Timothy Zahn: The Icarus Hunt

came within an ace of missing my flying leap upward at the eaves when mytakeoff log bobbled under my feet and robbed me of some hard-earned momentum. But Imade it and got the desired grip, and a second later had hauled myself over the edgeand onto the roof.

Not any too soon, either. I was just swinging my legs up over the edge whenone of the logs came whistling up past the eaves to disappear into the night sky.

Myplaymates below, proving themselves to be sore losers. I didn't know whetherYavanni were good enough jumpers to get to the roof without the aid of thewoodpile they'd just demolished, but I had no particular desire to find outthe hard way. Keeping my head down—there were plenty more logs where that firstone had come from—I got my feet under me and headed across the roof.

All the buildings in this section of the spaceport periphery were reasonablyuniform in height, with only those narrow alleys separating them. With alittle momentum, a gentle tailwind, and the inspirational mental image of irritatedYavanni behind me I made it across the gap to the next rooftop with half ameter to spare. I angled across that one, did a more marginal leap to the buildingabutting against its back, and kept going. Along the way I managed to get outof my jacket and turn it inside out, replacing the black leather with anobnoxiously loud paisley lining that I'd had put in for just this sort ofcircumstance. Aiming for a building with smoke curling out of its chimney, Ilocated its woodpile and made my way down.

The Yavanni were nowhere to be seen when I reentered the main thoroughfare andthe wandering groups of spacers, townspeople, come-ons, and pickpockets.

Unfortunately, neither was the white-haired man I'd been hoping to follow.

I poked around the area for another hour, popping in and out of a few moretavernos and dives on the assumption that my new employer might still betrolling for crewers. But I didn't see him anywhere; and the spaceportperipherywas far too big for a one-man search. Besides, my leg was aching from thatkick to the windbreak, and I needed to be at the spaceport when it opened atfive-thirty.

The Vyssiluyas ran a decent autocab service in their part of the periphery, but that thousand commarks I'd been promised weren't due until I showed up at theIcarus, and the oversize manager of the slightly seedy hotel where Ixil and Iwere staying would be very unhappy if we didn't have the necessary cash to paythe bill in the morning. Reluctantly, I decided that two arguments with largealiens in the same twelve-hour period would be pushing it, and headed back onfoot.

My leg was hurting all the way up to my skull by the time I finished the lastof the four flights of stairs and slid my key into the slot beside the door. Withvisions of a soft bed, gently pulsating Vyssiluyan relaxation lights, and aglass of Scotch dancing with the ache behind my forehead, I pushed open thedoor and stepped inside.

The soft bed and Scotch were still a possibility. But the lights apparentlyweren't. The room was completely dark.

I went the rest of the way into the room in a half fall, half dive that sentme sprawling face first onto the floor as I yanked my plasmic out of its concealed holster under my left armpit. Ixil was supposed to be waiting here; and adarkened room could only mean that someone had taken him out and was lying inwait for me.

"Jordan?" a smooth and very familiar Kalixiri voice called from across theroom.

"Is that you?"

I felt the sudden surge of adrenaline turn into chagrined embarrassment anddrain away through my aching leg where it could hurt some more on its way out.

"I thought you'd still be up," I said blackly, resisting the urge to trot outsome of the colorful language that had earned me a seat in front of thatcourt-martial board so many years ago.

"I am up," he said. "Come take a look at this."

With an amazingly patient sigh, I clicked the safety back on my plasmic andslid the weapon back into its holster. With Ixil, the object of interest could beanything from a distant nebula he'd spotted through the haze of city lights toan interesting glow-in-the-dark spider crawling across the window. "Be rightthere," I grunted. Hauling myself to my feet, I kicked the door closed androunded the half wall into the main part of the room.

For most people, I suppose, Ixil and his ilk would be considered as much avisual nightmare as the charming Yavanni lads I'd left back at the taverno. Hewas a typical Kalix: squat, broad-shouldered, with a face that had more thanonce been unflatteringly compared to that of a squashed iguana.

And as he stood in silhouette against the window, I noticed that thisparticularKalix was also decidedly asymmetric. One of those broad shoulders—the rightone—appeared to be hunched up like a cartoonist's caricature of a muscle-boundthrow-boxer, while the other was much flatter. "You're missing someone," Icommented, tapping him on the flat shoulder.

"I sent Pix up onto the roof," Ixil said in that cultured Kalixiri voice thatfits so badly with the species' rugged exterior. One of the last remainingsimple pleasures in my life, in fact, was watching the reactions of peoplemeeting him for the first time who up till then had only spoken with him onvidless starconnects. Some of those reactions were absolutely priceless.

"Did you, now," I said, circling around to his right side. As I did so, thelumpon top of that shoulder twitched and uncurled itself, and a whiskered noseprobed briefly into my ear. "Hello, Pax," I greeted it, reaching over toscritch the animal behind its mouselike ear.

The Kalixiri name for the creatures was unpronounceable by human vocalapparatus, so I usually called them ferrets, which they did sort of resemblein their lean, furry way, though in size they weren't much bigger than laboratoryrats. In the distant past, they had served as outriders for Kalixiri hunters, running ahead to locate prey and then returning to their masters with theinformation.

What distinguished them from dogs or grockners or any of a hundred othersimilar hunting partners was the unique symbiotic relationship between them and theirKalixiri masters. With Pax riding on Ixil's shoulder, his claws dug into thetough outer skin, Pax's nervous system was right now directly linked toIxil's.

Ixil could give him a mental order, which would download into Pax's limitedbrain capacity; and when he returned and reconnected, the download would gothe opposite direction, letting Ixil see, hear, and smell everything the ferrethad experienced during their time apart.

For Kalixiri hunters the advantages of the arrangement were obvious. For Ixil, a

starship-engine mechanic, the ferrets were invaluable in dealing with wiringor tubing or anything else involving tight spaces or narrow conduits. If more ofhis people had taken an interest in going into offworld mechanical andelectronic work, I'd often thought, the Kalixiri might well have taken overthat field the same way the Patth had done with general shipping.

"So what on the roof do you expect to find interesting?" I asked, giving Paxanother scritch and wondering for the millionth time whether Ixil got the samescritch through their neural link. He'd never commented about it, but thatcould just be Ixil.

"Not on the roof," Ixil said, lifting a massive arm. "Off of it. Over there."

I frowned where he was pointing. Off in the distance, beyond the buildings ofthe spaceport periphery and the more respectable city beyond it, was a gentleglow against the wispy clouds of the nighttime sky. As I watched, threethruster sparks lifted from the area and headed off horizontally in differentdirections.

"Interesting," I said, watching one of the sparks. It was hard to tell, givenour distance and perspective, but the craft seemed to be traveling remarkablyslowly and zigzagging as it went.