Part 14 (1/2)
I didn't believe it for a minute. I'd had only a brief look at the torch head that had done its best to take off the top of Ixil's skull, but that one look had been enough. The screw connector holding the head onto the connected hoses had had its threads badly crimped, probably with compression pliers, so that when the pressure built up enough it had come loose in that explosive fas.h.i.+on.
As sabotage methods went it had been effective enough; but it had also been fairly clumsy and, more to the point, extremely quick and simple. Not the sort of job one would expect even an amateur to pull, at least not an amateur with the time to do the job more subtly.
Which implied our saboteur had been rushed in his task. Which meant it had, in fact, been a response to our conversation.Which meant I was back to square one. How had he overheard us?
I spent the next fifteen minutes going over the lockers and bunks, and found exactly what I'd expected, namely, nothing. Then, stretching out on my bunk, I stared at the bottom of the bunk above me and tried to think.
When you have eliminated the impossible, Sherlock Holmes was fond of saying, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It wasn't an aphorism I.
particularly subscribed to, mainly because in real life eliminating all the various impossibles was usually a lot trickier than in Holmes's fictional setting. However, in this particular case, the list of directions the answer could be hiding in was definitely and distressingly short. In fact, as I turned the problem over in my mind, I found there was exactly one of Sherlock's improbables left.
Ixil had mentioned earlier that he'd looked over the full schematics for the Icarus. It was a fair a.s.sumption that he'd gone ahead and kept a copy, so I went back to his cabin, ungimmicked the door, and went inside. The room looked exactly the way I'd left it except that Pix and Pax were now up on the middle bunk with Ixil, nosing around the hip pouch where he habitually kept some of the little treats they especially liked. I put them back on their bunk where they wouldn't get rolled over on if Ixil s.h.i.+fted in his sleep, raided the pouch and gave them two of the treats each, then checked his locker. The schematics were there, a sheaf of papers rolled tightly together. I tucked the roll under my arm, regimmicked the door on my way out, and returned to my cabin.
I looked first at the main overview, noting in particular the diameter of the main sphere that made up the forward section of the s.h.i.+p. The number listed was forty-one-point-three-six meters-a strangely uneven number, I thought, but one I.
trusted implicitly. s.h.i.+p dimensions were critically important when landing-pit a.s.signments were being doled out, and no one ever got them wrong. Not more than once, anyway.
Two sheets down was the one I was most interested in: the schematic for the mid deck. Digging a pen out of my inside jacket pocket, I turned the first sheet over for some clean s.p.a.ce and started jotting down numbers.
Even given the inherent problem of fitting mainly rectangular s.p.a.ces into a giant sphere, the Icarus's various rooms were quite oddly shaped, and the semirandom placement of storage lockers, equipment modules, and pump and air-quality substations only added to the layout mess. But I was in no mood to be balked by a set of numbers, even messy ones, and I set to work.
And in the end, they all matched.
It was not the answer I'd been expecting, and for several minutes after rechecking my math I sat in silence scowling at the schematics. I'd been so sure that Sherlock and I had finally been on the brink of figuring this one out.
But the numbers added up perfectly, and numbers don't lie.
Or do they?
One page farther down was the lower-deck schematic, the deck I was currently on.
A few more minutes' work confirmed that these numbers, too, matched just fine.
But that was just the theoretical part of this project. Now it was time to moveon to the experimental work.
A laser measure would have been the most convenient, but after what had happened to Ixil I was a bit leery about scrounging tools out of the Icarus's mechanics room. Fortunately, I didn't have to. I'd seen the printer up in Tera's computer room, and I knew the size paper it used. Laying the schematics out on the floor, I set about using them to measure my cabin. It took just over two minutes, and when I was done I took a couple of the sheets out into the corridor and measured that, too.
And when I was finished, the numbers had stopped matching.
