"Because not everyone was ready to go," she sighed. "There were several keypeople out of the immediate area, and we didn't want to leave without them. Wealso knew that after the explosion the Ihmisits would come to investigate, andwe thought having the whole group still there would alleviate any suspicionsthey might have about the explosion."
She shook her head. "We never expected the official reaction to be sointense."
"That's because the Patth were already involved," I said, nodding heavily.
"Onlythere was no way you could know that. The Lumpies seem to be their hiredmuscle of choice."
"I guess so," she said. "Anyway, the Ihmisits descended on the dig like a packof jackals, found Dr. Chou and the two alien bodies, and arrested everyone insight. One of the techs managed to slip out of the noose long enough to get totown and warn Dad, but he was then picked up an hour later. They got Dad'spilot, too, and the rest of those who'd been off the dig site."
"Did the Ihmisits know your father was on Meima?" Ixil asked.
"Not at first," she said. "I'm sure that's what saved him. By the time theybacktracked the pilot to his ship, he'd already hired all the crewers heneeded.
Luckily, the computer the group had been using for their analysis—the WorthramT-66 down there—was one of the few computer systems I actually knew how tooperate, so he decided I would come aboard as the computer tech."
"Were you involved with the rest of the hiring?" I asked.
She shook her head. "He wanted me completely out of it. He still thought of meas his ace, and he didn't want to risk us even being seen in the same tavernotogether."
"Too bad," Ixil said. "It might have been useful to compare everyone'srecruiting story with an independent source."
"I can't help you there," Tera said. "Anyway, after everything was set he wentto ground somewhere for the night, and in the morning headed for the ship."
"How did he get in?" I asked. "I checked the time lock he'd set on the hatch, and it hadn't been opened."
"There's a secondary hatch on the top of the engine section," she said. "Justaft of the smaller sphere. He climbed up a collapsible ladder set into thestarboard side and went in, taking the ladder in with him. It and the hatchboth are hidden behind all that tangle of pipes and cables back there."
So that was what the twin lines of latch grooves I'd seen on the engineeringhull were for: anchor points for the ladder. "And since the guidance tags he'dgiven out would bring all of us to the ship from the port side, he figuredthat even if one of us got there before he was all the way inside he'd still be allright."
"You being the single question mark," she said. "I spotted you waiting at thesouth gate, ready to go charging in as soon as they opened up. Dad was goingin the west gate, but the south gate was slightly closer, and I was afraid you'dget there ahead of him."
"Hence, you called in an anonymous tip," I said sourly. "And pegged it to yourfather, knowing that that was something they'd take seriously enough to pullme in for."
"Basically," she said. "I gave it a few minutes, then called in the second tipto discredit the first and spring you."
"Brilliant," I said. "Really brilliant. I don't suppose it occurred to youthat attaching my name to Cameron's right at the beginning meant they would nowhave two faces to circulate instead of just one? And me with no idea anyone waseven looking for me?"
"I'm sorry," she said, dropping her eyes. "Again, all I can say is that I didn't know how involved the Patth were. If I had..."
She eyed me, some of her latent suspicion drifting up to the surface again.
"Frankly, I don't know what I'd have done. I didn't know then if I could trustyou. I still don't."
I thought about reprising our logical argument on that point, decided that ifit hadn't worked the first time a second rendition was unlikely to make thedifference. "We'll just have to work on that, I guess," I said instead, handingher gun back to her. "Still, it looks like the Patth were playing things alittle too close to their chests, too. Port Director Aymi-Mastr, for one, wasclearly out of the loop of what was really going on, or she'd never have letme go so easily."
"Or let the ship lift," Ixil added.
"Right," I said. "Okay; so much for background. Let's move on to thesuspicious-activities list. I assume now that you were the one who turned onthe grav generator during that first spacewalk and dumped Chort down the side ofthe ship. I'd told him to check the engine section for hull ridges, and you wereafraid he'd spot that extra hatch."
"Yes," she said, another twinge of guilt crossing her face. "It's camouflaged, but up close it's pretty easy to spot."
"And Jones's death?"
"No," she said emphatically. "Neither Dad nor I had anything to do with that."
"So we can chalk that one up to our Mr. X," I said. "As we can, I presume, theanonymous smuggling tip to Najiki Customs?"
"That wasn't me, either," Tera said. "You think I would want to draw officialattention to us in the middle of a Patth spaceport?"
"Just making sure," I said. "And we've already established that your fatherwas the one playing with cutting torches and intercoms. And circuit breakers, Ipresume?"
"That one was me, actually," she said. "He'd gotten out of the 'tweenhull areaand was warning me that he might have been spotted when the intercom wentdead.
I was up in my cabin, and on a hunch I checked the breaker box. When Icouldn't get the one to reset, I guessed what you were up to. There wasn't enough timeto fix the short circuit, so I just pulled all the breakers and hid them."
"It was clever," I conceded. "Annoying, but clever. I presume it was yourcomputer-room intercom I'd gimmicked?"
She nodded. "The access panel we'd improvised in the wall wasn't quite square, and sometimes I had to bang it into place. That was what you heard the timeyoucame charging in on me."
"I also heard it from sick bay once when I was talking to Shawn there," Iremembered. "He'd heard it a few times, too. There's another job to pin on Mr.
X, by the way: loosening Shawn's straps or whatever he did that let the kidgetaway."
"You think that was deliberate?" Tera asked, frowning.
"Of course it was," I said. "Our Mr. X couldn't very well poke around Ixil'sroom with his toolbox and junior poisoner's kit while the rest of you were still aboard—too much risk someone would catch him at it. But I'd told you all tostayput, so he had to come up with a good reason to get you outside."
Ixil cleared his throat delicately. "I'm afraid you both may be missing themore important point here," he said. "Bear in mind that while everyone wasconveniently off the ship, Arno Cameron vanished. Not necessarily of his ownvolition."
I looked at Tera, saw her face pale. "But how could they have done it?" shebreathed. "How could they have even known he was there?"
"The same way I figured it out, maybe," I said, the ominous implications of aCameron kidnapping tumbling over each other like leaves in a brisk autumnwind.
"Or else he heard one of those clunks and discovered you two talkingtogether."
"Perhaps that was the true purpose for the customs inquiry, in fact," Ixilsaid.
"To delay the moment when his disappearance would be discovered. And to ensurewe left Potosi afterward as quickly as we could, so that by the time anyonedid notice we'd be long gone from the scene."
"But why would they take all his things with him?" Tera persisted. Clearly, this wasn't a scenario she was at all willing to accept. "He had a full campingsetup: food and water packs, a roll-up mattress, even one of those littlecatalytic waste handlers."