Maybe she'd already used up all of her emotional reactions for one day. Ormaybeshe hadn't been surprised by the murder charge for the simple reason thatshe'd already known all about it.

"Computer Specialist Tera?" Chort's whistly voice came over the speaker. "Ibelieve I'm finished here. Shall I check the rest of the hull?"

I was still watching Tera closely, which was why I caught the slight butunmistakable tightening of her facial muscles. Perhaps she was thinking alongthe same line that had suddenly occurred to me: that it had been just as Chorthad set off on a similar check of the cargo and engine hulls his last time outthat the accident with the grav generator had occurred.

If it was, in fact, an accident. Perhaps someone aboard didn't want anyonetaking a close look at the outside of the cargo sphere.

For a moment I was tempted to tell him to go ahead, just to see if ourtheoretical spoilsport still had his same access to switches or junction boxesor whatever. But only for a moment. Ixil was sharing the hot spot with Chort, and the spoilsport might decide he didn't like Ixil any more than he'd likedJones. I had no interest in risking Ixil's life or health, at least not then.

Certainly not over a theory that hadn't even occurred to me until five secondsago.

"This is McKell," I said toward the speaker before Tera could answer. "Don'tbother, Chort—we don't have time for it. You and Ixil just get back in andbutton up."

"Acknowledged," he whistled.

"That was my job," Tera reminded me, throwing a brief glare in my direction.

But to my hypersensitive eye, the glare didn't seem to have the kind of firebehind it that I would have expected. Maybe she and I had indeed been thinking alongthe same lines, or maybe her chip-shoulder act was starting to wear a littlethin. "You're off-duty, remember?"

"Right," I said. "I keep forgetting. You can handle things here?"

She didn't even bother to answer that one, just gave me a look that saidvolumes all by itself and turned back to the monitors. Properly chastened, I floatedout of the bridge, maneuvered down the ladder well, and returned to my cabin. Iwas once again stripping off my jacket when the warning tone sounded and gravity came back on.

For a long time after that I just lay in my bunk, staring at the closed doorin the dim light, as I ran that last conversation through endless repeats in mymind. Tera was an enigma, and in general I hated enigmas. In my experience, theynearly always spelled trouble.

Unless I had been reading her words and her reactions all wrong. Or, worse, had somehow imagined them entirely. It certainly wouldn't be the first time I hadoh-so-cleverly Sherlocked myself straight down a blind alley.

But I hadn't imagined the mishap with the grav generator or Jones's death. Ihadn't imagined my brief detention on Meima, or the Lumpy Brothers, or theirunreasonably advanced hand weaponry.

And I certainly hadn't imagined Arno Cameron, amateur archaeologist and headof one of the largest and most influential industrial combines in the Spiral, sitting in a grimy Vyssiluyan taverno and all but begging me to fly the Icarusto Earth for him.

No, the facts were there, at least some of them. What they meant, though, Ididn't have the foggiest idea.

But a small group of unclearly related facts can chase each other around asingle overtired brain for only so long. Eventually, I fell asleep.

CHAPTER 6

THE PORT FACILITIES on Xathru had been a couple of steps above those on Meima.

The single commercial port on Dorscind's World, in contrast, was at least fivesteps back down again.

Not that the equipment itself was a problem. On the contrary, the landingcradle was the best the Icarus had seen yet, with the kind of peripheral and supportequipment that a place like Meima could only dream of. It was, rather, theport's clientele that put Dorscind's World well below the standards set by theSpiral's tour cruise directors. Planned by its developers as a high-classgambling resort, things hadn't quite worked out that way for the colony. Ithad been slipping since roughly day two, with the big money and high-spinnersfadingequally rapidly into the sunset.

The only thing that had kept the place from vanishing from the map altogetherwas its gradual and reluctant transformation into the sort of place wherequestionable papers and shady cargoes were generally winked at. With the Patthshipping domination, the shady-cargo slice of the pie chart had been steadilygrowing among non-Patth carriers.

And as a result, business at the Dorscind's World port was booming.

There was of course no record of a freighter named the Second Banana havingfiled a flight plan for Dorscind's World. But as I'd expected, minortechnicalities of that sort didn't even raise an eyebrow here. The usualdockingfee, plus a few more of Cameron's hundred-commark bills, and we had ourlandingcradle. I paid off the port official who came to the ramp to collect, madearrangements for refueling, and ordered delivery of replacement foodstuffs andsome more of Chort's magic hull-repair goo.

And after that, it was time for me to venture out into the dubious charm ofthe port city. Leaving the rest of the Icarus's crew behind.

The rest of the crew wasn't happy about that. Not one bit. "This is insane,"

Shawn snarled as I faced down the pack of them at the forward wraparoundpressure door, a task made all that harder psychologically by the upward tiltof the Icarus's decks that had them all looming over me. "I've been to a dozenplaces like this—it's no more dangerous than downtown Tokyo as long as youmind your own business."

"It would be nice to get out into the open air," Everett seconded. "Medicallyspeaking, recycled air starts wearing on a person after a while. Besides, theexercise would do us good."

"The exercise could also get you killed," I told him bluntly, charitablypassingup the obvious comment about how his bulk hardly indicated that exercise wouldbe his top priority out there. "Or weren't any of you listening to what I saidabout what happened to me on Xathru?"

"We were all listening, McKell," Tera said. "As far as I'm concerned, that's areason for you to stay out of sight, not us."

"Believe me, I wish I could," I said with one hundred percent honesty. Thelast thing I wanted to do was face down more of the Lumpy Clan and theircoronal-discharge weapons. Though to be honest, without having a flightschedule to guide them, the chances they could have tracked me here were vanishinglysmall. "Unfortunately, I have an errand to take care of out there. One which Ihave to do personally."

Which wasn't quite as hundred-percent honest as the first part had been. Ixilcould make the long-overdue call to Uncle Arthur as well as I could. But Ixilhad made it abundantly clear that he really didn't want to field that one; more to the point, I wanted him and the ferrets here to watch over the Icarus. "Butnone of that matters," I went on. "What matters is that as pilot, I'm also thecaptain. And I say you're staying here."

"So that's where the pig stick goes, huh?" Shawn snarled, his face working ashe glared at me with blazing eyes. Once again, as it had when we'd first met, Shawn's veneer of civility had cracked badly, revealing the callously rudeyoungbrat underneath. "You little tin-plate dictator—you love this, don't you?

Well, forget it—just forget it. I'm not sitting here staring at the walls whileyou'reout having fun. Neither is anyone else."

"That's enough, Shawn," Nicabar said quietly. Quietly, but with the fullweightof all those years as an EarthGuard Marine in his voice.

Shawn either didn't notice or didn't care. "Well, runny muck to you, too," hebit out at Nicabar. His whole body was trembling now, his fists opening andclosing like relays in an unstable feedback loop, and out of the corner of myeye I saw Ixil ease a little closer beside him. "I'm not staying cooped up inhere—I'm not."