The Icarus Hunt

by Timothy Zahn

  Because there was no way I was going to let her in on what the Icarus really was. No way in hell; for the simple reason that that would require me letting her know that I knew what it really was. As a possibly advanced stardrive that might or might not still function, the Icarus had a value that was potentially high but still nebulous. As a stargate with proven capabilities, that value had suddenly solidified to an astronomical level.

  And I had no intention of letting Tera come to the realization that the Icarus’s asking price was now light-years beyond the paltry half-million debt that held me enslaved to Brother John and the Antoniewicz organization. Enough to buy me out of that contract, guarantee me immunity from prosecution for every illegal act I’d ever committed, and set me up for a lifetime of luxury on top of it.

  I had reached the trigger. I took one last look at Cameron, who didn’t know any of what his daughter had learned about me. But as I squeezed the trigger, and the tingling and blackness closed in around me, I wondered oddly if he might possibly have guessed the truth.

  CHAPTER

  18

  The trip back to the Icarus probably took no longer than the trip out from it had. I say probably because it definitely seemed longer. Partly that was due to the fact that I was expecting it, with the accompanying sense of slightly cringing anticipation, and partly because this time I had a Kalixiri ferret cradled in my arm, whose main reaction to the tingling sensation was to attempt to dig his claws into whatever patches of skin were within easy reach.

  Mostly, though, it was due to the uncomfortable awareness that a single miscalculation on Cameron’s part would leave me in very serious trouble indeed. Because if Cameron had guessed that I was not precisely what he thought he’d hired back at that Meima taverno, and if he’d decided he didn’t want someone like me aboard his ship anymore, then a small mistake on the encoding panel would be the absolute simplest way of getting rid of me for good.

  But Pax’s claws didn’t get to anything that wouldn’t heal by itself, and Cameron hadn’t made any mistakes, deliberate or otherwise. There below me were the stacks of interior wall panels awaiting the attention of Chort and his welding team outside, the other stacks of equipment and paraphernalia, and the archaic computer humming beside the gaping access panel.

  The relatively minuscule part of my mind that hadn’t been worried about me ending up in the wrong stargate at the wrong end of the universe had occupied itself with the question of how I was going to explain my sudden appearance to Tera without giving away the true nature of her father’s discovery. But to my mild surprise Tera was nowhere to be seen, either at the access panel or half-hidden in the shadows thrown by the sections of inner hull that we’d left in place because of the wiring conduits fastened to their undersides. For a moment I wondered uneasily if she might have taken it upon herself to crawl into the small sphere after me, but as I began the by-now-familiar downward drift toward the surface I realized she had more likely simply gone around to the access panel in the engineering section to see if I was coming out there.

  For a change, Lady Luck seemed to be smiling on me. Then again, maybe the fickle wench was just lulling me into a false sense of security while she reached for a rock.

  I had made it to the surface, ready this time for the sudden surge in gravitational strength in that final meter, and was picking my way through the obstacle course toward the access panel when the hatchway to the wraparound opened. Tera, undoubtedly, come to ask questions I had no intention of answering.

  But to my mild surprise it wasn’t Tera who came crawling out of the zero gee of the wraparound toward me. It was, instead, Chort, still vacsuited but with his helmet hanging from the neck connector and bouncing gently against his shoulder blades. “Captain McKell,” he puffed as he caught sight of me. “Good—I had hoped to find you here.”

  I resisted the impulse to ask where else he thought I might have gotten to. It would have been unnecessarily sarcastic, and given my experiences of the past hour, would have been rather disingenuous as well. “Is there a problem?” I asked instead as I set Pax down.

  “We have to leave this place,” he said, pulling himself the rest of the way into the sphere and standing up. “As soon as possible.”

  I frowned. “Are you finished with the cowling already?”

  He twitched his head. “No, not entirely,” he said. “But there will be no finishing. Electronics Specialist Shawn is ill.”

