Timothy Zahn - The Icarus Hunt

It took me the better part of ten minutes to pull each of the manuals off theshelf, 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 havemade that noise.

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

Or a gun.

The mid-deck corridor was still deserted as I left the computer room and mademyway down the aft stairway. I was tired, my head was now competing with my legto see which could ache the most, and I had the annoying sense that I was chasingmy own tail. Even if Tera did have a weapon, that didn't necessarily mean shewas up to anything. Besides, it was still entirely possible that the noise hadcome 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 triplelocker facing it from the corridor-side wall. An intercom was set into the inner hullbeside the triple bunk, with a meter of empty hull space on its other sidewhere 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 passengers than werecurrently 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 afair amount of freedom of movement; not so useful in that it offered that samefreedom to everyone else, too.

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

"Why have we stopped?" I demanded.

Her eyebrows lifted a bit higher. "We've got another hull ridge," she said calmly. "Chort's getting ready to go out and fix it."

I scowled past her at the displays. Sure enough, the new camera I'd had Ixil and Shawn install in the wraparound showed two space-suited figures just sealing the pressure door behind them. One was obviously Chort; the other was just as obviously Ixil. "You should have called me," I growled.

"Why?" she countered. "There's nothing to this operation that the pilot needs to have a hand in. Besides, you're off-duty, remember? Go back to bed."

The radio speaker clicked. "We're ready, Tera," Ixil's voice said. "You can shut down the grav generator."

"Acknowledged," Tera said, flipping back the safety cover and turning the switch ninety degrees. "Shutting off gravity generator now."

She pushed the switch, and I went through the usual momentary disorientation before my stomach settled down. "Go back to bed," Tera repeated, her eyes on the monitors. "I'll call you if there's a problem."

"I'm sure you would," I said shortly. Once again, it seemed, I had managed to embarrass myself in front of this woman. This was getting to be a very bad habit. "I'll stay a bit."

"I don't need you," she said flatly, flicking a single glowering glance at me and then turning her attention back to the monitors. "More to the point, I don't want you. Go away."

"Do we know where the ridge is?" I asked, ignoring the order.

"Big sphere; starboard side," she said. "Chort thinks it's a small one."

"Let's hope he's right."

She didn't answer. For a few minutes we watched the monitors together in silence, anxious silence on my part, frosty silence on hers. I presumed that Ixil had made it his business to make sure the grav generator couldn't impulsively go on-line again; but I didn't know for sure, and I didn't want to ask him about it on an open radio channel. I tried to figure out how I would lock down the generator if it was up to me, but I didn't know enough about theintricacies of the system.

"You two been flying together long?" Tera broke into my thoughts.

I blinked at her in mild surprise. Casual conversation from Tera was somethingnew in my admittedly brief acquaintance with her. "Six years," I told her. "Itook him on about a year after I bought the Stormy Banks. I figured having apartner would help me run cargoes faster and more efficiently and bring inmore money."

"I take it it didn't work?"

"What makes you say that?" I countered, long experience with that questionputting automatic defensiveness into my voice.

"You're here, aren't you?" she said. "Sorry—I didn't mean that the way itsounded. With the Patth handling almost everything worth shipping these days, it's a wonder everyone else hasn't been driven out of business."

"Give them a few more years," I said sourly. "The way they're going, it won'tbe long before they have it all."

"At least everything legitimate," she said, giving me a sideways look. "You dorun legitimate cargoes, don't you, McKell?"

"Every single chance I get," I said, trying to put a touch of levity into mytone as I gazed at her profile, wishing I could read what was going on behindthose hazel eyes of hers. Had she talked to someone while we were on Xathru?

Heard something, perhaps, about my forced affiliation with Brother John andthe Antoniewicz organization? "What about you?" I asked, hoping to change thesubject. "How long have you been flying?"

"Not long," she said. "What do you do when you can't get legitimate work?"

So much for changing the subject. "Sometimes we're able to pick up intrasystemcargoes," I told her. "Occasionally we have to find temp jobs in whatever portwe're stuck in until something comes along. Mostly, we eat real light."

"You're not a big fan of the Patth, then, I take it?"

"No one who hauls cargo for a living is a fan of the Patth," I said darkly, myconversation with Nicabar flashing to mind. "Is this your subtle way ofsuggesting we might be carrying a Patth cargo?"

There were a lot of things, I knew, that a competent actress could do with herbody, voice, and expression. But the last time I checked, the red flush thatrose to briefly color Tera's cheeks wasn't one of them. "We'd better not be," she said, the studied casualness in her voice a sharp contrast to the emotionimplicit in that reddened skin. "Though I doubt we'll find out for sureanywherethis side of Earth."

"If even then," I pointed out. "Whoever Borodin's got working that end isn'tunder any obligation to let us watch while he cuts the cargo bay open."

"No, of course not," she murmured, almost as if talking to herself. "I wonderwhy he lied to us about coming along."

"Who, Borodin? What makes you think he did lie?"

She shrugged. "You saw that note he left. He had to have written it before theIhmisits closed the port down for the night."

I thought about Director Aymi-Mastr of the Meima Port Authority and thatmurder charge she'd talked about. "Unless he just had it here as a precaution," Isuggested. "Maybe he fully intended to join us, but circumstances preventedhim."