Part 24 (1/2)

”To delay the moment when his disappearance would be discovered. And to ensure we left Potosi afterward as quickly as we could, so that by the time anyone did notice we'd be long gone from the scene.”

”But why would they take all his things with him?” Tera persisted. Clearly, this wasn't a scenario she was at all willing to accept. ”He had a full camping setup: food and water packs, a roll-up mattress, even one of those little catalytic waste handlers.”

”Where did he get all that?” I asked.

”I bought most of it for him during our stopover on Xathru,” she said. ”He'd planned to come out after the first stop, but after Jones's death we decided he should stay hidden a while longer.”

”Ah,” I said, remembering now all the bags she'd brought aboard at Xathru, and how annoyed she'd been that I'd cut her shopping spree short.

”But why would anyone bother to take all of it along?” she asked again.

”Perhaps they wanted to eliminate any evidence that he was ever here,” Ixil said. ”Their contact would have told them that your father had kept his presence aboard a secret. At this point it would be basically your word against theirs.”

”If it ever even came to that,” I added. ”They may have something else planned for you down the line.”

She tried glaring at me again, but her heart wasn't in it. ”You're a real comfort to have around, McKell,” she growled. ”Both of you.”

”Yes, well, we haven't exactly gotten what we signed up for, either,” I countered. ”What I want to know is why this s.h.i.+p is still flying. We've been half a grab away from them at least twice now. Why haven't they simply picked us up?”

She sighed. ”I don't know.”

”Perhaps it would help,” Ixil suggested, ”if we knew what exactly this mysterious cargo is.”

For a long minute Tera remained silent, her eyes flicking between our faces, clearly trying to decide just how far she was willing to trust us. Or perhaps just trying to come up with a convincing lie. ”All right,” she said at last.

”The Icarus isn't carrying any cargo. The Icarus is the cargo.”

She waved a hand around her. ”This is what the team uncovered on Meima: twospheres, connected together, the larger one empty except for its radial gravity generator, the smaller one crammed with alien electronics.”

”How alien?” Ixil asked.

”Very alien,” she said grimly. ”It was like nothing they'd ever seen before, with markings and notations that were also totally unknown. We still don't know whether it predates the Spiral civilizations, or is simply from outside known territory. That's why that old Worthram T-66 is aboard-it was the one the archaeologists already had hooked up to study the small sphere, and when they built the Icarus they just basically a.s.sembled the computer room around it.”

”So that's where the spare gravity inside the outer hull came from,” I said.

”I'd been planning to ask you how and why you'd set that up.”

”We had nothing to do with it,” Tera said. ”And we have no idea what it's for.

All we know is that it runs about eighty-five percent Earth standard, and is completely self-adjusting, which is why it isn't fazed by the Icarus's own gravity generator.”

She smiled wanly. ”I understand it worked the same way on Meima. Even while it was sitting there in a full planetary gravitational field, you could still walk all the way around inside the sphere without falling off.”

”Must have been quite an experience,” I murmured.

”Half of them loved it; the other half couldn't stand it,” she said. ”Anyway, that's why they built the inner hull so far away from the outer one-all the metal seems to inhibit the sphere's gravity field somehow, but if you put the two hulls any closer together you get a terrible disorientation at the edges where the two grav fields intersect.”

”And that's what the Patth are all hot and bothered over?” I asked. ”The chance to get their hands on a new-style grav generator? Hardly seems worth committing murder for.”

She shook her head. ”I'm not sure the Patth even know about the grav generator,”

she said; and there was something in her voice that sent a s.h.i.+ver up my back.

”I.

said the team couldn't decipher the markings on anything in the two spheres.

But the grav generator wasn't the only thing still working. A lot of the electronics in the small sphere were on what appeared to be some kind of standby, and they were able to take a lot of readings. Waveform a.n.a.lyses, pattern operations- that sort of thing.”

She took a deep breath. ”They're not sure,” she said quietly. ”There's a lot they still don't understand. Most of it, actually. But from what they could decipher of the patterns and power levels and even the geometric shapes of some of the components... well, they think this whole thing could be a stardrive.”

I looked at Ixil. ”What kind of stardrive?” I asked carefully.

”A fast one,” she said. ”A very fast one. From the readings, they think it could be as much as twenty times faster than the Patth Talariac.”

”And that,” Ixil said softly, ”is worth committing murder over.”

CHAPTER.

13WE LEFT TERA to get back to her sleep, or at least what sleep she would be able to manage after that immensely cheering conversation, and reconvened our private council of war on the Icarus's bridge. Shawn, who'd been on duty, had voiced no objection at all to being relieved, heading off toward his cabin and bunk with a sort of dragging step that suggested he still wasn't fully recovered from his recent bout with Cole's disease. Or from straight borandis addiction, as the case might be.

But while the bridge provided all the privacy we could want, or at least all we were likely to get on the Icarus, it didn't offer anything in the way of either inspiration or answers.

”Hard though this may be to believe,” I commented to Ixil as I watched his ferrets climb nose first down his legs and scamper off to their corridor and bulkhead sentry duties, ”I think this whole thing is more confused now than it was before we talked to Tera.”

”I don't see how,” Ixil said. ”Instead of having a mysterious murderer/saboteur aboard the Icarus, we now only have a mysterious murderer.”

”Oh, that's a great help,” I said sarcastically.

”And we've also eliminated Tera as a suspect,” he continued, ignoring the sarcasm. ”Which leaves us only Chort, Nicabar, Shawn, and Everett. That should count for something.”

”Only if everything she told us was true,” I cautioned him. ”Don't forget that photo Uncle Arthur sent was not exactly definitive. She could simply be a very accomplished liar with a gift for improvisation.”

”Really,” he said, his polite voice edging as close to sarcasm as Kalixiri ever got. ”And does the large sphere's gravitational field come under the liar talent or the improvisational talent?”

”Fine, then,” I growled, giving up. ”Tera's as pure as the driven snow. Just bear in mind that even if she is who she says she is, her goals here may not coincide completely with ours.”

”Granted,” he said. ”So where does the extra confusion come in?”

”It comes in the same place Cameron went out,” I said. ”With all due respect, I.

don't think much of your kidnapping theory. If they knew enough to get in here and s.n.a.t.c.h him, why didn't they grab the Icarus while they were at it?”

”Maybe they don't know its actual significance,” Ixil said. ”Maybe they still think the prize is in the cargo hold and didn't think they had time to get to it right then.”

”Then why let us leave the planet?” I countered. ”Anyway, they have to have at least an idea of what it is they're chasing. You don't offer hundred-grand finder's fees completely on speculation.”