"Yes, I guess it is," she said with a grimace. "I was hoping that piece ofjunkwas the backup."
Those cold ferret feet started their wind sprints up my back again. Thecomputerwas very literally the nerve center of the entire ship. "Just how bad a pieceof junk is it?" I asked carefully.
"Noah had a better one on the ark," she said flatly. "It's an old Worthram T66"
No decision-assist capabilities, no vocal interface, no nanosecond monitoring.
Programming like I haven't seen since high school, no autonomic functions or emergency command capabilities—shall I go on?"
"No, I get the picture," I said heavily. Compared to normal starship operation, we were starting out half-blind, half-deaf, and slightly muddled—rather like a stroke victim, actually. No wonder Cameron had decided to jump ship. "Can you handle it?"
She lifted her hands. "Like I said, it's an echo from a distant past, but I should be able to work it okay. It may take me a while to remember all the tricks." She nodded toward the letter in my hand. "What's that?"
"A note from the camp counselor," I told her, handing it over. "You were right; it seems we're going on this hike by ourselves."
She read it, her frown turning to a scowl as she did so. "Well, this is awkward, I must say," she said, handing it back. "He must have left this last night, before the spaceport closed."
"Unless he managed to get in and out this morning," I suggested.
"Well, if he did, he must have been really traveling," she growled. "I know I got here about as fast as I could. So what do we do now?"
"We take the Icarus to Earth, of course," I told her. "That's what we agreed to.
Unless you have a date or something."
"Don't be cute," she growled. "What about our advance pay? He promised me a thousand commarks up front."
"It's all here," I assured her, patting the cash box. "As soon as I get the preflight started I'll go pass it out and let the rest know about the change in plans."
Her eyes lingered momentarily on the box, then shifted back to me. "You think they'll all stay?"
"I don't see why not," I said. "As far as I'm concerned, as long as I get paid, a job's a job. I'm not expecting any of the others to feel differently."
"Does that mean you're officially taking command of the ship and crew?"
I shrugged. "That's how the Mercantile Code lays it out. Command succession goes owner, employer, master, pilot. I'm the pilot."
"Yes, I know," she said. "I was just making sure. For the record."
"For the record, I hereby assume command of the Icarus," I said in my most official voice. "Satisfied?"
"Ecstatic," she said with just a trace of sarcasm.
"Good," I said. "Go on back to your station and start beating that T-66 into submission. I'll be along in a few minutes with your money."
She glanced at the cash box one last time, then nodded and left the bridge.
I set the box and papers on my lap and got to work on the preflight, trying to ignore the hard knot that had settled into my stomach. Cameron's note might have been overly dramatic, but it merely confirmed what I'd suspected ever since he'd invited himself over to my taverno table and offered me a job.
Somewhere out in the Meima wasteland, that archaeological team had stumbled onto something. Something big; something—if Cameron's rhetoric was even halfway to be believed—of serious importance.
And that same something was sitting forty meters behind me, sealed up inside the Icarus's cargo hold.
I just wished I knew what the hell it was.
CHAPTER 3
EVEN WITH THE clearance codes and papers Cameron had left with his note, I was fully expecting there to be trouble getting the Icarus off the ground. To my mild and cautiously disbelieving surprise, there wasn't. The tower gave uspermission to lift, the landing-pad repulsor boost got us up off the groundand into range of the perimeter grav beams, and a few minutes later we werehaulingfor space under our own power.
After Tera's revelation about the archaic computer system we'd been saddledwith, I had been wondering just what kind of shape the drive would be in. Butthere, too, my pessimism turned out to be unnecessary, or at least premature.
The thrusters roared solidly away, driving us steadily through the atmospheretoward the edge of Meima's gravity well, and with each of my periodic callsback to the engine room Nicabar assured me all was going just fine.
It wouldn't last, though. I knew it wouldn't last; and as the capacitors inthe nose cone discharged into the cutter array and sliced us a link hole intohyperspace, I warned myself that things were unlikely to continue running thissmoothly. Somewhere along the way, we were going to run into some serioustrouble.
Six hours out from Meima, we hit our first batch of it.
My first warning was a sudden, distant-sounding screech sifting into thebridge, sounding rather like a banshee a couple of towns over. I slapped the big redKILL button, throwing a quick look at the monitors as I did so, and withanother crack from the capacitors we were back in space-normal.
"McKell?" Nicabar's voice came from the intercom. "You just drop us out?"
"Yes," I confirmed. "I think we've got a pressure crack. You reading anyatmosphere loss?"
"Nothing showing on my board," he said. "Inner hull must still be solid. Ididn't hear the screech, either—must be somewhere at your end of the ship."
"Probably," I agreed. "I'll roust Chort and have him take a look."
I called the EVA room, found that Chort was already suiting up, and headedaft.
One of the most annoying problems of hyperspace travel was what the expertscalled parasynbaric force, what we nonexperts called simply hyperspacepressure.
Ships traveling through hyperspace were squeezed the whole way, the pressurelevel related through a complicated formula to the ship's mass, speed, andoverall surface area. The earliest experimental hyperspace craft had usuallywound up flattened, and even now chances were good that a ship of any decentsize would have to drop out at least once a trip to have its hull specialisttake a look and possibly do some running repairs.
Considering what I'd seen of the Icarus's hull back on the ground, I wasfranklysurprised we'd made it as far as we had.
Tera and Everett were standing in the corridor outside the EVA room when Iarrived, watching Jones help a vacsuited Chort run a final check on hisequipment. "Well, that didn't take long," Tera commented. "Any idea where theproblem is?"
"Probably somewhere here on the larger sphere," I said. "The computer didn'thave any ideas?"
She shook her head. "Like I said, it's old and feeble. Nothing but macrosensors, and no predictive capability at all."
"Don't worry," Chort assured us, his whistly voice oddly muted by his helmet.
"That screech didn't sound bad. Regardless, I will find and fix it."
"Someone's going to have to go into the wraparound with him, too," Jones put in.
"I checked earlier, and there aren't any of the connections or lifeline-feedsof a standard airlock."
I'd noticed that, too. "You volunteering?" I asked him.
"Of course," he said, sounding surprised that it was even a question. "EVAassist is traditionally mechanic's privilege, you know."
"I'm not concerned with tradition nearly as much as I am whether we've got asuit aboard that'll fit you," I countered. "Tera, pull the computer inventoryand see what we've got."
"I already checked," she said. "There are three suit/rebreather combos inLocker Fifteen. It didn't list sizes, though."
"I'll go look," Jones volunteered, checking one last seal on Chort's suit andsqueezing past him. "That's lower level, Tera?"
"Right," she said. "Just forward of Cabin Seven."
"Got it." Jones eased past me and headed for the aft ladder.
"So how will he handle it?" Everett asked. "Go into the wraparound and feedChort the lifeline from there?"
"Basically," I nodded. "There's a slot just outside the entryway where thesecondary line can connect, but he'll want Jones feeding him the primary lineas he goes along. Otherwise, it can get kinked or snarled on the maneuveringvents, and that eats up time."