Timothy Zahn - The Icarus Hunt

Of course, if Cameron wasn't in here, then we were back to the sticky questionof where in blazes he'd gotten to. If he'd left the Icarus at Potosi, voluntarily or otherwise, then he was likely in worse trouble than if he werein here. In fact, as I thought about it, I realized his abduction on Potosi mightexplain why the Najik had identified the Icarus so quickly at Utheno. Thoughthat could equally be the Potosi customs report catching up with us.

On the other hand, whether Cameron was in here or not, we still had to figureout how the stardrive worked if we were going to pussyfoot our way out of thePatth net. Still, it would definitely be the better part of valor for mecarefully to back out of here at this point and postpone any other plans untilPax came back with his report.

And then, even as I gave the light one last sweep around, I heard a soft, distant sound. Unlike the noise I'd heard while talking with Tera, though, this one was very familiar. It was the screech of a startled Kalixiri ferret, thekind of verbal reaction that usually went quickly up the tonal scale and thenjust as quickly back down again.

Only this one didn't. It went halfway up the scale, then abruptly cut off.

And with the sudden silence ringing in my ears, I stared into the darkness, feeling sweat beading up on my forehead and neck. There hadn't been even thewhisper of a trailing edge to that call; no whimper, no gasp, no sigh. None ofthe sounds that should have come from the last escaping bit of air in Pax'slungs as he collapsed into sleep or unconsciousness.

Which meant he hadn't collapsed into sleep or unconsciousness. He was dead.

And something in here had killed him.

I looked back toward the access hole, the movement of my head sending dropletsof sweat flying off my face to drift their way to oblivion among the maze ofcircuitry. If Tera had heard that abbreviated death cry, she would be stickingher head into view any second now to demand an explanation. But the secondsticked by, and there was no Tera, and I realized with decidedly mixed feelingsthat I alone knew what had just happened.

Which meant that the decision of what to do next was also mine alone. Probablyjust as well. Wiping the surface layer of sweat off my forehead with my leftsleeve, I eased the blocking wires out of the way and headed cautiously in.

I'd told Ixil and Tera that we weren't in any particular hurry here. WithPax's screech echoing through my memory, I was even less inclined to takeunnecessarychances. I kept it slow and careful, checking every wire and conduit in mypath, both visually and with my field sensor, before getting anywhere near it.

Before moving it aside I also made sure to trace along it as best I could through thetangle, trying to see where it intersected the wall or other components andmaking sure it had enough slack for me to safely push it aside withoutstraininganything. If it didn't have that slack, if it even looked marginal, I changedcourse and found another route.

It took me nearly an hour to work my way through that first three and a halfmeters; and I was just beginning to wonder if I was going to be able to do thewhole ten meters to the center in one try when I eased through a gap in afish-net-style mesh and abruptly found myself in open space.

I held on to the mesh with one hand, balancing myself parallel to it in thezero gee, and played my light around. The space wasn't quite as empty, I could seenow, as it had looked in that first glance. A dozen different cable loops thathad worked their way through the holes in the mesh were bobbing gently aroundthe edges, looking like some exotic form of seaweed drifting in a calmcurrent.

Half a dozen of the lighted displays I'd seen against the walls were also atthe edge of the open area, fastened by wires through the mesh and facing inwardtoward the center; from one of them a slender, articulatedblack-and-silver-banded extension arm stretched right to the point six and ahalf meters away from me where the center of the sphere should be. All thedisplay lights were red, giving the area an eerie, blood-tinged look. I movedmylight around the room again, steeling myself for what would probably be theveryunpleasant sight of a dead ferret. But there was no sign of his body.

Apparently, he hadn't made it through the wire maze before he died.

And then, abruptly, I caught my breath, swinging my light back toward thecenter again. So intent was I on looking for Pax's body that it had only now occurredto me that there should have been something else in here: the resonancecrystaland control board that Nicabar and Chort said a stardrive like this was supposedto come equipped with.

Unfortunately, this one wasn't.

Carefully, I ran my light over every square centimeter of the place, a tightknot twisting like a case-hardened drill bit into my stomach. I'd pinned a lot on Tera's assumption that the Icarus concealed an alien stardrive, but notuntil that moment did I realize just how much pinning I had actually done. If wecouldn't get this thing to jump us past the Patth net, then we'd had it, pureand simple. I remembered Shawn's question on that point, and how glibly I'dbrushed him off with the suggestion that we would be no worse off if Cameron'sarchaeologists had been wrong.

But I'd been the one who'd been wrong. All the work we'd done had indeed beenfor nothing, just as Shawn had warned. Worse, my brilliant scheme had cost usprecious time, a loss I realized now we were going to sorely regret. Not onlyhad the Patth been given the opportunity to consolidate and perhapsreconfiguretheir hunt for us, but the lost days had let Shawn's medical conditiondeteriorate to the point where there were probably no more than three or fourplanets we could reach in time to get him the borandis he would soon beneeding.

And to top it off, if the Patth had guessed we had had to go to ground forrepairs or recalibration after the Utheno attack, then they would beconcentrating everything they had on this region. The region that, sooner orlater, we were going to have to pop up into.

On the other hand, if this electrician's nightmare wasn't a stardrive, whatthe hell would the Patth want with it anyway? A possibly reassuring thought; butnot, I realized immediately, nearly as reassuring as it might have been. TheIcarus could still be the massive alien stardrive Cameron's people suspected, only with the vital crystal either removed or crumbled into dust. That wouldputus in the depressing position of having something that was totally useless tous, yet was still worth killing us to get.

Unless...

I played the light around again. If it was merely a matter of finding therightkind of crystal, that was the kind of miracle we still had an outside chanceof pulling off. I doubted such a rock would be an off-the-shelf item these days, but if I could get a message to Uncle Arthur, he might be able to dig one upfrom somewhere and get it to us.

I let go of the mesh, hovering in midair as I wiped some more sweat from myface. And as I did so, I suddenly heard a sound like two pieces of metalscratching together. The same sound, I realized, that I'd heard while sittingout in the big sphere with Tera.

Only this time it was coming from somewhere nearby.

I swung my light around, hoping to catch a glimpse of moving machinery. Butthe sound had stopped before I could get the light more than a fraction of the wayaround, despite the fact that I'd whipped my arm fast enough to send the restof my body into a slow tumble. Cursing under my breath, I reached back out forthe mesh.

My fingers closed on thin air. The mesh was out of my reach.

I tried again, swinging my body awkwardly over as I tried to get enoughextension, frowning at the complete illogic of the situation. I'd beenmotionless relative to the mesh when I'd started; and no matter how much I'dtwisted and turned, my center of mass should have remained that same distanceaway from it. That was basic level-one physics.