The Icarus Hunt

"So here are your choices, or at least the ones I'm going to recommend to SirArthur You can stay with Cameron and the research group, using your commandotraining and experience to help protect the project; or we can take you tomeet Sir Arthur and see if he thinks you've got it in you to be a down-and-outsmuggler type. We may have gotten Antoniewicz, but there are a lot of otherfish in the cesspool that we'd like to see flopping around the bottom of our boat."

"I appreciate the offer," he said, looking at Cameron and Tera. "But thisone's no contest. Here with the Icarus is where the future is going to be created.

If we can figure out how that stargate works, the Spiral is going to change, almost overnight. The Spiral, hell—we'll be able to get to places in the rest of thegalaxy we could never reach before."

He looked back at me. "And the one thing sure as hell is that the Patth willfight like demons every step of the way to keep us from pulling their littlegold-weave rug out from under them. No, I think I'd like to stay here."

"Okay," I said, catching Ixil's eye and getting to my feet. "I'll go give SirArthur a call, and we'll see what we can work out. I'll let you know what hesays." Nodding to Cameron and Tera, I headed across the room, leaving Ixil tothe task of prying his ferrets away from their impromptu snack.

There in the archway, though, I paused and looked back. Nicabar was deep inquiet conversation with the Camerons; but as he leaned across the table itseemed to me that his eyes were lingering more on Tera than they were on herfather, an attention that seemed to be reasonably mutual. And it occurred tome that after all the time the two of them had spent aboard the Icarus, surrounded by loathsome smugglers and potential murderers, having only each other totrust, they might have become a bit more than just shipmates. It would be interestingto drop back by the project in, say, six months and see if Cameron was nowworking under the protection of a future son-in-law.

Ixil was coming toward me now, Pix and Pax still munching away as they rodehis shoulders. I made a mental note to offer him a small wager.