"Where did he get all that?" I asked.
"I bought most of it for him during our stopover on Xathru," she said. "He'dplanned to come out after the first stop, but after Jones's death we decidedhe should stay hidden a while longer."
"Ah," I said, remembering now all the bags she'd brought aboard at Xathru, andhow annoyed she'd been that I'd cut her shopping spree short.
"But why would anyone bother to take all of it along?" she asked again.
"Perhaps they wanted to eliminate any evidence that he was ever here," Ixilsaid. "Their contact would have told them that your father had kept hispresenceaboard a secret. At this point it would be basically your word againsttheirs."
"If it ever even came to that," I added. "They may have something else plannedfor you down the line."
She tried glaring at me again, but her heart wasn't in it. "You're a realcomfort to have around, McKell," she growled. "Both of you."
"Yes, well, we haven't exactly gotten what we signed up for, either," Icountered. "What I want to know is why this ship is still flying. We've beenhalf a grab away from them at least twice now. Why haven't they simply pickedus up?"
She sighed. "I don't know."
"Perhaps it would help," Ixil suggested, "if we knew what exactly thismysterious cargo is."
For a long minute Tera remained silent, her eyes flicking between our faces, clearly trying to decide just how far she was willing to trust us. Or perhapsjust trying to come up with a convincing lie. "All right," she said at last.
"The Icarus isn't carrying any cargo. The Icarus is the cargo."
She waved a hand around her. "This is what the team uncovered on Meima: two spheres, connected together, the larger one empty except for its radialgravitygenerator, the smaller one crammed with alien electronics."
"How alien?" Ixil asked.
"Very alien," she said grimly. "It was like nothing they'd ever seen before, with markings and notations that were also totally unknown. We still don'tknow whether it predates the Spiral civilizations, or is simply from outside knownterritory. That's why that old Worthram T-66 is aboard—it was the one thearchaeologists already had hooked up to study the small sphere, and when theybuilt the Icarus they just basically assembled the computer room around it."
"So that's where the spare gravity inside the outer hull came from," I said.
"I'd been planning to ask you how and why you'd set that up."
"We had nothing to do with it," Tera said. "And we have no idea what it's for.
All we know is that it runs about eighty-five percent Earth standard, and iscompletely self-adjusting, which is why it isn't fazed by the Icarus's owngravity generator."
She smiled wanly. "I understand it worked the same way on Meima. Even while itwas sitting there in a full planetary gravitational field, you could stillwalk all the way around inside the sphere without falling off."
"Must have been quite an experience," I murmured.
"Half of them loved it; the other half couldn't stand it," she said. "Anyway, that's why they built the inner hull so far away from the outer one—all themetal seems to inhibit the sphere's gravity field somehow, but if you put thetwo hulls any closer together you get a terrible disorientation at the edgeswhere the two grav fields intersect."
"And that's what the Patth are all hot and bothered over?" I asked. "The chance to get their hands on a new-style grav generator? Hardly seems worthcommittingmurder for."
She shook her head. "I'm not sure the Patth even know about the gravgenerator," she said; and there was something in her voice that sent a shiver up my back.
"I said the team couldn't decipher the markings on anything in the two spheres.
But the grav generator wasn't the only thing still working. A lot of theelectronics in the small sphere were on what appeared to be some kind of standby, and theywere able to take a lot of readings. Waveform analyses, pattern operations—
that sort of thing."
She took a deep breath. "They're not sure," she said quietly. "There's a lotthey still don't understand. Most of it, actually. But from what they coulddecipher of the patterns and power levels and even the geometric shapes ofsome of the components... well, they think this whole thing could be a stardrive."
I looked at Ixil. "What kind of stardrive?" I asked carefully.
"A fast one," she said. "A very fast one. From the readings, they think itcould be as much as twenty times faster than the Patth Talariac."
"And that," Ixil said softly, "is worth committing murder over."
CHAPTER 13
WE LEFT TERA to get back to her sleep, or at least what sleep she would beable to manage after that immensely cheering conversation, and reconvened ourprivatecouncil of war on the Icarus's bridge. Shawn, who'd been on duty, had voicedno objection at all to being relieved, heading off toward his cabin and bunk witha sort of dragging step that suggested he still wasn't fully recovered from hisrecent bout with Cole's disease. Or from straight borandis addiction, as thecase might be.
But while the bridge provided all the privacy we could want, or at least allwe were likely to get on the Icarus, it didn't offer anything in the way ofeither inspiration or answers.
"Hard though this may be to believe," I commented to Ixil as I watched hisferrets climb nose first down his legs and scamper off to their corridor andbulkhead sentry duties, "I think this whole thing is more confused now than itwas before we talked to Tera."
"I don't see how," Ixil said. "Instead of having a mysteriousmurderer/saboteuraboard the Icarus, we now only have a mysterious murderer."
"Oh, that's a great help," I said sarcastically.
"And we've also eliminated Tera as a suspect," he continued, ignoring thesarcasm. "Which leaves us only Chort, Nicabar, Shawn, and Everett. That shouldcount for something."
"Only if everything she told us was true," I cautioned him. "Don't forget thatphoto Uncle Arthur sent was not exactly definitive. She could simply be a veryaccomplished liar with a gift for improvisation."
"Really," he said, his polite voice edging as close to sarcasm as Kalixiriever got. "And does the large sphere's gravitational field come under the liartalent or the improvisational talent?"
"Fine, then," I growled, giving up. "Tera's as pure as the driven snow. Justbear in mind that even if she is who she says she is, her goals here may notcoincide completely with ours."
"Granted," he said. "So where does the extra confusion come in?"
"It comes in the same place Cameron went out," I said. "With all due respect, I
don't think much of your kidnapping theory. If they knew enough to get in hereand snatch him, why didn't they grab the Icarus while they were at it?"
"Maybe they don't know its actual significance," Ixil said. "Maybe they stillthink the prize is in the cargo hold and didn't think they had time to get toit right then."
"Then why let us leave the planet?" I countered. "Anyway, they have to have atleast an idea of what it is they're chasing. You don't offer hundred-grandfinder's fees completely on speculation."
"That doesn't necessarily follow," he said. "Maybe all they know is that theIcarus is carrying something Cameron desperately wants to get to Earth, whichthey want to take a look at simply on general principles. Perhaps that waswhat the anonymous gem-smuggling tip was all about, to give them an excuse to getinto the cargo hold."
I ran that one a couple of times around in my mind. It was not, I decided, as ridiculous as it seemed at first blush. "If so, they've got terriblecoordination problems," I pointed out. "The Najik let us go without evenblinking an eye."