"I'm very good at what I do," I told him, trying hard to be patient. "Makesure we've been fueled and are ready to lift as soon as Tera and I get back withShawn."

Another faint hiss. "All right. We'll see you back at the ship."

There was a click as he disconnected. "Tera?" I called.

"Still here," she confirmed tightly. "And I think people are starting to getirritated by Shawn's ravings. You'd better hurry."

"Trust me," I assured her, wincing as I turned part of my attention back tothe automotive drama taking place around me. "He must have made good time to beout of the spaceport already. How long since he jumped ship?"

"About an hour ago," she said. "Just after you left to—"

"An hour?" I cut her off in disbelief, a white-hot flash of anger slicingthrough me. "An hour? And you didn't think it worth mentioning to me?"

"We didn't want to bother you," she protested, clearly startled by my suddenanger. "You already had the medicine to find—"

"I don't care if I've got the crown jewels to steal," I snarled. "Somethinglike this happens, you get on the phone and tell me about it. Let me worry aboutwhat it does to my schedule. Is that clear?"

"Clear," she said, more subdued than I'd ever heard her. For a moment Iconsidered taking another verbal slice of flesh out of her, decidedregretfullythat it probably wasn't her fault, and kept my mouth shut. Possibly it wasn'tany of their faults. Ixil would have known what to do; but Ixil was in hiscabin in a coma, and it was painfully obvious that none of the others had anywherenear our experience with this sort of thing.

Instead, I vented my frustration on the map lying open beside me, folding itback up with far more force than was necessary and shoving it into my jacket'sleft side pocket.

"McKell?" Tera said, her voice suddenly tight. "I think I see a police carheading this way. Red and blue, with a flashing blue light on top, moving veryfast."

"Don't worry," I told her. "It's a cab, and I'm in it. Flag me in, will you?"

A block ahead, I saw her step to the curb and raise her hand, a vision ofloveliness standing there in the downpour in her stylish drowned-rat look. Idirected the driver over to her, dropped two hundred-commark bills on the seatbeside him as I got out, and pulled Tera quickly away from the curb as he shotoff again in a foaming wave. Maybe I'd wasted all that tip money; maybe thatwas the way he always drove anyway.

"There," Tera said, pointing across the street.

"I see him," I said. Considering the way Shawn was bouncing around the storeentrance waving his arms at everyone in sight, he would have been hard tomiss.

Taking Tera's arm again, I steered us through the traffic flow toward him.

After everything else that had happened, the capture itself was ratheranticlimactic. Pleading and screeching and cursing at the passersby, his wethair plastered half across his face, Shawn was in no shape to see anythinghappening around him, Tera and I could have driven up to him in an armoredpersonnel carrier without him noticing. As it was, we simply moved in fromopposite sides and grabbed his arms. He gave a single terrific lurch, butthere wasn't much strength left in him, and after that one attempt to break free hejust stood there shaking in our grip.

We led him away from the door and the pedestrian traffic to the narrowpassageway between the outfitter's store and the next building over, Teramurmuring soothingly in his ear the whole way. When we were as far out of thepublic eye as we were likely to get, I dug out the cassette and fed him one ofthe borandis capsules. He seemed to be having trouble getting it down untilTera filled her cupped hands with rainwater and gave him a drink.

The effects were quite amazing. Almost immediately his trembling began tosubside, and within a couple of minutes he seemed almost back to normal.

At least physically. "You sure took your sweet time about it," he growled, breathing heavily as he brushed his wet hair impatiently out of his face.

"Where the hell are we, anyway? You said we were going to Mintarius. This isn'tMintarius. I know—I've been there."

"Change of plans," I told him shortly, peering closely at his eyes. Hispupils, strongly dilated when we'd first grabbed him, seemed to be shrinking back tonormal size.

"Yeah, well, that change of plans might have killed me," he snapped. "Did youever think of that? This place must be at least three hours farther thanMintarius was."

"No, just two," I said. He was well enough to travel, I decided; and even ifhe wasn't, we were going. The sooner he was aboard the Icarus and shut away whereI didn't have to listen to him, the better. Taking his arm, I pulled him backout toward the main thoroughfare.

"Wait a minute, what's the rush?" he growled, leaning back against my pull.

His strength was also making a remarkable comeback. "We just got here. How aboutjust for once sticking around some planet more than five minutes, huh?"

"Shut up and come on," Tera snapped, grabbing his other arm. From the look ofsurprise that flicked across his face, I guessed she was digging her nailsinto his skin more than was necessary to maintain the grip. Certainly more than Iwas; but then, I'd only been irritated by his disappearing act for the pastfive minutes. Tera had had a whole hour of slogging through the rain in which towork up resentment.

Between her voice, her grip, and whatever he saw in her face, Shawn apparentlyrealized that, too. He shut up as ordered, and docilely followed us down thestreet and through the spaceport gate. We caught the slideway and headed in.

I kept a careful eye behind us, as well as on the slideways that passed orintersected ours, but I saw no sign of anyone tailing us. I had thought Torskmight have second thoughts about letting me leave so easily, but apparentlyhe'd decided that discretion was the better part of continued employment and haddecided to leave well enough alone.

We reached the last freighter parked between us and the Icarus; and finally, it seemed, we were out of the woods. We had the borandis, we had Shawn, and no one had pointed toward me and yelled for the Patth. Now, if the Icarus had justbeen fueled properly, we would be in business. Hoping distantly that we wouldn'tfind the fuelers still trying to figure out how to get the hose into the Icarus'sintake, we came around the side of the freighter.

The fuelers weren't there. What was there was a group of ten Najik wearing theblack-and-red tunics of customs officers. Standing by the entry ramp.

Waiting for us.

CHAPTER 10

BESIDE ME, SHAWN made a strangled sort of sound deep in his throat. "Oh, God," he breathed. "We're dead."

"Quiet," I muttered back, taking a second, closer look at the scene, hoping itwasn't as bad as I'd first thought.

It was. The ten Najik were still there, tall and spindly, with those hairyarms and legs that always made me think of giant four-limbed tarantulas. They werestill wearing the customs uniforms, and there was an impatient look in theirmultiple eyes as they glanced over our direction through the pouring rain.

On the other hand, it could also have been worse. Locks or no locks, customsofficers on the prowl normally didn't bother to wait for the captain beforegoing inside a target ship, but simply popped the hatch and apologized laterfor the damage if apologies were called for. Now, with my second look, I saw whythey were still out here getting rained on.

Standing square in the center of the ramp, looking for all the world like afeathery-scaled Horatius holding the bridge, was Chort. From the water runningsteadily off his fingertips it was clear he'd been there for a while; from thesettled look of his stance, it was equally clear he was prepared to stay aslongas necessary.