Part 28 (2/2)

Then, hunching his shoulders, Ixil straightened up again. ”He's gone,” he said, handing the light back to me. ”Disappeared behind something that looked like a multicable coupler.”

”He'll be fine,” Tera said quietly, laying a hand soothingly on his arm. ”He does this sort of thing all the time, remember?”

Ixil grunted, clearly not in the mood to be soothed. ”I'd better get back to the engine room-there's still a lot of recalibration to be done, and Everett doesn't know how to do most of the calculations on his own. You'll call me when he comes back?”

”Yes,” I a.s.sured him. ”Actually, Tera, you might want to go back there with him and open the other access hole, the one you said was behind the breaker panel.

If Pax gets disoriented, it would be handy for him to have a second way out.”

”Good idea,” she said. ”Come on, Ixil.”

They climbed up the slight curve-it still made me vaguely dizzy to watch people walking around the hull in here-and disappeared through the open pressure door into the zero gee of the wraparound. With a sigh, I lay down on the hull again and s.h.i.+ned my light into the opening. Pax was gone, all right, though I imagined I could hear occasional scratching sounds as he maneuvered his way through the maze. Leaning partially over the hole, I stuck my head carefully in and played the light slowly around the inner surface.

I was halfway around in my sweep when I saw the gap.

I was still lying there studying it two minutes later when Tera returned.

”He's really not happy about this, is he?” she commented as she sat down cross- legged beside me. ”He claims they're not pets, but I think he really-”

”Did Chou and his people take photos of what they could see from this opening?”

I interrupted her.

She took a half second to switch gears. ”I think so,” she said. ”At least some.

I hadn't pulled them up before because-”

”Pull them up now,” I ordered, trying to keep my sudden apprehension out of my voice. ”Find me one that shows a gray trapezoid about half a meter across withabout two dozen wires coming off gold connectors along its edges.”

She was already at the computer, fingers playing across the keys. ”What is it?”

she asked tightly.

”Just find me the picture,” I said tersely, getting up and stepping to her side.

Dr. Chou's people, it turned out, had taken a lot of pictures. It took Tera nearly a minute to find the specific area I was looking for.

And when she did, my apprehension turned to full-blown certainty.

”Tera, you told me your dad left the s.h.i.+p at Potosi,” I said. ”How do you know?

Did he leave a note?”

She shook her head, her neck twisted to look up at me. ”No, nothing like that,”

she said, a note of uncertain dread in her voice as she picked up on my own mood. ”I told you: He and his things were gone, and I couldn't find him anywhere on the s.h.i.+p.”

”Right,” I nodded. ”Except that you didn't think to look inside the small sphere here, did you?”

Her eyes widened, her throat muscles suddenly tense. ”Oh, no,” she breathed.

”He's not-oh, G.o.d.”

”No, no, I can't see him,” I hastened to a.s.sure her. ”There's no-I mean-”

”No body?”

”No body,” I confirmed. At least not one I could see, I carefully refrained from saying. ”What there is by that trapezoid is a gap in the wiring. A big gap, as if someone maneuvered his way through the thicket, creating a hole as he went.”

”It couldn't have been Pax?” she asked, her voice going even darker.

”It's man-sized,” I told her gently. ”Look, maybe he's just lying low in there.”

She shook her head, a short, choppy movement. ”No, we've been doing work here by the access panel off and on for the past couple of days. He'd have heard my voice and come out.” She swallowed. ”If he could.”

I looked back over at the hole, coming to the inevitable decision. ”I'm going in,” I announced, taking a step that direction.

A step was all I got. Like a rattlesnake her hand darted out and grabbed my arm.

”No!” she snapped, holding on with a strength that surprised me. ”No! If he's dead, it means something in there killed him. We can't risk you, too.”

”What, all this concern for a soul-dead smuggler?” I retorted. It wasn't a nice thing to say, but at the moment I wasn't feeling particularly nice. ”Maybe he's not dead in there-you ever think of that? Maybe he's injured, or unconscious, or paralyzed. Maybe he can't get to the opening, or can't even call out to you.”

”If he went in while we were on Potosi, he's been in there eleven days,” she said. Her voice sounded empty, but her grip on my arm hadn't slackened a bit.

”Any injury serious enough to prevent him from getting out on his own would have killed him long before now.”

”Unless he just got the injury,” I shot back. I wasn't ready to give in, either.”Maybe he got thrown around while I was dodging the ion beams off Utheno. He could still be alive.”

She took a deep breath. ”We'll wait for Pax to come out.”

”We'll wait half an hour,” I countered.

”One hour.”

I started to protest, took another look at her face, and gave it up. ”One hour,”

I agreed.

She nodded, and for a long moment she stared down at the access hole. Then, reluctantly, she keyed off the computer photo we'd been looking at and sat down on the deck. ”Tell me about yourself, McKell,” she said.

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