked exactly the way it had when I'd last seen it, except of course that Tera wasn't there. The Worthram T-66 computer dominated the s.p.a.ce, pressing up against the aft bulkhead and covering much of the starboard wall as well.

Fastened to the forward bulkhead was a two-sectioned metal cabinet with the hard-copy printer on one side and a set of shelves crammed with reference material and datadisks on the other. Squeezed in between the two was the computer control desk where Tera fought to beat the archaic machine into submission.

And where, allegedly, she'd been sitting when she hit her head hard enough for me to hear from the wraparound.

I went over and sat down in the chair. It wasn't nearly as fancy as the one on the bridge; but then, in emergency maneuvers it was far more important for the pilot to stay in his seat than the computer jock. Taking a deep breath, I leaned forward and banged my head experimentally against the edge of the control panel.

Even granted that I was hearing it from a more personal angle, the thud didn't sound anything like what I'd heard earlier. That one had definitely been metallic; this one sounded exactly like a skull whacked against a control board.Rubbing thoughtfully at my forehead and the dull ache that had joined the chorus throughout my body, I looked slowly around the room. So there were two possibilities. Either Tera had coincidentally hit her head against something at about the same time I'd heard that metal-on-metal sound, or else she was lying.

If the former, then I needed to look elsewhere; if the latter, there was something else in here that had in fact made the noise.

The problem was, what? Unlike Ixil's machine shop, there weren't any tools lying around or hanging on racks that might fall and clatter against the deck. There were plenty of cables and connectors, but they were for the most part light and rubber-coated. The cabinet was plain metal, but it was bolted to the bulkhead.

Besides, if it had tipped over, it would have left a mess of manuals and datadisks scattered on the deck which she wouldn't have had time to pick up.

The manuals themselves, it went without saying, couldn't possibly make such a sound.

Unless, it suddenly occurred to me, one of the manuals wasn't what it seemed.

It took me the better part of ten minutes to pull each of the manuals off the shelf, examine it carefully, and put it back in its place. Ten wasted minutes.

None of them was anything other than it appeared, and none of them could have made that noise.

Which left only one possibility. Whatever Tera had dropped, she was carrying it with her. A wrench, possibly, though what she would need a wrench for I couldn't imagine.

Or a gun.

The mid-deck corridor was still deserted as I left the computer room and made my way down the aft stairway. I was tired, my head was now competing with my leg to see which could ache the most, and I had the annoying sense that I was chasing my own tail. Even if Tera did have a weapon, that didn't necessarily mean she was up to anything. Besides, it was still entirely possible that the noise had come from somewhere else. I didn't really believe it, but it was possible.

The Number Eight sleeping cabin was like the other seven aboard the Icarus: small and cramped, with a triple bunk against the inner hull and a triple locker facing it from the corridor-side wall. An intercom was set into the inner hull beside the triple bunk, with a meter of empty hull s.p.a.ce on its other side where a lounge seat or computer desk would have gone on a properly furnished ship.

Clearly the ship had been designed to carry a lot more pa.s.sengers than were currently aboard; as it was, we all conveniently got a cabin to ourselves, with one on the upper deck as a spare. The privacy was useful in that it gave me a fair amount of freedom of movement; not so useful in that it offered that same freedom to everyone else, too.

The light switch was by the door. I punched it to nighttime dim, then crossed the room and lay down on the bottom bunk. Unrolling the blanket over me, I slid my plasmic under the pillow, where it would be available if needed, and closed my eyes. With unpleasant images of a frowning Uncle Arthur flickering behindmy eyelids, I fell asleep.

I AWOKE SLOWLY, in slightly disoriented stages, vaguely aware that something was wrong but not exactly sure what. The light was still at the dim level I'd set, the door was still closed, and I was still alone in the cabin. The rhythmic drone of the environmental system was still vibrating gently through the air and hull around me. The deeper hum of the stardrive- The deeper hum of the stardrive wasn't there.

The Icarus had stopped.

I had my boots and jacket on in fifteen seconds flat, almost forgetting to grab my plasmic in my rush to get out of the room. I hurried out into the corridor, went up the forward ladder like a cork out of a bottle, and charged into the bridge.

Seated in the restraint chair, Tera turned a mildly questioning eye in my direction. "I thought you were asleep," she said.