by Timothy Zahn
It wasn’t simply caution, though, or even a lack of faith in the Icarus’s original designers. Despite Everett’s assurance that his doctor friend was above reproach, we were heading into a largely unknown situation on a completely unknown world. With three of us qualifying as walking wounded—four if you counted Shawn’s medical problems—I figured the more recovery time we had along the way, the better.
Still, I had to admit that our first pass by Beyscrim showed the place to be pretty much as advertised. The planet boasted just five public spaceports, none of them up to even Meima’s casual standards, with the coordinates Everett’s friend had supplied reading halfway up a mountain and very literally in the middle of nowhere. The automated landing system guided us in to a group of five pads about three hundred meters west and slightly downslope from the mansion-sized lodge itself, the pad cluster edged in turn on its downslope side by an extensive range of bushy blue-green trees. I chose the pad closest to the trees, setting us down parallel to them and as close to their outstretched branches as I could manage, remembering first to rotate the ship so that the hatchway was on the open, non-tree side facing the lodge.
Tera questioned my choice of placement, pointing out that resting so close to the edge of an artificially built-up landing area was an invitation to disaster should the Icarus’s weight cause the edge to collapse. Everett was equally critical of my landing site, except that his argument was that I’d chosen the pad farthest from the lodge, thereby putting us an extra hundred meters from the comforts we all hoped were waiting for us up there. I pointed out to Tera that the idea was for the trees to provide us at least a little bit of visual cover from any aircraft that happened to pass overhead; to Everett, I rather ungraciously suggested that if after several days of rest the walk was still too much for him, he was welcome to stay aboard while the rest of us checked the place out.
That was exactly what he did, though he phrased it more along the lines of standing guard over the ship than of anything so childish as a fit of sulking or pique. I accepted his offer, pretended also to accept his rationale for it, and together the rest of us trooped on up through the cool afternoon air to the lodge.
I’d noted on the way in that the lodge was good-sized, but I hadn’t realized just how extensive the place actually was. Besides the main rectangular section running parallel to the landing area, there was also a full wing extending back from the middle toward the mountain itself, giving the building an overall T-shape. How I’d missed that back wing I didn’t know, except to assume that the rough-cut slate roofing had blended so well into the rocky slope beyond that I hadn’t realized it was part of the lodge. Beyscrim, I decided, must be a fantastically popular place at the height of the tourist season.
The size of the lodge also meant that the six of us—or seven, whenever Everett deigned to join us—would have the chance to get seriously lost from each other. After the forced intimacy we’d created by ripping out the Icarus’s decks and cabins, the thought of a little personal privacy was something the whole crew was definitely champing at the bit for. I thought about keeping us all together at least long enough to check out the public areas of the lodge for signs of recent occupancy, but when I offered the suggestion Tera made it clear that she wasn’t interested in anyone else’s company for a couple of hours at least. Snagging the key for one of the guest rooms—old-fashioned permanent keys were apparently part of the rustic atmosphere of the place—she headed off to get some sleep on a real bed. Shawn and Nicabar took her cue and picked out rooms of their own, while Chort headed instead to the kitchen area to see what sort of food might be available. Giving up, I sent Ixil with him and then headed back outside onto the lodge’s wide front portico.
It had been late afternoon when we’d landed, and from what the nav listing had said about Beyscrim’s rotation period I had assumed we would have another two to three hours of daylight left. But I had failed to take into account the effects of the mountain range to the west that rose dramatically behind the Icarus and its shading trees. Already the sun was dipping behind the taller peaks, and I could see now that it would be dusk in probably half an hour.
Still, half an hour of sun and fresh air was better than nothing. Snagging one of the sturdy lounge chairs lined up along the portico’s back wall, I pulled it to the front edge and sat down.
Everett had evidently been thinking along the same lines I had, at least as far as the fresh air was concerned. From where I sat I could make out his figure in the wraparound just behind the open hatchway, gazing back in my direction. I thought about waving to him, but concluded after a minute that the lack of any such gesture on his part probably meant he was still not feeling all that sociable, at least not toward me. So I just settled more comfortably into my chair, aware of Everett’s presence but not acknowledging it any more than he was acknowledging mine.
We sat there, wrapped in our own little worlds, as the sun vanished and the western sky faded from sunlight into a multicolored glow into dusk. Ixil came by once to tell me that Chort had located a cache of stored food and was busy preparing dinner for us all, then disappeared back inside to assist him. I stayed where I was a few minutes more, watching the sky and mountains as the dusk darkened to full night and a scattering of brilliant stars appeared. Everett, I presumed, was similarly watching the lodge and the mountains rising behind it. Or possibly he was just watching me.