  I grimaced. In the excitement of my trip to nowhere and back I’d almost forgotten about this constraint on our little operation. “How bad is he?”

  “You will see for yourself soon,” Chort said, his voice noticeably more whistly than usual. “Drive Specialist Nicabar will be bringing him inside as soon as his seizure is ended.”

  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck tingling unpleasantly. Seizures? That was a new one on me. “Does Revs need help?”

  Another twitch of the head. “He assured me he can manage on his own. But we will need to obtain more medicine as soon as possible.”

  “Understood,” I said, stepping over to the computer and tapping the intercom to the engine room. “Ixil?”

  “There you are,” Tera’s voice came back almost instantly. “Where have you been?”

  “Where do you think I’ve been?” I retorted. “Inside that damn puzzle box disentangling Ixil’s damn ferret from all that damn wiring. Why, wasn’t I moving fast enough for you? Put Ixil on.”

  She didn’t reply, and I could imagine her floundering with surprise at my uncharacteristic harshness. I felt a twinge of guilt, but at the moment hurt feelings were low on my priority list. “Yes, Jordan?” Ixil’s voice came calmly.

  “Shawn’s having some kind of seizure,” I told him. “Revs will be bringing him in as soon as it’s over. Start kicking the thrusters and stardrive back to life, and send Everett and Tera over to this side before we have to seal down the wraparound again.”

  “Understood,” he said. “They’re on their way.”

  “Good,” I said. “Oh, and I’ve got Pax. He’s safe and sound.” A thought occurred to me—“I’ll bring him back around to you in a minute.”

  I keyed off before he could ask why I would waste time bringing a safe and sound ferret around to him now instead of concentrating on the navigational part of our upcoming trip. “What shall I do?” Chort asked.

  “Go get the treatment table ready for him,” I said, pointing across toward the pile of sick-bay equipment. “Then stand by to assist Everett. I’ve got to get Pax back to Ixil in case he needs him.”

  The excuse, lame though it was, was unnecessary. Chort probably didn’t even hear it as he took off at a quick jog across the sphere. I headed in the opposite direction, toward my personal kit and the food supplies that had been stored near my cabin and were now conveniently piled nearby. I’d promised Cameron some supplies, and this could very well be my last clear chance for a while to get them to him.

  I’d just finished filling my bag with food bars and water bottles when Everett and Tera emerged from the wraparound. Everett made a beeline for Chort and the medical setup; Tera, not surprisingly, made an equally straight beeline for me.

  I met her halfway. “Well?” she asked in a low and anxious voice, her expression that of someone braced for the worst.

  I shook my head. “He’s not in there,” I said. “Not alive, not dead, not injured.”

  The anxiety in her face eased, but only fractionally. “Then where is he?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I told her, a statement that was technically correct, though misleading as hell. “Maybe he got off at Potosi after all.”

  She turned her eyes away from me. “He wouldn’t have left the Icarus,” she said quietly. “Not voluntarily.”

  I thought about that one. Another technically correct statement, though she didn’t know it. “Perhaps,” I said. “I wouldn’t give up hope, though. If anyone can find a place to hide where the Patth can’t find him, it’ll be your father.”<
br />
  She took a careful breath. “I hope so.”

  “I know so,” I said, turning my eyes away from her in turn. The quiet pain on her face was tugging hard at my conscience, making me want to tell her that he was all right.

  But with a heroic effort I resisted the temptation. If I even let myself start dropping hints as to the true situation here, I would go from comforter to suspect in nothing flat. Neither of us could afford that. “Look, I’d love to chat some more,” I said instead. “But I have to get this stuff to Ixil before Nicabar needs to turn the wraparound into an airlock again.”

  “Sure,” she said automatically, her thoughts clearly still with her father.

  Which for the immediate moment was all to the good. If I could get out of her sight before she thought to ask what I had in my bag, it would mean one less thing I would have to lie to her about. Whistling for Pax, who was rooting around the food stores, I headed out into the wraparound.