Each of the inner-hull plates was about a meter square and held in place by sixteen connectors. The average s.p.a.cer's mult.i.tool isn't really the proper gadget to use for removing hull plates, but mine was a somewhat better model than the average and had a couple of additional blades those missed out on. By the time I was down to the final four-the ones in the corners-I was getting pretty adept at the procedure. I paused long enough at that point to dig out my flashlight and set it on the deck where it would be handy; after a moment's thought I drew my plasmic and put it down beside the light. Then I removed the last four connectors and eased the plate out of place.
And there, dimly seen by the reflected overhead light from my cabin, was the gray metal of the outer hull. Not twenty centimeters beyond the inner hull like it was supposed to be, but a solid meter and a half away.
Plasmic in one hand and flashlight in the other, I leaned my head cautiously into the opening and looked around. The pipes and cables and conduits that normally ran through the 'tweenhull area were all in evidence, fastened securely to the inner hull just the way they were supposed to be. The rest of the s.p.a.ce was completely empty except for the series of struts that fastened the two hulls together. Struts, I decided, that would provide a strenuous but workable jungle-gym walkway for anyone who wanted to move unseen about the s.h.i.+p.
As well as a convenient work platform for, say, someone desiring to tap into the coax cable from an intercom. Specifically, my intercom. I turned my light on the spot off to the left where the relevant wires emerged, but it was too far away and my angle too shallow to see with certainty whether or not anything had been tampered with.
The nearest support strut in that direction was nearly half a meter away.
Laying my gun and light on the deck beside me, I gathered my feet under me, gauged the distance, and leaped carefully toward it.
And with a sudden stomach-twisting disorientation, I jerked sideways and slammed hard onto my right shoulder and leg against the outer deck.
It says a lot for the shock involved that my first stunned thought was that the Icarus's grav generator had malfunctioned again, shutting off at the precise moment I jumped-this despite the fact that I was now lying flat on my side against the outer hull. It took another several seconds before my brain caughtup with the fact that I was, in fact, lying against the outer hull, the term ”lying” automatically implying a gravitational field.
Except that this gravitational field was roughly at right angles to the one I'd just left in my cabin. The only one that the Icarus's generator could create.
The only one, in fact, that had any business existing here at all.
Slowly, carefully, I turned my head to what was now ”up” from my new frame of reference. There was my cabin, a meter above my head, with my plasmic and light clinging unconcernedly to what was from my perspective a sheer wall. Even more carefully, I leaned my torso up away from the hull, half expecting that this magic grip would suddenly cease if I let go of the hull and send me sliding down to the underside of the Icarus.
I needn't have worried. Except for the total impossibility of its vector, this field behaved more or less like the one created by a normal s.h.i.+p's grav generator. I reached up toward my cabin, and because I was paying close attention I was able to feel where the two gravity vectors began to conflict with each other a few millimeters my side of the inner hull. At least now I knew what the anomaly was that Pix and Pax had detected while scampering beneath my bunk, and why neither they nor Ixil had been able to interpret it.
It also explained how our mysterious eavesdropper/saboteur had been able to move around so easily. No dangerous or athletic strut-leaping required; all he had to do was crawl around like a spider on a wall. I snagged my light and gun and brought them to me, nearly dropping the plasmic when its weight suddenly s.h.i.+fted in my grip. It might not take great athletic ability to move around in here, I amended, but it did take some getting used to. Holstering the weapon, I s.h.i.+fted myself cautiously toward my intercom, still not entirely trusting this phenomenon.
I was easing up to get a closer look at the wires when I heard a small sc.r.a.ping sound in the distance.
For a moment I thought I'd imagined it, or else that it had merely been some normal s.h.i.+p's noise distorted by the echo chamber I was lying in. But then the sound came again, and I knew I'd been right the first time.
There was someone else in here with me.
Silently, I shut off my light and put it in my pocket, at the same time drawing my plasmic. Then, not nearly as silently, but as silently as I could manage, I set off down the curving hull.
