And for that same number of hours, I was going to be on my own.

Ixil had made up the lower bunk for Pix and Pax, bunching the blanket up forthem to snuggle into and putting their food and water containers where theycould easily get to them. I spent a few minutes getting them settled there, then pulled the blanket off the top bunk and tucked it under Ixil's mattress, wedgingits center under the lower bunk beside the ferrets' nest and letting the restdrape down from there onto the floor. Assured that they could get to the floorif they wanted exercise or to Ixil if they wanted company, I turned off thelight and left the cabin.

There were no locks on any of the Icarus's interior doors. Up till now Ihadn't really worried much about that; but up till now my partner hadn't been lyingcomatose and reasonably helpless after what might or might not have been aneffort to kill him. Pulling out my multitool, checking both ways down thecorridor to make sure I was unobserved, I removed the cover of the release padfrom the center of the door and pulled out the control chip. On the underside, snugged inconspicuously between two of the connector feet, was what I waslooking for: the timing dial, which told the door how many seconds it was tostay open unless you overrode it by locking the door in place. Using thenarrowest screwdriver from the multitool, I eased the dial from its presetposition all the way to zero, then returned the chip to its socket.

Experimentally, I touched the release pad. Not only did the door open barelyten centimeters before slamming shut again, it did so with a startlingly loudclunk as the buffer mechanism that normally provided for a smoother closing failedto engage. For a moment I flashed back to the metal-on-metal sound I'd heard atleast twice now aboard the Icarus, wondering if there could simply be a badbuffer in one of the doors. But even allowing for the sound to be filtered bydistance, I knew this wasn't it.

I put the cover back on the pad and went down the corridor to my own cabin. Itwas far from a perfect solution—anyone bent on unscrupulous deeds, after all, could presumably open the release pad himself and ungimmick it as easily as Ihad, assuming he knew about the adjustment dial, which most people didn't. Butfor the moment it was the best I could do. At least this way any attempt togetto Ixil would generate a noise and vibration that I ought to be able to hearfrom my own cabin. Ixil himself, of course, with a completely separate touch- padmechanism on his side of the door, could come out anytime he wanted. I reachedmy cabin, dithered momentarily about whether I should gimmick my own door as Ihad Ixil's, decided against it, and went in.

The room was still as small and as unadorned as it had always been, but as Iputmy back against the door I found myself looking at it with new eyes. Somehow, someone had overheard our last conversation in here, and had overheard itclearly enough to nip up to the mechanics room and sabotage the cutting torch.

The question was how.

The wall separating the cabin from the corridor was solid metal, a good fivecentimeters thick. The bulkheads were even thicker, probably nine or tencentimeters, and on the side away from the corridor was the Icarus's inner hull, with no more than another twenty centimeters between it and the outer hull.

Outside the outer hull, of course, was the vacuum of space. There were, Iknew, ways to hear through solid metal walls, but all of them involved fairlysophisticated equipment and even then success was not at all guaranteed aboarda starship where the whole frame was continually vibrating with everything fromengine drone to voices and footsteps two decks away. The bunks were too simpleand flimsy to conceal a hidden transmitter strong enough to punch a radiosignalthrough that much metal; ditto for the lockers. After that tracker incident onMeima, I'd made it a point to regularly signal-scan both myself and Ixil forsuch unwanted hitchhikers, and had just as regularly found nothing. Andfinally, there was nothing on any of the walls that could camouflage any such listeningdevice.

Except the intercom.

I unfastened the cover of the intercom with my multitool, swearing silently atmyself the whole time. It was the oldest trick in the book: Sometime when Iwas out, probably during our stop on Dorscind's World, someone had slipped in hereand rearranged a few wires so that the intercom was continually on, at leastas far as one other specific intercom was concerned. Someone who'd known what hewas doing could have done it in three minutes. Still swearing, still feelinglike a fool, I pulled the cover off the intercom and peered inside.

It was an intercom, all right. A simple, standard, bottom-of-the-line ship'sintercom. The kind you could buy for five commarks in any outfitter's shopanywhere across the Spiral.

And it hadn't been tampered with.

I stared at it for a good three minutes of my own, prodding wires aside withmyscrewdriver as I visually traced every one of them from start to finish atleast five times. Nothing. No gimmicking, no crossed wires, no questionablecomponents, nothing that shouldn't be there. Nothing even left the box excepttwo power wires and a slender coax cable—exactly the right number—whichdisappeared through a tiny hole in the inner hull to join the rest of the mazeof wiring and plumbing laid out in the narrow gap between inner and outerhulls.

Slowly, I replaced the intercom cover, now thoroughly confused. Had we beenwrong about an eavesdropper? Had the accident with the cutting torch been justthat? Or if not an accident, then sabotage simply on general principles bysomeone who didn't want the Icarus's cargo examined, and not a reaction to ourconversation at all?

I didn't believe it for a minute. I'd had only a brief look at the torch headthat had done its best to take off the top of Ixil's skull, but that one lookhad been enough. The screw connector holding the head onto the connected hoseshad had its threads badly crimped, probably with compression pliers, so thatwhen the pressure built up enough it had come loose in that explosive fashion.

As sabotage methods went it had been effective enough; but it had also beenfairly clumsy and, more to the point, extremely quick and simple. Not the sortof job one would expect even an amateur to pull, at least not an amateur withthe time to do the job more subtly.

Which implied our saboteur had been rushed in his task. Which meant it had, infact, been a response to our conversation.

Which meant I was back to square one. How had he overheard us?

I spent the next fifteen minutes going over the lockers and bunks, and foundexactly what I'd expected, namely, nothing. Then, stretching out on my bunk, Istared at the bottom of the bunk above me and tried to think.

When you have eliminated the impossible, Sherlock Holmes was fond of saying, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. It wasn't an aphorismI particularly subscribed to, mainly because in real life eliminating all thevarious impossibles was usually a lot trickier than in Holmes's fictionalsetting. However, in this particular case, the list of directions the answercould be hiding in was definitely and distressingly short. In fact, as Iturned the problem over in my mind, I found there was exactly one of Sherlock'simprobables left.

Ixil had mentioned earlier that he'd looked over the full schematics for the Icarus. It was a fair assumption that he'd gone ahead and kept a copy, so Iwent back to his cabin, ungimmicked the door, and went inside. The room lookedexactly the way I'd left it except that Pix and Pax were now up on the middlebunk with Ixil, nosing around the hip pouch where he habitually kept some ofthe little treats they especially liked. I put them back on their bunk where theywouldn't get rolled over on if Ixil shifted in his sleep, raided the pouch andgave them two of the treats each, then checked his locker. The schematics werethere, a sheaf of papers rolled tightly together. I tucked the roll under myarm, regimmicked the door on my way out, and returned to my cabin.