  Ixil was drifting around the cramped space of the engine section like a massive cloud, checking and double-checking monitors and indicators as he eased the thrusters and stardrive back to life. “I’m glad to see you’re all right,” he said, dropping his eyes to Pax as I gave the ferret a nudge that sent him floating through the air in Ixil’s direction, squeaking happily as his claws scrabbled through the air in search of a pawhold. “Both of you,” he added as Pax reached him and clawed his way up the tunic to his accustomed place on Ixil’s shoulder. “Any problems?”

  “Hang on to your teeth,” I advised, crossing toward the access panel into the small sphere, which Tera had thoughtfully left open for me. “I’ll make you a small wager you’re not going to believe the ride Pax and I had.”

  The tangle of wiring on this side of the sphere was as bad as the matching set on the other side had been. Now, though, after Cameron’s assurances that the stuff was stronger than it looked, I was far less concerned that an accidental bump might irrevocably damage something. Accordingly, I plowed my way inside, pushing the wires and conduits aside with relatively reckless abandon, and as a result took only five minutes to reach the mesh instead of the hour it had taken me going in from the opposite side.

  Hovering just inside the mesh, I pulled out a pad and scribbled a quick note to Cameron, warning him again not to budge from his private hermitage until one of the ferrets or I came for him. I stuffed the note into the pack, and with careful aim sent the whole bundle dropping gently toward the end of the control arm. At the last minute it occurred to me that perhaps having the pack bump into the end wouldn’t be enough, that it might require an actual grip of some sort to trigger the mechanism. If so, I would have to figure out a way to retrieve the bag and send it back down with Pix strapped somehow to it. At that point I would also have to figure out how to explain the ferret’s disappearance to the rest of the crew, because the last thing I could afford would be for Pix to suddenly appear in the center of the large sphere with the whole bunch of us in there with him.

  But evidently a grip was not required. The bag slid down the arm to the end, and without any fuss whatsoever it vanished. There was a faint, brief breeze as air rushed into the hole where it had been, and that was that.

  I worked my way out back to the rim—another five-minute trip—and climbed out into the engine section. Ixil was strapped into the control chair now, both ferrets on his shoulders, a look on his face that I’d never seen before. “So,” I said conversationally as I swung the hinged breaker panel closed again over the access hole. “What do you think?”

  With an obvious effort he focused on me. “It’s unbelievable,” he said quietly. “Absolutely unbelievable.”

  “Isn’t it though,” I agreed. “But it’s real.”

  Absently, Ixil reached up to rub Pax’s head. “We can’t let the others know about this,” he said. “The Patth would be willing to topple whole governments if they really knew what it was they were chasing.”

  “Yes, I’ve already worked through the logic,” I assured him. “Including the fact that we can’t tell Tera, either.”

  The ferrets did one of their unison twitches. “Because we work for Brother John?”

  “And because turning the Icarus over to him would more than buy our way clear of the whole organization,” I said. “She doesn’t trust us as it is—she’d spot-weld our butts to the hull if she knew the bargaining chip we held here.”

  “Yes.” Ixil was silent a moment. “Which unfortunately loops us back to the question of our immediate future.”

  I grimaced. “I don’t think we have any choice,” I said. “Unless we want to sit out here and watch Shawn die, we have to go get him some more borandis.”

  “I wonder,” Ixil said thoughtfully. “We have only his word that he even has the disease, you know. As I recall, Everett was unable to either confirm or deny it. What if he’s faking all this, with these seizures his way of pulling us out of hiding before we’re ready?”

  “In that case, we’re back to the question of why he didn’t betray us earlier and save everyone a lot of trouble,” I reminded him.

  “I suppose.” He eyed me closely. “You wouldn’t be holding out on me, would you?”

  “Holding out how?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a shrug. “Actually considering offering the Icarus to Brother John without consulting me first, for example.”

