I interrupted her.

She took a half second to switch gears. "I think so," she said. "At leastsome.

I hadn't pulled them up before because—"

"Pull them up now," I ordered, trying to keep my sudden apprehension out of myvoice. "Find me one that shows a gray trapezoid about half a meter across with about two dozen wires coming off gold connectors along its edges."

She was already at the computer, fingers playing across the keys. "What isit?" she asked tightly.

"Just find me the picture," I said tersely, getting up and stepping to herside.

Dr. Chou's people, it turned out, had taken a lot of pictures. It took Teranearly a minute to find the specific area I was looking for.

And when she did, my apprehension turned to full-blown certainty.

"Tera, you told me your dad left the ship at Potosi," I said. "How do youknow?

Did he leave a note?"

She shook her head, her neck twisted to look up at me. "No, nothing likethat," she said, a note of uncertain dread in her voice as she picked up on my ownmood. "I told you: He and his things were gone, and I couldn't find himanywhereon the ship."

"Right," I nodded. "Except that you didn't think to look inside the smallspherehere, did you?"

Her eyes widened, her throat muscles suddenly tense. "Oh, no," she breathed.

"He's not—oh, God."

"No, no, I can't see him," I hastened to assure her. "There's no—I mean—"

"No body?"

"No body," I confirmed. At least not one I could see, I carefully refrainedfrom saying. "What there is by that trapezoid is a gap in the wiring. A big gap, asif someone maneuvered his way through the thicket, creating a hole as hewent."

"It couldn't have been Pax?" she asked, her voice going even darker.

"It's man-sized," I told her gently. "Look, maybe he's just lying low inthere."

She shook her head, a short, choppy movement. "No, we've been doing work herebythe access panel off and on for the past couple of days. He'd have heard myvoice and come out." She swallowed. "If he could."

I looked back over at the hole, coming to the inevitable decision. "I'm goingin," I announced, taking a step that direction.

A step was all I got. Like a rattlesnake her hand darted out and grabbed myarm.

"No!" she snapped, holding on with a strength that surprised me. "No! If he'sdead, it means something in there killed him. We can't risk you, too."

"What, all this concern for a soul-dead smuggler?" I retorted. It wasn't anice thing to say, but at the moment I wasn't feeling particularly nice. "Maybehe's not dead in there—you ever think of that? Maybe he's injured, or unconscious, or paralyzed. Maybe he can't get to the opening, or can't even call out to you."

"If he went in while we were on Potosi, he's been in there eleven days," shesaid. Her voice sounded empty, but her grip on my arm hadn't slackened a bit.

"Any injury serious enough to prevent him from getting out on his own wouldhave killed him long before now."

"Unless he just got the injury," I shot back. I wasn't ready to give in, either.

"Maybe he got thrown around while I was dodging the ion beams off Utheno. Hecould still be alive."

She took a deep breath. "We'll wait for Pax to come out."

"We'll wait half an hour," I countered.

"One hour."

I started to protest, took another look at her face, and gave it up. "Onehour,"

I agreed.

She nodded, and for a long moment she stared down at the access hole. Then, reluctantly, she keyed off the computer photo we'd been looking at and satdown on the deck. "Tell me about yourself, McKell," she said.

I shrugged, sitting down on the deck beside her. "There's not very much totell."

"Of course there is," she said quietly. "You had hopes and plans and dreamsonce. Maybe you still do. What would you be doing now if you weren'tsmuggling?"

"Who knows?" I said. She didn't care about my hopes and dreams, of course. Iknew that. She was just casting around looking for some mindless chatter, something to distract herself from the mental image of her father floatingdead in there. "Once, I thought I might have a career in EarthGuard. That endedwhen I told a superior officer exactly what I thought of him."

"In public, I take it?"

"It was public enough to earn me a court-martial," I conceded. "Then I thoughtI might have a career in customs. I must have been a little too good at it, because someone framed me for taking bribes. Then I tried working for ashippingfirm, only I lost my temper again and slugged one of the partners."

"Strange," she murmured. "I wouldn't have taken you for the terminallyself-destructive type."

"Don't worry," I assured her. "I'm only self-destructive where potentiallypromising careers are concerned. When it comes to personal survival, I'm notnearly so incompetent."

"Maybe the problem is you're afraid of success," she suggested. "I've seen itoften enough in other people."

"That's not a particularly original diagnosis," I said. "Others of myacquaintance have suggested that from time to time. Of course, for theimmediate future my options for success of any sort are likely to be seriously limited."

"Until about midway into the next century, I believe you said."

"About that."

She was silent a moment. "What if I offered to buy you out of your indentureto that smuggling boss?"

I frowned at her. There was no humor in her face that I could detect. "Excuse me?"

"What if I offered to buy out your indenture?" she repeated. "I asked you thatonce, if you recall. You rather snidely countered by asking if I had a halfmillion in spare change on me."

I felt my face warm. "I didn't know who you were then."

"But now you do," she said. "And you also know—or you ought to if you don't—

that I have considerably more than a half-million commarks to play with."

A not-entirely-pleasant tingle ran through me. "And you're suggesting that bailing me out of my own pigheaded mismanagement would be worth that much toyou?" I asked, hearing a hint of harshness in my voice.

"Why not?" she asked. "I can certainly afford it."

"I'm sure you can," I said. This was not safe territory to be walking on. "TheCameron Group probably spends half a million a year just on memo slips. Which, if I may say so, is a hell of a better investment than I would be for you."

"Who said anything about you being an investment?" she asked.

"Process of elimination," I said. "I don't qualify as a recognized charity, and I'm too old to adopt."

Somewhere along in here I'd expected her to take offense. But either she wastoo busy worrying about her father to notice my ungrateful attitude, or she had ahigher annoyance threshold than I'd thought. "Perhaps it's a reward forbringingthe Icarus safely home," she said. "Payment for services rendered."

"Better wait until it's sitting safely on the ground before you go off theedgewith offers of payment," I warned. "Unless, of course, you think I'm likely toweaken before we get to Earth and figure this is the best way to lock in myloyalty."

"Or else I just want to give you a new chance," she said, still inexplicablyunruffled. "You don't belong with smugglers and criminals. You're not thetype."

It was worse than I'd thought. Now she was sensing nobility and honor anddecency in me. I had to nip this in the bud, and fast, before there wastrouble I couldn't talk my way out of. "Not to be insulting or anything," I said, "butthe high-society life you grew up with is not exactly the sort of backgroundyouneed for judging people in my line of work. I could tell you about a man witha choirboy face and manner who could order one of his thugs to rip your heartout and watch him do it without batting an eye."

"You seem awfully vehement about this," she commented.

"I don't want you to get hurt dabbling in things you don't understand, that'sall," I muttered. "More than that, I don't want me to get hurt. Stick withcorporate mergers or archaeological digs or whatever it is you do for yourfather, Elaina Tera Cameron. You'll live longer that way."