It had been full night for about twenty minutes when the dropping air temperature finally began to penetrate my jacket and I decided enough was enough. Picking my way carefully downslope, with only the decorative lights of the portico to illuminate the path, I made my way back to the Icarus.
I found Everett stretched out on his cot in the main sphere, leafing through the ship’s pharmaceutical listing, his injured leg propped up on one of the medical kits. “The wraparound get too boring for you?” I asked as I made my way toward him.
“It got too chilly,” he said. “What’s happening out there?”
“Absolutely nothing,” I said. “Oh, except that dinner is going to be ready soon. Thought you might want to join us.”
“What are we having?” he asked.
“No idea,” I admitted. “However, Chort’s in charge of preparation, so I expect it’ll at least be palatable.”
“Probably,” Everett said, wincing slightly as he shifted his leg. “Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’m up to the walk.”
“Really,” I said, frowning, as I squatted down beside him. “I didn’t realize it was bothering you that badly or I wouldn’t have jumped on you earlier. Sorry.”
He waved the apology away. “Don’t worry about it. You were right—it should be mostly healed by now. Maybe it’s the cold and lower air pressure up here that’s bothering it.”
“Then the lodge and a real bed are exactly what you need,” I said briskly, straightening up and reaching down to him. “Come on—I’ll give you a hand.”
“No, that’s all right,” he said. “Let me just rest it a while longer, and I’ll come up later.”
“You’re going to join us for dinner, Everett,” I said firmly. “This is the first decent meal we’ll have had since I don’t know when, and you and your leg aren’t going to miss out on it.”
“Look, I appreciate the thought. But—”
“Besides, we have to have a serious talk about what we’re going to do after we leave here,” I said. “And that’s going to concern all of us. So, bottom line: Either you let me help you up to the lodge, or I’m going to send Nicabar and Ixil to carry you. Your choice.”
“You win,” he said, putting down the listing and smiling wryly. “They wound up mostly carrying me back to the Icarus on Palmary, and I’m not in any hurry to repeat the experience.”
We made our way around the curve of the hull and into the wraparound. Everett’s leg didn’t seem to be giving him all that much trouble that I could see, but I nevertheless kept a hand ready to assist if it should suddenly go weak on him. I turned on the entr
yway floodlights for better lighting and preceded him down the ladder. He reached the ground safely, and we headed toward the lodge.
A gentle breeze had started up since I’d entered the Icarus, stirring up the cold mountain air and making it feel that much colder, and Everett’s leg reacted by stiffening up even more. It took us over ten minutes to cross the four hundred meters to the lodge, and by the time we made it up the steps to the portico he had given his pride a vacation and was leaning heavily on my arm. “Sorry about this,” he puffed as I steered us to the main door. “I guess I should have let Ixil carry me after all.”
“Not a problem,” I assured him. “You’ll be better once we get you out of all this cold night … damn.”
“What?” he asked.
“The lights,” I said, turning around to look behind us. Sure enough, the Icarus was beautifully bathed in the backwash from the floodlights. “I wasn’t even thinking. Too used to always leaving them on in port, I guess.”
“You going to go back and turn them off?” Everett asked.
“Unless we want to advertise our presence to anyone who happens to pass by,” I said, getting the door open and helping him limp over the threshold. The delicate aromas coming from the kitchen area made my stomach growl. “Go on in—the dining area’s off to the left, around that corner and through a sort of rectangular archway. I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Better grab a flashlight for the way back,” he warned as I headed back across the portico. “That ground’s pretty uneven in places.”
“I will,” I called back over my shoulder. “Assuming I can remember where we stashed them. Make sure Chort saves me some of whatever that is, all right?”
“Sure,” he called. “Well, probably.”
Between the portico lights behind me and the floodlights in front of me I had no problem traversing the terrain this time around. I climbed up the ladder and shut off the floodlights, then headed forward into the main sphere.
Contrary to what I’d implied to Everett, I knew exactly where the flashlights were, and it was the work of ten seconds to unearth one from the pile of machine-shop equipment. But now that I was finally alone in the ship there were other more urgent matters that needed to be attended to, and the excuse of hunting for a flashlight should give me the time I needed.
I tackled the helm and nav systems first, my familiarity with them permitting me to finish the job in probably two minutes. Tera’s computer was next on my list, another relatively quick and easy job given how much time I’d spent around it lately. After that, making sure to stay well back in the wraparound as I slipped past the open hatchway, I headed back into the engine section.
Even with full lighting the maze of cables and conduits back there was a pain to get through. With only a flashlight, and one that had been adjusted to its lowest setting yet, such a safari was downright dangerous. But I made it through to the control station without garroting myself, and five minutes later I was done.
