Even with full lighting the maze of cables and conduits back there was a painto get through. With only a flashlight, and one that had been adjusted to itslowest setting yet, such a safari was downright dangerous. But I made itthroughto the control station without garroting myself, and five minutes later I wasdone.

The hidden access to the inner sphere was sitting wide-open, just as I'dinstructed Ixil to leave it. I shined my light briefly inside, but there wasnothing to be seen except the usual tangle of wiring. I looped a few turns ofconduit over the hinged breaker panel, just to make sure no one thoughtlesslyclosed it, then left the engine section, making sure that the door to thewraparound was also locked open.

I left my flashlight off as I slipped out of the hatchway and climbed down theladder. Everett or someone else might be looking in this direction, and Istill had one last task to perform before I could head back up for dinner. Carefulof my footing, I circled the aft end of the ship and made my way around to theship's starboard side.

With the tree branches towering over me blocking out the starlight, this sideof the ship was even darker than the port side had been. Even so, it wasn'tdifficult to locate the set of latch grooves I'd spotted on my firstinspectionof the ship back at Meima, the grooves I'd later learned Cameron had anchoreda collapsible ladder into for his backdoor entrance into the ship that morning.

Probing carefully with my little finger, I felt in one of the two bottomgroovesfor the piece of guidance tag I'd wadded up and put inside.

The folded piece of plastic was no longer wedged halfway down the opening asI'd left it. Instead, it had been jammed all the way to the bottom of the groove.

A

quick check of the other groove showed the other half of the tag had likewisebeen crammed into the bottom.

Feeling my way along the side of the ship, I circled around the drivethrusters and worked my way back to the base of the ladder. Then, and only then, did Iturn on my flashlight and head up to the lodge.

Everett was not, as I'd expected, waiting for me in the expansive foyer whereI'd left him. He had instead found his way to the dining room and seatedhimself at the far end of one of the rustic hewn-wood tables. Shawn, Tera, and Nicabarhad reappeared from their rooms and were in the process of choosing seats oftheir own at the table, with Chort and Ixil just lugging in a large steamingstewpot containing whatever it was I'd smelled earlier. Four seats were still empty: one on each side of Everett at the far end, one beside Shawn, thefourth at the end of the table closest to me, the seat facing away from the entrancearchway. Choosing that one, leaving Chort and Ixil to fight over the otherthree chairs, I sat down.

Dinner was a curious affair, full of odd contrasts. The couple of hours ofprivacy had done small but noticeable wonders for the civility level among thegroup, particularly for Tera and Shawn, who mentioned that they'd spent theirtime catching up on badly needed sleep. The fact that the quiet surroundingslent themselves to a sense of security was also undoubtedly a calming factor.

At the same time, though, there was an underlying tension permeating the wholeevent, a tension that showed up in a hundred little ways, from the slightlystilted conversation and long uncomfortable silences to the way everyone'seyesperiodically and suddenly darted to the archway behind me as if expecting theentire population of the Patth homeworld Aauth to suddenly come charging in onus. Tera seemed the worst in this respect, though Shawn's natural twitchinessbrought him in a close second. By a sort of unspoken mutual consent we avoidedthe topic of the rest of our trip, and our chances of actually getting toEarth with the whole Spiral breathing down our necks.

I gave it half an hour, until the stew was gone and the conversation had againlagged and they were starting to make the small but unmistakable signs ofgetting ready to take their leave. Then, clearing my throat, I lifted my lefthand for attention. "I know you're all tired and anxious to start settlingdown for the night," I said. "But there are one or two matters we still need todeal with."

Their expressions could hardly be considered hostile, but there certainly wasno particular enthusiasm I could detect. "Can't it wait until morning?" Everettasked from the far end of the table. "My leg's starting to hurt again, and I'dlike to go somewhere where I can prop it up."

"This will only take a few minutes," I assured him. "And no, it really can'twait."

"Of course not," Shawn muttered under his breath. "Not when McKell thinks it'simportant."

"First of all," I said, nodding toward Chort and then Ixil, "we need to thankChort and Ixil for the excellent dinner we've just eaten. Especially Chort, who I understand did most of the preparation."

There was a somewhat disjointed chorus of nods and thank-yous, accompanied bythe gentle scraping of chair legs on the floor as Shawn and Nicabar pushedtheir seats back in preparation for getting up. "Anything else?" Everett asked, halfstanding.

"Actually, yes," I said, lifting my right hand above the level of the table toreveal the plasmic I was holding. "If you'll all sit back down again and putyour hands on the table," I said into the suddenly shocked silence, "there's amurderer I'd like you to meet."

CHAPTER 23

FOR A HALF-DOZEN heartbeats they stood or sat in utter silence like carvedmarble statues, every eye staring either at my face or else the gun in my hand.

I didn't move or speak either, giving them as much time as they needed tocatch up with the bombshell I'd just dropped in their laps.

Everett recovered first, easing back down onto his chair as if there were arow of eggs waiting there and he didn't want to break any of them. As if that werea signal, Shawn and Nicabar just as carefully unfroze and hitched their ownchairs back to the table. The three men and Ixil already had their hands on the tableas instructed; I sent a querying look at Chort and Tera and they reluctantlyfollowed suit.

"Thank you," I said, leaning back in my chair but keeping my plasmic ready.

"We have had, from the very beginning of this trip, a number of unexplained and, at least on the surface, inexplicable events dogging our heels. We had the ship'sgravity go on unexpectedly while Chort was working on that first hull ridge, which could presumably have seriously injured or even killed him if he'd hitsomething wrong on his way down. We had the malfunction with the cutting torchthat gave Ixil some bad burns and would probably have killed him if Nicabarand I hadn't been able to shut it off in time. We also had a combination of potentially lethal chemicals put inside Ixil's cabin and the cabin doorrelease smashed while he was recovering from those burns.

"There are others, but I mention these particular three first because it turnsout they're the most easily and innocently explained. It seems that Tera wasthe one who turned on the gravity during the spacewalk in order to keep Chort fromdiscovering a secret about the ship that she didn't want revealed."

All eyes, which had been locked on me, now turned as if pulled by a set ofinvisible puppet strings to Tera. "That she didn't want revealed?" Nicabarasked.

"Specifically, a secondary hatchway on the top of the engine section," I said.

"A hatch her father had used to sneak into the ship that morning on Meima."

"Wait a minute," Shawn said, sounding bewildered. "Tera is... she's Borodin'sdaughter?"

"Exactly," I said, nodding approvingly and trying to ignore the aghast look onTera's face. "Except that the man who called himself Alexander Borodin was infact a rather better-known industrialist by the name of Arno Cameron."