I'd thought the words, or at least the tone, might get another facial reactionout of her. But she simply studied me, those hazel eyes holding more pity thanloathing. "I'll stay," she said. "I took the contract, too."
"Good," I said briskly. "Then we're all one big happy family again. How nice.
Revs, I believe you're still on duty?"
"I'll stay with the ship for now, McKell," he said quietly. "But remember whatI told you earlier. If I find out we're carrying drugs or guns, I'm out."
I nodded. "I'll remember," I promised.
He regarded me another moment, then nodded back and tapped the door-releasepad.
It opened, and he disappeared back out into the corridor.
Tera started to follow, but then paused in the doorway. "You're not trapped, Jordan," she said, her voice quiet. Quiet, earnest, and idealistic as allget-out. Generally, it was a combination I hated. On her, oddly enough, itseemed to fit rather naturally. "There's a way out somewhere. You just have towant to find it badly enough."
"I once thought that way," I told her. "Thought there was a quick and simplesolution to every problem."
"I didn't say the solution would be quick or simple," she said impatiently, the idealism level dropping but the earnestness increasing to more than make upthe difference. "I just said that it was there if you really wanted it."
"I'll keep that in mind," I said. "And while I'm doing that, perhaps you'lltryto remember that job security of any sort is a damn sight better than thestarvation diet everyone but the Patth is on these days. It's easy for acomputer jock like you—you don't have to fly on star-ships; there arecomputerseverywhere. But I can't very well fly an accounting firm's desk, now can I?"
"I suppose the question is how much security is worth to you," she said.
"Compared with, say, self-respect." Turning back to the door, she started tostride out of the room.
"By the way, Tera?" I said.
Almost reluctantly, probably annoyed at my ruining her dramatic exit, shestopped. "Yes?"
"Everett told me you were in the mechanics shop when he came to alert everyoneabout Shawn's escape," I said. "What were you doing in there?"
She regarded me coolly. "I was looking for a jeweler's screwdriver set," shesaid. "One of my displays was going funny and I thought it might need someadjustment."
"Ah," I said. "Thank you."
She gazed at me another heartbeat. "You're welcome," she said, turning againand making her exit.
I watched the door slide closed behind her, gave her and Nicabar a minute togetout of the corridor, then went over and locked the door open again. I like myprivacy as much as the next man, but if anyone was planning to go for a strollaround the mid deck, I wanted to hear them doing it.
Returning to my chair, I resumed my regimen of scowling at the displays. Teraand Nicabar had at least been up front about their suspicions about me. Howmanyof the others, I wondered, were having the same thoughts, only weren'tinterested in a confrontation?
I didn't care about being popular. Well, I did, actually, as much as anyoneelse, but I'd long since resigned myself to the knowledge that people wholiked me were going to be few and far between. The vital question right now, though, was not popularity but trust and obedience. If there was any chance at all ofmaking it through the ever-tightening Patth noose, it was going to require allof us working together.
All of us. Including our mysterious saboteur.
It would help enormously if I could figure out what exactly he was going for.
But while I could hammer any three or four of the incidents into a workabletheory, trying to put all of them together simply refused to work. If someoneknew what was in the Icarus's cargo hold, and if it was as valuable as we allthought, why hadn't he turned us in to the Patth on Potosi and claimed thereward? Or had the gem-smuggling tip to Najiki Customs been an abortiveattemptto do just that? And how did the attacks on Jones and Ixil fit in?
Abruptly, I sat up straighter in my chair, my mind flashing back to what Imyself had said not ten minutes earlier to Nicabar about the hijackerspossiblyhiring a pilot for the occasion. The Patth might very well be doing justthat—they certainly had enough money to spread around, and I was the onepersonthey knew was aboard. A single well-placed shot could take me out of thepicturepermanently, and make it vital for the rest to find a new pilot.
And if the Patth were dangling high-denomination bills in front of ships'pilots, why not ships' mechanics as well? Our resident saboteur, no matterwhat his secret talents and certificates, probably couldn't fly a ship this sizeand shape by himself. But two such talented and certified men just might be ableto pull it off.
And if this second man was also a mechanic, then the simplest way to get himaboard was to create an opening in that slot. Our saboteur had succeeded ineliminating Jones; but I'd already had Ixil standing in line to fill thevacancy. Was the implied threat of cyanide poisoning a heavy-handed attempt toscare Ixil off?
If so, he was going to be sorely disappointed. Kalixiri in general didn'tscare very well, and Ixil was even worse at it than the average.
Which unfortunately still left the question of why the Icarus wasn't alreadyin Patth hands; and maybe I'd now come up with an answer to that one, too. UncleArthur had said the Patth Director General was personally calling the variousgovernments along our route; but what if he was not, in fact, speaking for theentire Patth government? I'd always assumed the Patth were fairly monolithic, at least insofar as their relations with other species were concerned. But whatif that wasn't the case?
In that event our saboteur might not have turned us in to the Patth simplybecause he hadn't yet run across the right Patth to turn us in to. Maybe thecustoms flap on Potosi had indeed been an attempt to alert someone, only theyhadn't gotten the message in time. Or else my maneuver with Antoniewicz's namehad gotten us out of trouble and off the planet faster than anyone hadanticipated.
The politics of the situation, I knew, I didn't have a hope of unravelingwithout more detailed information about the Patth, which I didn't expect to begetting anytime soon. However, with this assumption came an unexpectedopportunity. Unless our saboteur had been recruited on the spot at the Meimaspaceport—which seemed unlikely—it meant that he must have had previous tiesto the Patth. Ties that, if I was lucky, would show up in the background reportsUncle Arthur had promised to deliver to me at our next stop.
I looked over my instruments and displays again, and despite the extra fuelcost involved edged our speed up a little. Suddenly, I was very anxious to get toMorsh Pon.
CHAPTER 11
IT WAS AN eighty-four-hour flight from Potosi to Morsh Pon, eighty-four hoursthat went both smoother and more annoyingly than I'd expected them to. We hadto make only two stops along the way for Chort to repair more hull ridges, whichconsidering the Icarus's haphazard construction was not a bad showing at all.
Perhaps the main hull's spherical design, unlovely though it was, actuallystood up better against hyperspace pressure than the lean, graceful lines that I wasmore used to with starships. Or maybe it was just that all of our good luckwas being unidirectionally expended on our hull.
There were no more attempts at sabotage, at least none that came to light, butwe had plenty of other trouble. Successive doses of borandis were able tobringShawn back from the edge and ensure that he wouldn't have any permanent neuraldamage, at least this time around. Unfortunately, he'd apparently been farenough along that it took more of the medicine than normal to get him properlystabilized. Everett thought we would be okay to Morsh Pon and probably the stopafter that, but we were going to have to get hold of a new supply sooner thanI'd hoped.