The Icarus Hunt

I frowned, an odd co

She smiled wanly. "Very good," she complimented me. "Yes, it was my father'slittle joke. I was the fourth of the three children they'd pla

"Hence, the et cetera?"

"She didn't even notice for four years," Tera said. "Not until I startedlearning to write and was putting my initials everywhere."

"I'll bet she was really pleased with your father."

"Actually, she was mostly just a

"Nothing like that with your brothers' initials?"

She shrugged. "If there was, it was something so obscure none of us everfiguredit out. Dad certainly never let on about any jokes hidden there."

"Sounds like him," I said. "He's always had a reputation for playing his cards all the way inside his vest."

"Only when it was necessary," Tera insisted. "And he never hid them from hisfamily and close friends." She looked past me at the access hole. "Which justmakes this all the stranger. Why would he go in there without telling me?

Especially after forbidding anyone else to do so?"

"Maybe he was afraid I would come into the 'tweenhull area after him again," Isuggested.

"But why didn't he tell me?" she persisted. "There was a day and a halfbetween that incident and our landing on Potosi. If he thought he needed to hide outfrom you, there was plenty of time for us to talk it over."

"Unless he thought I might drop in on him unexpectedly," I said. "Remember, there was nowhere else on the ship he could hide."

"Of course there was," she said. "The Number Two cabin on the top deck, theone Jones used before he died. After Ixil took the release pad off to put on hisown door, it would have been a perfect place for him to hide. We were pla

"With access in and out through the i

"If he needed to move around, yes," she said. "We couldn't very well take thechance of letting one of the others see him, could we? We had some of the hullco

"Ah," I said, feeling even more like Nobel prize material. I'd been throughthat whole 'tweenhull area from starboard to port, and it had never even occurredto me to check for loose or missing i

She shook her head. "We were pla

"Is that why you were in the mechanics room when Everett found you?" I asked.

"You were actually there to pick up a co

She smiled tightly. "You are sharp, aren't you?" she commented. "Yes, that'sexactly why I was there. When Everett charged in on me I thought we'd beenfound out, but he just told me Shawn was gone and charged back out again withoutasking any questions about what I was doing there."

She shrugged. "Then, of course, after you asked and I'd spun you the computerstory, I had to take the computer apart and pretend there was a genuine glitchsomewhere. Just as well I did, I suppose, given all the sand that had gottenin.

That was as big a surprise to me as it was to anyone else."

There was a faint and distant-sounding noise like metal scratching on metal, and I looked hopefully back at the access hole. But there was no sign of Pax.

Probably one of the group outside had banged the hull or something. "Maybe oneof the others did see him," I suggested slowly. "That might account for hisdeciding he needed somewhere else to hide."

"But then why hasn't that person said something?" Tera pointed out. "I mean, after that note he left you about how he wouldn't be coming along, don't youthink seeing him aboard would have been worth at least a passing comment?"

"It should have," I agreed. "Unless that someone had a reason for keeping itsecret. Maybe your father caught him doing something that—oh, damn."

Tera got it at the same time I did. "The poison you found in Ixil's room," shebreathed. "Of course. Dad was going down the corridor for some reason andspotted him setting that up."

Abruptly, her eyes widened. "Oh, my God. McKell—maybe he didn't go in therevoluntarily. Maybe he was... put there."

I got to my feet. "I'm going in," I told her, snagging my flashlight andstuffing it securely into my belt. "There should be a couple of medkits overwith the sick-bay stuff. Go get me one."

She set off across the curved surface at a fast run, her footsteps echoingeerily through the mostly empty space. I headed off in nearly the oppositedirection, across the broken landscape that was what was left of the Icarus'si

Tera was already waiting by the computer by the time I started back. "Here'sthe medkit," she said as I came up to her, holding out a large belt pack. "I putin a bottle of water and some emergency ration bars, too."

"Thanks," I said, resisting the urge to remind her that wrapping me inu

"Good luck," she said quietly.

I threw her a frown, wondering if I was imagining the concern I heard in hervoice. But then I realized that the fear wasn't for me, or at least notprimarily for me. It was for her father.

Turning away from her, I lay down on the floor beside the access hole. Takinga deep breath, I got a grip on the edge and pulled myself in.

CHAPTER 16

THE FIRST LEG of the trip was uneventful enough. There was plenty of lightcoming in behind me, the zero gee made precision movement reasonably easy, andI had a mostly clear path up to the gap I'd pointed out to Tera. I held theelectronic-field sensor at arm's length in front of me the whole way like amystical talisman, keeping a close eye on its readings and pausing to checkout the source of anything that made its indicators so much as twitch.

There was current flowing in here, all right, plenty of it. Fortunately forpurposes of navigation, the strongest sources seemed to be the handful ofpanels spaced irregularly along the i

After a few minutes I reached the gap, only to discover that my earlierinterpretation of its significance was not nearly as clear-cut as I'd thought.