The hidden access to the inner sphere was sitting wide-open, just as I’d instructed Ixil to leave it. I shined my light briefly inside, but there was nothing to be seen except the usual tangle of wiring. I looped a few turns of conduit over the hinged breaker panel, just to make sure no one thoughtlessly closed it, then left the engine section, making sure that the door to the wraparound was also locked open.
I left my flashlight off as I slipped out of the hatchway and climbed down the ladder. Everett or someone else might be looking in this direction, and I still had one last task to perform before I could head back up for dinner. Careful of my footing, I circled the aft end of the ship and made my way around to the ship’s starboard side.
With the tree branches towering over me blocking out the starlight, this side of the ship was even darker than the port side had been. Even so, it wasn’t difficult to locate the set of latch grooves I’d spotted on my first inspection of the ship back at Meima, the grooves I’d later learned Cameron had anchored a 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 bottom grooves for 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 as I’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 likewise been crammed into the bottom.
Feeling my way along the side of the ship, I circled around the drive thrusters and worked my way back to the base of the ladder. Then, and only then, did I turn on my flashlight and head up to the lodge.
Everett was not, as I’d expected, waiting for me in the expansive foyer where I’d left him. He had instead found his way to the dining room and seated himself at the far end of one of the rustic hewn-wood tables. Shawn, Tera, and Nicabar had reappeared from their rooms and were in the process of choosing seats of their own at the table, with Chort and Ixil just lugging in a large steaming stewpot 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, the fourth at the end of the table closest to me, the seat facing away from the entrance archway. Choosing that one, leaving Chort and Ixil to fight over the other three chairs, I sat down.
Dinner was a curious affair, full of odd contrasts. The couple of hours of privacy had done small but noticeable wonders for the civility level among the group, particularly for Tera and Shawn, who mentioned that they’d spent their time catching up on badly needed sleep. The fact that the quiet surroundings lent themselves to a sense of security was also undoubtedly a calming factor.
At the same time, though, there was an underlying tension permeating the whole event, a tension that showed up in a hundred little ways, from the slightly stilted conversation and long uncomfortable silences to the way everyone’s eyes periodically and suddenly darted to the archway behind me as if expecting the entire population of the Patth homeworld Aauth to suddenly come charging in on us. Tera seemed the worst in this respect, though Shawn’s natural twitchiness brought him in a close second. By a sort of unspoken mutual consent we avoided the topic of the rest of our trip, and our chances of actually getting to Earth with the whole Spiral breathing down our necks.
I gave it half an hour, until the stew was gone and the conversation had again lagged and they were starting to make the small but unmistakable signs of getting ready to take their leave. Then, clearing my throat, I lifted my left hand for attention. “I know you’re all tired and anxious to start settling down for the night,” I said. “But there are one or two matters we still need to deal with.”
Their expressions could hardly be considered hostile, but there certainly was no particular enthusiasm I could detect. “Can’t it wait until morning?” Everett asked from the far end of the table. “My leg’s starting to hurt again, and I’d like to go somewhere where I can prop it up.”
“This will only take a few minutes,” I assured him. “And no, it really can’t wait.”
“Of course not,” Shawn muttered under his breath. “Not when McKell thinks it’s important.”
“First of all,” I said, nodding toward Chort and then Ixil, “we need to thank Chort 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 by the gentle scraping of chair legs on the floor as Shawn and Nicabar pushed their seats back in preparation for getting up. “Anything else?” Everett asked, half standing.
“Actually, yes,” I said, lifting my right hand above the level of the table to reveal the plasmic I was holding. “If you’ll all sit back down again and put your hands on the table,” I said into the suddenly shocked silence, “there’s a murderer I’d like you to meet.”
CHAPTER
23
For a half-dozen heartbeats they stood or sat in utter silence like carved marble s
tatues, 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 to catch up with the bombshell I’d just dropped in their laps.
Everett recovered first, easing back down onto his chair as if there were a row of eggs waiting there and he didn’t want to break any of them. As if that were a signal, Shawn and Nicabar just as carefully unfroze and hitched their own chairs back to the table. The three men and Ixil already had their hands on the table as instructed; I sent a querying look at Chort and Tera and they reluctantly followed 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’s gravity 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 hit something wrong on his way down. We had the malfunction with the cutting torch that gave Ixil some bad burns and would probably have killed him if Nicabar and 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 door release smashed while he was recovering from those burns.
“There are others, but I mention these particular three first because it turns out they’re the most easily and innocently explained. It seems that Tera was the one who turned on the gravity during the spacewalk in order to keep Chort from discovering a secret about the ship that she didn’t want revealed.”