It was, in retrospect, probably not the most brilliant thing I'd ever done in my life. However it was he'd discovered this cozy little back stairway, our saboteur surely had a better idea of the lay of the land in here than I did, including knowing where all the best hiding places and ambush sites were. He was furthermore presumably already acclimated to the place, whereas I was still distracted by the nagging feeling that at any minute the hull's peculiar gravity would fail and I would become the cue ball in a giant spherical game of b.u.mper billiards. But at the moment all that I could think of was that I had a chance to nail him dead to rights, and I was going to take it.I started off by scooting along the hull on my backside, but quickly gave that up as not nearly quiet enough, not to mention being a posture that tended to leave me with my back to the direction I was going. I tried switching to a standard hands-and-knees crawl, but after a couple of meters decided that that was no good either, leaving my gun hand as it did too far out of line to get off a quick shot if necessary. The only other option I could think of was the one I.
finally adopted, a crouching sort of duck waddle that was hard on the knees and undignified in the extreme, but at least had the advantage of leaving my gun and me pointed in the same direction.
The sound had seemed to come from above me, the term ”above” referring to the direction toward the Icarus's top deck, so that was the direction I headed. It was slower going than I'd expected, partly because of the awkwardness of my stance and the need for silence, but also because of the unpleasant vertigo effect of having my head bobbing along just about where the two competing gravity fields mixed at roughly equal strength. The effect became steadily more p.r.o.nounced as I pa.s.sed the mid deck and continued around toward the top of the s.h.i.+p, with the angle between the gravity vectors gradually veering from ninety degrees toward an even more disconcerting 180.
I don't know how long the slow-motion chase went on. Not long, I think, not more than fifteen or twenty minutes' total. Between my aching knees and swimming head and the fact that I was alone in a dark s.p.a.ce with a man who had already killed once, my time sense wasn't at its best that night. Every thirty seconds or so I.
paused to listen, stretching out with all my senses over the rumbling background noise and vibration of the s.h.i.+p, trying for a new estimate of where he was.
It was on the fifth or sixth such halt that I realized that what had up till now been occasional incautious sc.r.a.ping sounds had suddenly become something far more steady. Steady sc.r.a.ping noises, yet paradoxically quieter than they had been up till then.
My quarry knew I was here.
Earlier, I had come up with the image of being a spider on a wall. Now, suddenly, the image changed from a spider to a fly. A fly pinned by a light against a very white wall. For a dozen heartbeats I squatted there motionlessly, sweating in the darkness as I strained to listen, trying to determine whether the sounds were moving toward or away from me. The latter would mean he was trying to escape, the former that he had yet another violent accident on his mind. And if there was one thing certain here, it was that I couldn't afford to guess wrong.
For those dozen heartbeats I listened; and then I knew. The sounds were definitely moving away, probably downward to my right, though the echo effect made it difficult to tell for sure.
All the reasons why I shouldn't have come in here after him in the first place once again flashed through my mind. Once again, I shoved them aside. I'd already lost several rounds to this man, and I was getting d.a.m.ned tired of it. Pickinga vector that would theoretically intersect his, I set off after him.
To this point it had been a slow-motion chase. Now, it became an equally slow-motion game of hounds and hares. I was stopping ever more frequently to listen; but my quarry was doing the same, and as often as not I would pause only to find he had changed direction again. Doggedly, I kept at it, my earlier thought about the possibility of ambush spots never straying too far from my mind. So far our saboteur had shown no indication of being armed, but everyone else I'd run into on this trip had been and there was no reason to expect that whoever had been handing out the guns with such generosity would have neglected his friend here aboard the Icarus.
More than once I also considered banging the b.u.t.t of my plasmic against the inner hull and trying to rouse the rest of the crew to help in the search. But by then I was so thoroughly lost that I had no idea whether I was even near enough to any of the others scattered around the s.h.i.+p for my pounding to do any good. And whether any of them heard me or not, my playmate in here certainly would, and at the first sign of an attempted alarm he might well postpone his escape plan in favor of shutting me up first.