Timothy Zahn - The Icarus Hunt

Except that it wasn't strictly unoccupied, and for a brief, time-stretchedsecond I tried to think of how to turn that to our advantage. If Tera, Shawn, and I could walk casually past the Icarus as if we weren't connected with itat all; and if I could get Ixil on the phone—

We hadn't gotten two steps before any such decisions were taken out of my hands.

"There," Chort called out, pointing to me. "There is the captain. You mayaddress your questions to him."

I sighed. "You two stay back," I murmured to Tera and Shawn. There was arustle as Tera took Shawn's left arm, pulling him subtly to a halt as I continued ontoward the ramp. The Najik in the center of the group took a step toward me inresponse, and now that he was facing me I could see the insignia of a gokra—

the equivalent of a senior lieutenant—on his collar. Apparently, Customs HQ wastaking this very seriously.

"Good day, Gokra," I greeted him as we sloshed through the puddles to within afew steps of each other. "Is there a problem?"

"You are the captain of the Sleeping Beauty?" he asked. His tone was decidedlyneutral.

"I am," I said, wondering fleetingly if Chort might have slipped up and giventhem my real name, realized immediately that he hadn't. If he had—if the Najikknew beyond a doubt what they had here—they wouldn't be bothering with a fewmeasly customs officers. They'd have an army battalion here, plus the localPatth ambassador and his staff, plus probably a military marching band thrownin for color. "Is there a problem?"

"You will unseal the hatch," he said, waving back toward the Icarus. "You willtell your crewer to move aside, and you will allow us to go in."

"Of course," I said, not moving. "May I ask what the problem is?"

For a moment he seemed disinclined to tell me, but apparently decided therewas no harm in playing by the proper Mercantile Code rules. "We have received areport that this ship is engaged in illegal smuggling activities," he said.

The rest of me was soaking wet. My mouth, however, was suddenly dry.

"Smugglingactivities?" I managed, hoping I sounded more bewildered than guilty.

"Yes," the gokra said. "Specifically, that you have unregistered gem-stoneshidden aboard."

I stared at him, not needing to feign any bewilderment this time. "Gemstones?"

I echoed. "That's crazy. We're not carrying any gemstones."

"You will please tell your Craea to stand aside," the Najik said, not evenbothering to acknowledge my protest. I couldn't blame him; he'd probably heardvariants of it twice a day throughout his entire career. "Then you will unsealthe hatch and allow us inside. I will need to see your personalidentification, as well."

"Of course," I said, brushing some of the water out of my eyes and trying tofigure out what the hell was going on. The gemstone story was utter nonsense, of course—you could fill fifty ships the size of the Icarus from deck to ceilingwith Dritar opals without so much as lifting a Patth eyebrow. But if theysuspected the ship in front of us might be the Icarus, why bother with thissubterfuge?

Answer: they wouldn't. Which meant that they didn't know it was the Icarus.

Which further meant the Patth weren't involved in this; that it was a purelyNajiki affair, with the whole gemstone thing being either a ridiculousbureaucratic error or else a horrifying coincidence. I'd chosen the nameSleeping Beauty for our current ship's ID on the assumption that few people inthe Spiral were going to name their ships after obscure nineteenth-centuryRussian ballets. It would be the height of irony if I'd not only guessed wrong, but had managed to pick the name of a bona fide smuggling ship in the bargain.

Unfortunately, in about five minutes the how and why of it weren't going tomatter anymore. There were a dozen different numbers etched on engines andconsoles all over the ship, numbers that were on various lists all across theSpiral. If Cameron had done a proper job of creating a history for his phantomfreighter, those numbers would be in a Mercantile file labeled Icarus, and theminute the Najik started checking them we would be finished. If Cameron hadn'tfiled the numbers, it would simply take a little longer for the soap bubble toburst.

The Najik were still waiting. "Of course," I said again, turning back andstepping to where Tera was still clinging to Shawn's left arm. There was onevery tenuous hope here, a hope based on Brother John's off-handed commentearlier about the Najik, and my own hopefully not-too-cynical interpretationof it. "Let me get the hatch unlocked first and get us in out of the rain.

Especially Geoff here—he's not well."

Someone in the group gave a deep-bass rumble, the Najiki equivalent of aguffaw, as I took Shawn's right upper arm. Not an unreasonable response, given thatShawn looked more drunk than he did sick, and I took it as a good sign.

Customs HQ might be taking this seriously, but apparently not all the officersthemselves were. Together Tera and I led Shawn through the Najiki cordon tothe near end of the ramp. I keyed in the combination on the pad and, behind Chort, the hatch swung open. Without waiting for permission from the Najik, I movedus forward onto the ramp.

"Keep going," I murmured to Tera, letting go my grip on Shawn's arm andslidingmy left arm through his, freeing up that hand while still giving theappearancethat I was holding on to him. Extending my reach as much as I could, I dippedinto my side jacket pocket for the folded city map I'd stuffed in thereearlier.

My other hand had already slipped inside my jacket for my pen; and as wepassedout of the rain into the shelter of the wraparound I scribbled briefly on thefront of the map.

"An interesting ship design," the gokra commented from right behind me. Hemightbe courteous enough to let me precede him into my own ship, but that didn'tmean he was going to let me get too much of a lead on him. "Ylpea-built, Ipresume?"

"I really don't know," I said. Now that he mentioned it, I could see an echoof the Ylpean love of French curves in the Icarus's double-sphere shape. Had thatbeen what Cameron had been going for? Regardless, something worth remembering.

"I'm just the pilot, not the owner. I don't know anything about its history."

"Ah."

We had moved along the wraparound, and were now coming up on the main sphere.

Behind the gokra the rest of the Najik had filed in, with a silent Chortbringing up the rear. "But you're not here for a history lesson anyway," Iadded, pulling my ID folder from inside my jacket and surreptitiously slidingthe map inside it. "Here's my ID."

I handed it to him, mentally crossing my fingers. If I'd guessed wrong, itwasn't even going to take until the Najik started calling in console numbersfor me to be in big trouble.

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

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

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

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