For a long moment he didn't speak, his pale blue eyes gazing at me in that waythat always made me feel like he was trying to drill his way down through thevarious layers of my psyche to my soul. "You're serious," he said at last. Itwasn't a question.

"Deadly serious," I agreed. "I can do it. Bear in mind, too, that if we don'tdo something, we will lose the Icarus. Either to the Patth or—"

"All right, you've sold me," he cut me off. "What do you need?" And for thenext ten minutes, in great detail, I told him.

THERE WERE, PREDICTABLY, none of the little runabout cars available as I leftthe StarrComm building, which meant another long walk. Mindful of the hour'sgrace time I'd given Ixil before he was to try his hand at piloting theIcarus, I hurried as quickly as my throbbing head and the need to remain reasonablyinconspicuous would permit.

None of the others was visible outside the ship as I finally dragged myselfinto view of it. But then, I wasn't really expecting to see anyone, not with Ixiland Nicabar in charge of arranging guard duty. It wasn't until I was nearly to thefoot of the ladder that I spotted Pix crouched in the shadow of one of theship's landing skids, staying clear of the press of spacers wandering aroundeven at this hour. I whistled, and he bounded away from his spot and scamperedover to me. I managed to catch him before he could try his tree-climbing actwith my shin and scritched him briefly behind his ears. "Ixil?" I calledquietly.

"Here," a voice answered from above and to my left. I looked up, just as Ixilappeared from behind the festively glowing lights that had been set up as permyorders in the gaps of our camouflaging cowling. "Any trouble?"

"None," I said, watching as he eased his way through one of the larger gapsand dropped to the ground. "You?"

He shook his head. "It's been very quiet," he said, waving somewhere behindme.

I turned to look, saw Chort detach himself from a parked fueler and headtoward us. "You like the job Chort and Tera did with the lights?"

"Very nice," I agreed, looking up at the lights again. "Nice little sniper'sposition you found up there, too."

"Chort's idea, actually," Ixil said as he took Pix back from me and set him onhis shoulder. "He was up there on guard when Nicabar and Everett and I gotback.

Since Kalixiri are slightly more conspicuous than Crooea, I took it over andset him up in the more visible spot over at that fueler."

"Sounds reasonable," I said. "How's Shawn doing?"

"Bad, but not critical. At least this time he didn't get loose. Tera made surehe was securely strapped down before she set up her own guard position justinside the hatchway." He peered up. "She should still be there, in fact—

neither Everett nor Nicabar was in any shape to take over from her. Be sure toannounce yourself before you step inside the wraparound; I get the feeling she's stilla little nervous."

"I know exactly how she feels," I said dryly as Chort came up beside us. "Youall right, Chort?"

"Quite well, Captain McKell, thank you," he whistled, peering closely at me.

"I understand you have not had such fair fortune, however."

"I've been worse," I assured him. "Looks like Ixil will be on engine-room dutyfor lift; I'd like you to stay back there with him in case he needsassistance.

We did get fueled, didn't we?"

"Loaded and topped off and paid for," Ixil assured me. "Easily enough to getwhere we're going."

"Good," I said, putting one foot on the bottom rung of the ladder and takingone last look around. There were no Patth or Iykams anywhere to be seen. Nor, forthat matter, were there any police or customs officials visible, either. Butthen, now that the last onion layer had been peeled away, that didn'tespeciallysurprise me. "Let's do it."

CHAPTER 22

THE FIVE-DAY TRIP to Beyscrim was the longest jump at one stretch that we'dtried yet with the Icarus. We paid the price for such daring, too, to the tuneof three hull ridges and a pair of hairline cracks. Each required from two tosix hours of outside work; together, they added nearly a full day to ourtravel time.

The most frustrating part, at least to some of the more impatient members ofthe crew, was that it was no longer clear whether such repair work was evennecessary, given what we now knew about the true nature of the Icarus. Thecracks and ridges were only in the outer-hull plating that Cameron's peoplehad layered over the artifact sphere, and there was no indication that the alienmetal beneath was being affected in the slightest by the hyperspace pressureit was being subjected to. There were several lively discussions about that, infact, most of them occurring while Chort and Ixil were busy outside with thelatest repair job. But the arguments presented were for the most partcompletelymoot. I voted to continue stopping for repairs, whether they were necessary ornot, and no one else got a vote.

It wasn't simply caution, though, or even a lack of faith in the Icarus'soriginal designers. Despite Everett's assurance that his doctor friend wasabove reproach, we were heading into a largely unknown situation on a completelyunknown world. With three of us qualifying as walking wounded—four if youcounted Shawn's medical problems—I figured the more recovery time we had alongthe way, the better.

Still, I had to admit that our first pass by Beyscrim showed the place to bepretty much as advertised. The planet boasted just five public spaceports, none of them up to even Meima's casual standards, with the coordinates Everett'sfriend had supplied reading halfway up a mountain and very literally in themiddle of nowhere. The automated landing system guided us in to a group offive pads about three hundred meters west and slightly downslope from themansion-sized lodge itself, the pad cluster edged in turn on its downslopeside by an extensive range of bushy blue-green trees. I chose the pad closest tothe trees, setting us down parallel to them and as close to their outstretchedbranches as I could manage, remembering first to rotate the ship so that thehatchway was on the open, non-tree side facing the lodge.

Tera questioned my choice of placement, pointing out that resting so close tothe edge of an artificially built-up landing area was an invitation todisaster should the Icarus's weight cause the edge to collapse. Everett was equallycritical of my landing site, except that his argument was that I'd chosen thepad farthest from the lodge, thereby putting us an extra hundred meters fromthe comforts we all hoped were waiting for us up there. I pointed out to Tera thatthe idea was for the trees to provide us at least a little bit of visual coverfrom any aircraft that happened to pass overhead; to Everett, I ratherungraciously suggested that if after several days of rest the walk was stilltoo much for him, he was welcome to stay aboard while the rest of us checked theplace out. That was exactly what he did, though he phrased it more along thelines of standing guard over the ship than of anything so childish as a fit ofsulking or pique. I accepted his offer, pretended also to accept his rationalefor it, and together the rest of us trooped on up through the cool afternoonair to the lodge.

I'd noted on the way in that the lodge was good-sized, but I hadn't realizedjust how extensive the place actually was. Besides the main rectangularsection running parallel to the landing area, there was also a full wing extendingback from the middle toward the mountain itself, giving the building an overallT-shape. How I'd missed that back wing I didn't know, except to assume thatthe rough-cut slate roofing had blended so well into the rocky slope beyond that Ihadn't realized it was part of the lodge. Beyscrim, I decided, must be afantastically popular place at the height of the tourist season.