Part 11 (2/2)

see it, there are two other possibilities we haven't yet addressed. First, that the attack on Jones was personal to Jones. Once he was dead, the perpetrator stopped perpetrating because his job was finished.”

”But why pick on Jones?” I countered. ”No one aboard knew anyone else prior to boarding.”

”So we a.s.sume,” Ixil said. ”That may turn out not to be the case. Second, and possibly more intriguing, the attack on Jones may have been staged by Jones himself.”

I frowned. ”To what end?”

”To the end of allowing him to jump s.h.i.+p without any attached suspicion,” Ixil said. ”Think about it. If the carbon monoxide hadn't killed him, you would certainly have put him off the s.h.i.+p on Xathru for a complete medical check.

That would have left him with names and complete descriptions of you and the rest of the crew, details of the Icarus itself, and very possibly the itinerary Cameron had planned for the trip to Earth. And he would have had complete freedom of movement.”

”The itinerary wouldn't have done him any good,” I said mechanically. This angle had never even occurred to me. ”We're already way off Cameron's plan, and will be staying that way as long as the docking-fee bribe money holds out. You're suggesting he just miscalculated, then?”

”I don't know.” Ixil paused. ”There is, of course, one other possibility we haven't touched on. Did you think to search Jones's body before it was taken off the s.h.i.+p?”

A tight knot formed in the center of my stomach. ”No, I didn't,” I said. ”It never even occurred to me.””It's possible whoever killed him did so in order to use his body as a receptacle for pa.s.sing information,” Ixil suggested. ”Hard data, perhaps, such as photos or schematics that couldn't easily be sent via phone.”

”But why bother?” I asked. ”They all had complete freedom of movement on Xathru.

Why not just deliver it in person?”

”Perhaps the murderer didn't want to risk being seen in the company of the wrong people.”

I mulled that one over. ”Which would imply we were dealing with a genuine professional here.”

Ixil nodded. ”Yes. It would.”

I hissed thoughtfully between my teeth. There were indeed people out there, I knew, who would go to such lengths to complete a mission. But to have one of them just happen to be aboard the Icarus was pus.h.i.+ng the bounds of credibility way beyond even their normal elasticity range. ”Again, though, if someone wanted the Icarus badly enough to slip that kind of professional aboard, why haven't we been stopped already?”

”That is indeed a key question,” Ixil conceded. ”I'm afraid, Jordan, that there are still too many missing pieces to this puzzle.”

”The biggest of which is sitting back there in our cargo hold,” I agreed grimly.

”I'm starting to think it's about time we had ourselves a close look at it.”

Ixil rubbed his cheek. ”I don't know,” he said doubtfully. ”I've looked over the schematics Tera pulled from the computer. There aren't any access panels shown at all.”

”You've got a cutting torch in the mechanics shop, don't you?” I pointed out.

”An access hole is basically wherever we want to make one.”

”I wasn't thinking so much about getting in as I was of covering up afterward the fact that we'd done so,” Ixil said mildly. ”If Jones didn't engineer his own accident-and to be honest, I really don't think he did-then whoever did is still aboard. We may not want to set up a situation where he would be able to get a look of his own into the hold.”

Unfortunately, he was right. ”All right,” I said reluctantly. ”We'll play along a while longer. But you might want to get your cutting equipment ready just the same. At some point I don't think we're going to be able to afford to continue flying blind.”

”Perhaps,” Ixil said. ”How much of this are you planning to tell the others?”

”As little as possible,” I said. ”I've already told Tera I ran afoul of someone back there who had decided to make it his business to hijack the Icarus.”

”Which is more or less true.”

”Eminently true,” I agreed. ”I also mentioned the murder charge against Cameron to her, just to see what kind of reaction I'd get.”

”And that was?”

”Protests of surprise, but no visible evidence of it,” I told him. ”Though I'm not sure where exactly that leaves us. I think that the rest of the details, including the fact that the Patth are involved, should be left out of thestory for the moment. We've got enough trouble as it is explaining why we're running under fake IDs and why no one should mention the name 'Icarus' in groundside conversations. There's no need to scare them, too.”

”I agree,” Ixil said, looking around and snapping his fingers twice. Pix and Pax scampered out from under my bunk and whatever they'd found to explore there and climbed up his legs and torso back to his shoulders. ”I'll go up and...”

He trailed off, an odd look on his face. ”What is it?” I asked.

”I don't know,” he said slowly, the look still there. ”Something's not quite right. I can't put my finger on it.”

I was on my knees now, plasmic in hand, my full attention on the deck where the ferrets had emerged from beneath the bunk. Carefully, one hand on the edge of the bunk to steady myself, I leaned over and looked underneath.

Nothing. No one scrunched up in hiding, no mysterious packages ready to go boom in the quiet watches of the night, no indication of hidden bugs or bottles of poisonous spiders, no evidence of tampering at all. Just a plain metal deck with a plain metal hull beyond it.

I got back to my feet. ”Nothing there,” I reported, brus.h.i.+ng off my knees with my free hand.

”Of course not,” Ixil said, his face wrinkling in a different way. ”We would certainly have seen and recognized anything obvious.”

I knew that, of course. On the other hand, it wasn't his bunk in his cabin.

”So how un.o.bvious is it?” I asked.

”Very,” he said, shaking his head. ”It's rather like one of those ideas or memories that floats around the edge of your mind, but which you can't quite tease out into the open.”

”Keep trying,” I told him.

”I will,” he promised, throwing one last frown at the bunk and turning toward the door. He was reaching for the release pad when, beside the middle bunk, the intercom crackled. ”Captain McKell, this is Chort,” the Craea's familiar voice whistled through the speaker, the rhythmic thuds and hums of the engine room in the background. ”Is Mechanic Ixil there with you?”

I stepped around the bunks to the intercom and tapped the key. ”Yes, he is,” I told him. ”Trouble?”

”Nothing serious, I don't think,” Chort a.s.sured me. ”But I am in need of his a.s.sistance. The readings indicate an intermittent fault in the Darryen modulator relay, with possible location in the power-feed couplings.”

”Probably the connectors,” Ixil rumbled from behind me. ”Those go out all the time.”

”So I understand,” Chort agreed. ”I thought perhaps you and your outriders could either confirm or deny that possibility before I wake Drive Specialist Nicabar and ask him to open the conduit.”

”No problem,” Ixil said, tapping the door-release pad. ”I'll be right there.”

He stepped into the corridor and headed for the aft ladder. ”Thank you,” Chort said as the door closed again. The intercom clicked off, and I was alone.

For a few minutes I stood there, listening to the various hums and clanks and throbbings, staring at my bunk and the wall behind it. I've never had anyparticular problems with the loneliness or unpleasant self-evaluation that for some people make solitude something to be avoided. For that matter, given that much of my human interaction lately had been with people like Brother John, solitude was in fact something to be actively sought out. I was tired, I'd been running low on sleep since even before that taverno run-in with Cameron, and under normal circ.u.mstances I would have been on my bunk and asleep in three minutes flat.

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