  “Don’t be silly,” I said, putting some huff into my voice. “Though you have to admit that would be one way to keep it safe.”

  “ ‘Safe’ being an extremely relative term.”

  “True,” I conceded. “Still, Brother John could probably give even the Patth a pretty good run for their money.”

  “And of course, turning such a plum over to him would give us a giant step up in the Antoniewicz organization,” he continued. “Don’t pretend that hadn’t already occurred to you, either.”

  “Occurred, pondered, and dismissed,” I assured him. “I have plenty of faults, but ambition on that scale isn’t one of them.” I cocked an eyebrow at him. “Unless you’d like to take a shot at it.”

  “What, be the first nonhuman in Antoniewicz’s direct line of command?” he asked dryly. “Thanks, but I think I’ll pass.”

  I waved a hand. “Up to you. By the way, do you happen to know if Nicabar’s gotten Shawn back inside the ship yet?”

  “Yes, they came in while you were inside the small sphere,” he said. “Tera will let us know when the wraparound’s been repressurized.” He cocked his head to the side. “She seemed rather annoyed you’d gotten yourself trapped on this side of the wraparound when you had work to do over there.”

  “Actually, there’s very little work left to do,” I said with a shrug. “I already know where we’re heading.”

  “And that is?”

  I cleared my throat. “I thought we’d try the Grand Feast of Plorins on Palmary.”

  The ferrets twitched again, quite impressively this time. “You are joking,” Ixil said. “The Grand Feast of Plorins?”

  “Can you think of a better place to hide than square in the middle of a wall-to-wall crowd of people?” I asked reasonably.

  “With half the thieves, lifters, and cons for two hundred light-years working that same crowd?” he countered. “And, as a consequence, half the badgemen for the same two hundred light-years there to keep an eye on them? And both groups busy looking for us?”

  “Of course it’s crazy,” I agreed. “That’s why no one will be expecting it.”

  He shook his head. But at least the ferrets had settled down again. He must be getting used to the idea. “ ‘Crazy’ isn’t nearly strong enough a word,” he said with a sigh. “But under the circumstances I suppose it’s as good a plan as any.”

  “That’s the spirit,” I said approvingly. “Besides, they’ll be watching every port within a thousand light-years of Utheno anyway. The bigger the clog of space traffic we sneak in under, the better the chances they’ll miss us completely.”

&n
bsp; He gave me one of his repertoire of sour looks. “And the more confusion and panic we can stir up if they don’t?”

  I shrugged. “Something like that.”

  The intercom clicked. “McKell?” Tera’s voice came. “Wraparound’s ready again. You feel like getting your butt in here and finding us a place to land?”

  “Yes, dear,” I murmured.

  “What was that?”

  “I said I’ll be right there,” I said. “And tell Revs to get back here and give Ixil a hand with the startup procedure.”

  Palmary was one of those semi-independent colony worlds that, while relatively newly settled, still somehow managed to seem like it had been there forever. Part of that was the fact that, unlike most colonies, there was no dominant species controlling most of the local real estate. The Trinkians had found the world about twenty years ago and started its development, but within a few years they’d been joined by Wanch settlers, Porpyfian miners, and k’Tra foresters. Someone on some news service had touted the place, commenting favorably on its egalitarian flavor, and within a few years more the planet was starting to seem almost crowded.

  The Grand Feast of Plorins was something the k’Tra had brought with them, and the rest of the egalitarians on the planet had grabbed on to the idea with both hands. Depending on who you talked to, the Grand Feast was either a deeply meaningful manifestation of esoteric historic and cultural significance, or else the greatest excuse to party the Spiral had ever known. I assumed the truth was probably somewhere in the middle, where truth has a tendency to lurk anyway, but I was certainly willing to concede the point that millions of beings who had not the slightest interest in k’Tra history or culture nevertheless descended enthusiastically on the planet every year for a three-week bash.