"Dad wasn't trying to hurt him," Tera snapped, her face flushing. "Not Ixil oranyone else." She transferred her glare to Ixil. "He thought you'd beprofessional enough to check the torch before you tried lighting it."
"I'd already done so," he said calmly. "Under the circumstances, I should haveknown to check it again."
"I'm sorry," she growled, her expression one of anger mixed with guilt. "Forwhatever it's worth, he felt very bad about you getting hurt."
Ixil inclined his head. "I accept his apology."
"Accept it in person, why don't you," I put in. "Elaina, we need to talk toyourfather right away."
"Tera," she corrected me. "And Dad's not here. He got off at Potosi."
I threw a glance at Ixil. The biggest Patth shipping facility in the entireregion; and that was where Cameron had chosen to jump ship? "Why?" I asked.
"I don't know," she said. "He didn't say anything about it to me beforehand.
All I know is that when we all got back after looking for Shawn, he and his thingswere gone."
Ixil rumbled in his throat. "You'll forgive me if I say that makes no sensewhatsoever."
"You can search the ship yourselves if you want," she countered tartly. "Itell you, he's not here."
"Let's go back to the beginning," I interrupted them, not about to let thisdegenerate into a reality-versus-logic argument if I could help it. "Let'sstart with how you got to Meima and why you're aboard the Icarus under thissemiassumed identity."
Tera looked back and forth between us, a wary look on her face. "Why should Itell either of you anything?" she demanded. "You've already admitted yoursouls are owned by a crime boss. Why should I trust you?"
"Because you have to trust someone," I told her, putting on my quietly earnest face and gunning it for all it was worth. "And as far as this ship and creware concerned, we're it. Did you know the Patth are hunting for us?"
She swallowed. "Yes. There were hints even before we left Meima, and Dad heardyou talking about it in your cabin."
"All right," I said. "Then remember back to Potosi, where one of our fellowcrewers called in a tip that nearly got us impounded by the Najiki Customsagents."
"How do you know it was one of us?" she asked.
"Because no one except the seven of us knew we were running under the nameSleeping Beauty at the time," I said. "If I hadn't gotten us out of that whenI did, the Icarus would inevitably have wound up in Patth hands. That ought toprove I'm on your side."
"And which is my side?"
"The side of getting the Icarus and its cargo to Earth intact," I told her. "Icould have turned you in on Dorscind's World, too. In fact, I risked gettingshot in order not to."
I waved a hand at Ixil. "And as for Ixil here, someone aboard—and I presumeit's all the same person—is apparently trying to scare him off the ship. While therest of you were out searching for Shawn on Potosi, he left the makings forpoison gas inside the door of Ixil's cabin. And then, for good measure, smashed the release pad to keep everyone else out."
Tera stared at me. "No. I don't believe it."
I shrugged. "You can ask Everett. He was there when we found the stuff."
"The point is that someone's been operating behind the scenes," Ixil said.
"But apparently, so have you and your father, for whatever reasons of your own."
"And the only way we're going to figure out who this other person is," Iconcluded, "is for you to tell us which were Cameron and Daughter Productionsand which weren't." No doubt about it, I decided, Ixil and I could be dazzlingin our logic when we wanted to be. "So: back to the beginning. How did you endup aboard the Icarus?"
If Tera was dazzled, she was hiding it well. But if she wasn't totallyconvinced, she was nevertheless convinced enough. "Dad was funding anarchaeological dig on Meima," she said, pulling off the blanket and swingingher legs over the side of the bunk. She was fully dressed, I noted, the sort ofthing that someone who's expecting trouble automatically does. She hadn'tneeded our arguments to know there was trouble aboard. "About three months ago theysent word that they'd found something big, something that could conceivablychange the course of history."
"Archaeologists do get a bit dramatic sometimes," I murmured. "Especially atfunding time."
"In this instance they may have understated the case," Tera said, droppingonto the deck and sitting down on the middle bunk. "Dad heard their description, and decided we needed to get it back to Earth as quickly and secretly as possible.
It took him a month to make the necessary preparations, after which he flew atech team in with the Icarus packed in pieces in shipping crates. Theyassembled the ship underground, the only place they could do it where they wouldn't beseen. A week ago Dad and I flew into Meima ourselves to oversee the final stages. He came in on his private ship, the Mensana, while I took a commercialliner under a false ID."
"Why?" Ixil asked. "Why did you come in by liner, I mean?"
"I was the ace up his sleeve," she said, a tight smile touching her lipsbrieflybefore vanishing again. "Or so he said. None of the others were to know I wasthere—as he pointed out, you can't leak information you don't have. My job wasto keep an eye on the Ihmisit authorities and try to get us a heads up ifanyonestarted showing undue interest in our activities."
"Having a starship suddenly appear out in the middle of nowhere would probablydo that," I said.
"It wasn't supposed to happen that way," Tera said, glaring at me. "Give us alittle credit. Dad had another team building a copy of the Icarus at one ofhis heavy construction plants on Rachna. The idea was for the copy to fly in, creating a nice official presence and data trail along the way, and get alllegally inspected at the Meima port. Then it would fly out to the dig, we'dmake a switch, and fly the original out. By the time anyone stumbled across thecopyhidden in the cavern, we figured we'd be on Earth."
"What went wrong?" Ixil asked.
Tera grimaced. "Two of those bumpy aliens that slut Jennifer was trying towake up at the Morsh Pon taverno sneaked into the dig somehow," she said bitterly.
"They got Dr. Chou before they could be stopped. It was horrible—I wasn'tthere, but Dad said their weapons burned him alive."
"Yes, I've seen them in action," I said, feeling my own stomach turning withthe memory. "It is definitely not pretty."
Her forehead creased. "That's right; she said you'd killed a couple of them, didn't she?"
"In self-defense only, I assure you," I told her, wondering what her reactionwould be if I told her that far from trying to wake the Lumpies up, Jenniferhad instead been dabbing them with soporific from an injector ring to make suretheir blissful sleep lasted until well after the Icarus was off the planet. "Ihope you did something similar with your batch."
She shivered. "We killed them, yes," she said quietly. "Like you, inself-defense."
"But you knew they would have friends?" Ixil prompted.
"Yes." Visibly, Tera shook the thoughts of death away from her. "We—they, rather—knew they had to get the Icarus out right away. So they mixed up aconcoction that would scramble the spaceport sensors, blew the roof off thecavern, and Dad and the Mensana's pilot sneaked the ship up and off theplanet."
"Why turn around and come back?" I asked. "Why didn't they put everyone aboardwhile they could and head straight out?"