The Icarus Hunt

There was the sound of jaws dropping all around the table. "Arno Cameron?"

Everett all but gasped. "Oh, my God."

"I wondered about that," Nicabar murmured. "Someone had to have had tremendousresources to put a ship like the Icarus together in the first place."

"And if there's one thing Cameron's got, it's tremendous resources," I agreed.

"It also turns out that Cameron was the one who sabotaged the cutting torch, though Ixil getting burned was an accident. He'd eavesdropped on Ixil and meas we discussed cutting a hole into the cargo area, and for obvious reasonsdidn't want us to do that. Gimmicking the torch was the only way he could come upwith to stop us in the limited time he had to work with."

"Borodin—I mean, Cameron—was aboard the Icarus with us?" Shawn asked. "Where was he hiding?"

"He must have been in the gap between the i

"It was the perfect hiding place. None of us even knew there was that muchspacein there until we started taking the ship apart."

"That's exactly it," I confirmed. "He surfaced once or twice to touch basewith Tera, or to check our course heading on the computer-room repeater displays.

But mostly he just lay low."

"So where is he now?" Everett asked. "I trust you're not going to try to tellus he's still hidden aboard somewhere?"

"I'd be very surprised to find that he was," I said. "Getting back to the mainpoint, it turns out Cameron was the one responsible for those lethal chemicalsbeing in Ixil's cabin in the first place."

"You're wrong," Tera snapped, her eyes blazing. "I already told you Dad didn'twant to hurt him or anyone else."

"I didn't say he did," I said mildly. "Actually, his part in all that was tosave Ixil's life. But I'll come back to that.

"So as I said, some of these incidents can be explained away," I continued, letting my gaze sweep around the table. "But not all of them, unfortunately.

Which brings us to the murder—the deliberate murder—of our first mechanic, Jaeger Jones."

"Murder?" Chort said, his voice almost too whistly in his agitation for me tounderstand. "I thought it was an accident."

"It wasn't," I told him. "But the murderer hoped most of us would think itwas.

All of us, in fact, except one person."

"But that's ridiculous," Everett snorted. "Why would the Patth want to killJones?"

"I never said the Patth had anything to do with it," I said. "But since youbring it up, that very question is what had me stymied for so long. Youremember Shawn's disease-crazed escape on Potosi, and the Najiki Customs officials whonearly impounded the ship? That was our murderer's handiwork, too."

"What do you mean, his handiwork?" Tera asked. "I thought Shawn broke free onhis own."

"No, he had help, though he probably doesn't remember it," I said. "Themurderer needed Shawn to run away so that everyone would scatter to search for him andhe'd be free to make a couple of private vid calls. The stumbling point hereis that our killer seemed hell-bent on stopping the Icarus, no matter what he hadto do. Yet at every place where he might have turned us over to the Patth, hedidn't do it."

"Sounds like you're describing a schizophrenic," Everett murmured.

"Or a plain, flat-out psycho," Shawn added, glancing furtively around thetable.

"Someone who kills just for the fun of it."

"Actually, there's nothing unbalanced about him at all," I assured them. "Butall right; let's assume for a minute that he is a nutcase. Let me then throwout another question, one that helped me start thinking in the right direction.

Here we have Arno Cameron, creator of an enormous financial and industrial empire, wandering through the hot spots of Meima looking for a crew to get thisvitallyimportant piece of hardware back to Earth. Question: Given that Cameron'ssuccess must have been at least partially based on being an excellent judge ofcharacter, how in the world did he not catch on to the fact that one of thepeople he was hiring was a schizophrenic, psychotic potential murderer?"

For a minute all I saw in their faces was confusion, either at the questionitself or because they were puzzling over the answer to it. All their faces, that is, except Tera's. In that instant I saw in her suddenly wide eyes thatthe pieces were finally starting to fall into place. "The answer, of course," Icontinued, not waiting for the class to respond, "is that he didn't sense anysuch problem because one of you is not the man he hired for your particularslot on the ship."

Chort found his voice first. "That is incredible," he said, the whistlingunder only slightly better control. "How would anyone have known the Icarus wasvaluable enough to do such a thing?"

"And once he knew it, why didn't he just go to the Patth and turn us in?"

Shawn added. "This makes less sense than the psycho nutcase theory."

"Not really," I said. "The answers, in order, are that he had no idea at allthat there was anything special about the Icarus. And he didn't turn the shipin to the Patth because his purpose in coming aboard was something elseentirely."

I nodded to Everett. "Everett was the one who finally pushed me onto the righttrack," I said. "It was back when you all learned what the Icarus wascarrying, and he pointed out that Borodin and the Patth weren't the only possibleplayersin this game. I suddenly realized that he was right; and furthermore realizedwho the other player was."

"Who?" Tera demanded.

I lifted a hand. "Me."

There was a short silence. "I don't get it," Shawn said. "What are you talkingabout?"

"I'm talking about me, and about the people I work for," I told him. "Andabout the fact that the murderer came aboard the Icarus for the sole purpose ofdelivering me a message. A lesson in obedience."

My gun had been waving almost idly around the table, the hand gripping itmakingsmall gestures as I spoke. Now, in a single smooth motion, I brought it topointrock-steady at the center of the large torso looming up over the far end ofthe table from me. "You can tell him, Everett," I said quietly, "that I got themessage."

Another silence descended on the room, this one as thick and dark as tar paste.

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," Everett said at last, hisvoice husky and as dark as the silence had been.

"I'm talking about a crime boss named Johnston Scotto Ryland," I said. "A manwho thought I needed to be taught a lesson about strict obedience to one'sorders and one's master."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Shawn said, sounding bewildered. "You've lostme completely. How did a crime boss get into this?"

"Because he's a crime boss who's holding a half million of McKell's debt,"

Nicabar said, his eyes studying me with an intensity I didn't much care for.

"McKell's been smuggling for him for the past few years."

"You're a smuggler?" Shawn demanded, staring accusingly at me. "So that's howyou got the borandis so easily. I should have guessed that a big simon-purehotshot like you—"

"Put a baffle on it, Shawn," Nicabar cut him off. "So what did you do to earnthis lesson, McKell?"

"Ixil and I had a cargo of his bound for Xathru," I said. "We were ru

"Why?" Tera asked.

"I'll get to that later," I said. "Ryland has informers everywhere, even on abackwater world like Meima. I think Ryland was already having suspicions aboutmy loyalty, so when one of his snitches reported I'd landed there instead ofXathru he apparently concluded I was getting ready to jump ship or double- cross him or some such thing. Regardless, he decided I needed a lesson on why thatwas a bad idea. Were you that informer, Everett, or just the local muscle for theterritory?"

Everett didn't answer. "Well, the perso