And sitting in the center of the plotting table were an envelope and a largemetal cash box.

I stepped over to the table and crouched down, giving the box a long, carefullook. There were no wires that I could see; no discolorations, no passivetriggers, nothing that struck me as an obvious booby trap. Holding my breath, picked it up and eased it open a crack.

Nothing snapped, flashed, hissed, or blew up in my face. Perhaps I was gettingparanoid in my old age. Exhaling quietly, I opened it the rest of the way.

Inside was money. Crisp one-hundred-commark bills. Lots of them.

I looked at the cash for another moment, then set the box back on the plottingtable and opened the envelope. Inside were a set of cards, the originals ofthe registration and clearance papers Cameron had showed me in the taverno last night, plus a single sheet of paper with a hand-printed message on it: To the captain: Due to circumstances beyond my control, I will not be able to accompany youand the Icarus after all. I must therefore trust in your honor to take the shipand its cargo to Earth without me.

When you reach Earth orbit, please contact Stann Avery at the vid numberlisted at the bottom of the page. He will give you specific delivery instructions foryour cargo and arrange your final payment. The settlement will include asubstantial bonus for you and the others of the crew, over and above whatwe've already agreed to, provided the ship and cargo are delivered intact.

In the meantime, the initial payments for all of you are in the box, as wellas the money for fuel and docking fees you'll need along the way.

Again, my apologies for any inconvenience this sudden change of plan may causeyou. I would not be exaggerating when I say that delivering the Icarus and itscargo safely will be the most significant accomplishment any of you will everdo in your lives. It may in fact be the most significant deed any human beingwill perform during the remainder of this century.

Good luck, and do not fail me. The future of the human race could well liewithin your hands.

It was signed "Alexander Borodin."

My first thought was that Cameron really needed to cut back on thosemelodramas and star-thrillers he was watching in the evenings after work. My second wasthat this was one hell of a hot potato for him to have dropped into my lap onno notice whatsoever.

"McKell?" a female voice called from behind me.

I turned to see Tera making her way uphill into the bridge. "Yes, what is it?"

"I wanted to check out the bridge," she said, glancing around the room. "I waskind of hoping the main computer might be stashed in here."

I frowned. "What are you talking about? Isn't it back in the computer room?"

"Yes, I guess it is," she said with a grimace. "I was hoping that piece ofjunkwas the backup."

Those cold ferret feet started their wind sprints up my back again. Thecomputerwas very literally the nerve center of the entire ship. "Just how bad a pieceof junk is it?" I asked carefully.

"Noah had a better one on the ark," she said flatly. "It's an old Worthram T66"

No decision-assist capabilities, no vocal interface, no nanosecond monitoring.

Programming like I haven't seen since high school, no autonomic functions or emergency command capabilities—shall I go on?"

"No, I get the picture," I said heavily. Compared to normal starship operation, we were starting out half-blind, half-deaf, and slightly muddled—rather like a stroke victim, actually. No wonder Cameron had decided to jump ship. "Can you handle it?"

She lifted her hands. "Like I said, it's an echo from a distant past, but I should be able to work it okay. It may take me a while to remember all the tricks." She nodded toward the letter in my hand. "What's that?"

"A note from the camp counselor," I told her, handing it over. "You were right; it seems we're going on this hike by ourselves."

She read it, her frown turning to a scowl as she did so. "Well, this is awkward, I must say," she said, handing it back. "He must have left this last night, before the spaceport closed."

"Unless he managed to get in and out this morning," I suggested.

"Well, if he did, he must have been really traveling," she growled. "I know I got here about as fast as I could. So what do we do now?"

"We take the Icarus to Earth, of course," I told her. "That's what we agreed to.

Unless you have a date or something."

"Don't be cute," she growled. "What about our advance pay? He promised me a thousand commarks up front."

"It's all here," I assured her, patting the cash box. "As soon as I get the preflight started I'll go pass it out and let the rest know about the change in plans."

Her eyes lingered momentarily on the box, then shifted back to me. "You think they'll all stay?"

"I don't see why not," I said. "As far as I'm concerned, as long as I get paid, a job's a job. I'm not expecting any of the others to feel differently."

"Does that mean you're officially taking command of the ship and crew?"

I shrugged. "That's how the Mercantile Code lays it out. Command succession goes owner, employer, master, pilot. I'm the pilot."

"Yes, I know," she said. "I was just making sure. For the record."

"For the record, I hereby assume command of the Icarus," I said in my most official voice. "Satisfied?"

"Ecstatic," she said with just a trace of sarcasm.

"Good," I said. "Go on back to your station and start beating that T-66 into submission. I'll be along in a few minutes with your money."

She glanced at the cash box one last time, then nodded and left the bridge.

I set the box and papers on my lap and got to work on the preflight, trying to ignore the hard knot that had settled into my stomach. Cameron's note might have been overly dramatic, but it merely confirmed what I'd suspected ever since he'd invited himself over to my taverno table and offered me a job.

Somewhere out in the Meima wasteland, that archaeological team had stumbled onto something. Something big; something—if Cameron's rhetoric was even halfway to be believed—of serious importance.

And that same something was sitting forty meters behind me, sealed up inside the Icarus's cargo hold.

I just wished I knew what the hell it was.

CHAPTER 3

EVEN WITH THE clearance codes and papers Cameron had left with his note, I was fully expecting there to be trouble getting the Icarus off the ground. To my mild and cautiously disbelieving surprise, there wasn't. The tower gave uspermission to lift, the landing-pad repulsor boost got us up off the groundand into range of the perimeter grav beams, and a few minutes later we werehaulingfor space under our own power.

After Tera's revelation about the archaic computer system we'd been saddledwith, I had been wondering just what kind of shape the drive would be in. Butthere, too, my pessimism turned out to be unnecessary, or at least premature.

The thrusters roared solidly away, driving us steadily through the atmospheretoward the edge of Meima's gravity well, and with each of my periodic callsback to the engine room Nicabar assured me all was going just fine.

It wouldn't last, though. I knew it wouldn't last; and as the capacitors inthe nose cone discharged into the cutter array and sliced us a link hole intohyperspace, I warned myself that things were unlikely to continue running thissmoothly. Somewhere along the way, we were going to run into some serioustrouble.

Six hours out from Meima, we hit our first batch of it.

My first warning was a sudden, distant-sounding screech sifting into thebridge, sounding rather like a banshee a couple of towns over. I slapped the big redKILL button, throwing a quick look at the monitors as I did so, and withanother crack from the capacitors we were back in space-normal.