The Icarus Hunt

I glanced down at his arms. Still well muscled, but to my perhapshypercriticaleye they looked thi

"Rather to my amazement, it did," he said. "Especially since his light wasdazzling my eyes at the time, which limited my ability to pick my target. Imade sure to hit him again a couple of times on his way down, just to make sure.

Again fortunately for me, he hit the deck and stayed there."

"It's so gratifying when they do that," I agreed. "Do you think you'drecognizehim if you saw him again?"

"I doubt it," he said. "I really didn't get a good look at him. Besides, Iimagine it's a moot point by now. He surely hightailed it off the ship as soonas he woke up. Unless you and the Icarus have suddenly picked up a newpassenger, that is."

"No, no new passengers," I confirmed.

He spread his hands. "So that's that," he said. "You have to admit it's a bigSpiral for a single man to lose himself in."

"I once thought it was a big Spiral for a single starship to lose itself in,"

I countered. "I don't think so anymore. So then what did you do?"

"After he was unconscious, I spotted the bottles he'd been working with on the floor and looked them over," he said. "Any doubts I'd had about hitting himvanished at that point; they turned out to be the ingredients for a cyanide- gasbomb.

"I knew I didn't have much time before he either awoke or all of you cametrooping back aboard the ship, and I didn't have anything I could tie him upwith, so I decided all I could do would be to thwart this particular schemeand call it a draw. The cabin door was still wedged open, so I resealed thebottles and put them as far inside as I could reach and then pulled the wrench out andlet the door slam shut. Then, just to make sure he didn't have time to tryanything else, I pulled the opening mechanism's control chip and added it tothe pile and smashed what was left."

"Leaving a very thorny mystery in your wake," I said. "We were going nutstryingto figure out what happened there."

"I'm sorry," he said. "All I can say is that it wasn't my intent to be somysterious. My plan was to hide out just for a day or two, until you'd had achance to thoroughly search the 'tweenhull area and confirm there wasn'tanyonein residence there. At that point I expected you to conclude that it had beenone of the crew you'd chased around, give up your search for stowaways, and Icould come back out. Then I'd be able to tell Elaina the whole story, and shewould have found a way to warn you about future incursions into the ship fromoutside."

He shook his head, his throat tightening visibly. "Only it didn't quite workout that way. I made it through that tangled mess of a decompressed-wiring zoneand found myself in a nice clear space. But then gravity came on, pulling me intoward the middle. I grabbed that striped arm to try to slow myself down, hitwhat I now realize was the triggering mechanism in the end, and here I am."

"A long way from nowhere," I said heavily, studying his slightly sunkencheeks.

"Not to mention out of delivery range of the nearest grocery store. I'm alittle surprised you haven't starved to death."

"My meals have been a bit sparse lately," he conceded. "I wasn't pla

I'd completely forgotten about the water bottle and food bars I was carrying.

"Sure is," I said, feeling a twinge of admittedly selfish reluctance as Ihanded it over to him. This wasn't going to last even one person very long, let alonetwo of us. "Your daughter must be psychic," I added as he uncapped the bottleand drank deeply. "I was only pla

There was a moment of silence as he drank. I looked around the sphere again, this time spotting his camper's mattress and catalytic waste handler half- hidden in the glare of one of the display boards.

"Bless her heart," he said when he finally came up for air. I noticed with another twinge that the bottle was now only two-thirds full. "Fortunately forus, we're not going to need it."

I frowned. "What do you mean?"

"I mean we're going home," he said. He raised the bottle and had anotherdrink, a shorter one this time. "Just as soon as we can gather my things together."

"Really," I said, my tone studiously neutral. I'd never heard of anyone goinginsane between eye blinks, which implied that he must have gone round the bendbefore I even got here. "Tell me how."

"No, my mind hasn't snapped, McKell," he assured me as he lifted an arm andpointed off to my right. "Look over there."

I followed the direction of his finger and found myself looking at one of thealien displays, this one marked with yellow-and-black squares. "All right.

What is it?"

"It's the destination setting," he said. "Destination being defined as theparticular stargate you'll be traveling to if you slide down the centering armand hit the trigger. Now; do you see the display to its left?"

"Such as it is," I said. The second display was an identical array of squares, except that all of them were black.

"That one gives the identification code for the stargate you just left," hesaid. "Unfortunately, whether by design or malfunction, it only stays lit fora few minutes after transport before going blank again. That's why I couldn'tgetback by myself; by the time I realized the significance of that particulardisplay, it had long since gone black. However—"

"Wait a minute," I said, frowning. "How do you know all this? Tera told me theMeima archaeologists didn't get very far in their analysis of the thing."

He shrugged. "Well, I have been here eleven days, you know," he reminded me.

"I couldn't just sit around and do nothing. And though you probably didn't knowit, I was once a Trem'sky Scholar in Alien Studies. I did quite a fair bit ofarchaeology and alien translation back in my youth."

It was a speech clearly and carefully designed to impress and lull thegullible.

But I wasn't in the mood to be impressed, and lulling was completely out ofthe question. "That's baloney, and you know it," I said bluntly. "You had onecourse in archaeology and three in alien language, all of which focused on knownspecies and didn't have a thing to do with interpreting unknown scripts. Andthat Trem'sky Scholarship was an honorary title Kaplanin University gave youafter you donated fifty million commarks to them for a new archaeologicalresearch center."

His face had gone rigid. "You're very well informed," he said softly. "Onemightwonder how. And why."

"The how is that I have friends with good memories," I said. "The why is justas simple: I like to know who it is I'm working for. I certainly won't find thatout by taking what you say at face value."

He eyed me speculatively. "You can see for yourself why I've been secretiveabout myself and my agenda," he said, waving a hand around him. "What's yourexcuse?"

"I like my life," I told him. "Not my current circumstances, necessarily, but the basic idea of continued existence."

"And what are your current circumstances?"

"Somewhat messy," I said. "But we're getting away from the point. How do youknow so much about the stargate?"

We locked gazes for another few seconds. Then his eyes drifted away from mine, as if he was too tired to keep up his end of the nonverbal battle. "Elainadoesn't know this," he said, "but the archaeologists had already cracked muchof the alien script before my people and I arrived on Meima to build the Icarus.

With that hurdle crossed, we were able to gain considerable knowledge of thei