Ixil's inventory included only three of the connector tools, but since there was also a great deal of hauling to be done the limited number worked out just fine.
Cameron, bless him, had used high-strength but low-weight metal composites, which meant that even Shawn and Chort could lug the plates to the wraparound with relative ease. We rotated jobs every twenty minutes or so, with an eye toward not fatiguing any one set of muscles. As Ixil suggested at one point, there was likely to be more than enough muscle fatigue to go around.
For the first six hours we concentrated on simple disassembly, starting with the nonsupporting walls and moving on to bulkheads, shifting the plates into the wraparound and stacking them by the hatch. At that point, I decided we had enough material to start with Chort's exterior modification plan. We still had two shipboard suits—the third had been left behind on Xathru when we'd filed Jones's death report—and of course Chort had his own suit as well. Putting Tera and Nicabar into the smaller and larger sizes, respectively, I sent them outwith Chort, the welder, and two connector tools and crossed my fingers.
It worked out better than even my best level of cautious hope. Chort, itturned out, was quite competent with the welder, at least as skilled as Ixil if not ashade more so. The proper positioning of the plates was another worry I'd had; Tera solved that one by the three of them assembling an entire longitudinalsection and working it into place between the two spheres before Chort did anywelding. With two of the connector tools now outside, the four of us insideshifted jobs again from mass disassembly to the more delicate task of movingthe gear from the now nonexistent rooms to new quarters against the inside of thehull. The large sphere's gravitational level of .85 gee made the tasks oflifting and carrying marginally easier while still avoiding the missteps andinertial problems of low-gee environments.
The days settled into a steady if slightly frantic routine. Chort spent everywaking hour outside, clearly loving it, except for the brief periods when hehad to come in to have his rebreather recharged. Those of us who could fit intothe remaining suits—which was everyone except Everett—took our turns outside withhim, most of us not nearly as enthusiastic about the wide-open spaces as Chortwas. The rest of our time was divided between more disassembly, shifting thenecessary equipment to the inner hull and tossing the rest, or collapsing onour transplanted bunks in the near coma that had taken the place of normal sleep.
With the verbal sniping and general lack of sociability that had marked thetripup to this point I had braced myself for the escalation in overall tensionthat all this unscheduled exercise was bound to create. Once again—and this one wasreally to my surprise—it didn't happen. There was the occasional snapped wordor under-the-breath curse, but for the most part I found my fellow travelerssuddenly behaving far more like a seasoned crew than a random collection ofsemi-hostile strangers.
In retrospect, I suppose, I shouldn't have been so surprised by the suddentransformation. Before the Najiki near miss at Utheno we'd been little morethan interstellar truck drivers, doing a dull job for low pay, with nothing inparticular to look forward to after it was done, and with only the vaguethreat of a possible hijacking to make it even marginally interesting. Now, suddenly, we were on the cusp of history, with the chance to make a name for ourselvesand at the same time stick it hard to the Patth and their hated economic empire.
We had the chance for immortality—and, even more importantly, for possiblyserious riches—and that simultaneous group grab for the brass ring was drawing usfirmlytogether.
Of course, lurking behind the chance to make history was the darker knowledgethat if the Patth caught up with us even our own personal histories wouldprettywell be over. That was undoubtedly part of the cooperation, too.
But whatever the reason, the progress the first four days was nothing short ofremarkable. So much so that midway through the fifth day I pulled Everett andIxil off the work crews and sent them aft to the engine room to startrecalibrating the equipment that the Najiki ion attack had scrambled. Then, with Chort, Nicabar, and Shawn working outside, I took Tera over to her computerand settled in for a crash course in Alien Stardrive 101.
The class didn't take nearly as long as I'd hoped it would. "That's it?" Iasked as the last page of data scrolled to the top of the computer display. "That'sall they found?"
"Be thankful we have even this much," she countered tartly. But there wereworrylines creasing her forehead, too. Perhaps, like me, she was starting torealize just how much of a long shot this whole scheme really was. "The idea wasn't tosit there on Meima until they had the whole thing figured out to fivedecimals, you know. The minute they realized what they had, they shot that message offto Dad. This isn't much more than the five weeks it took to get the Icarus partsshipped in and put together."
"I suppose," I conceded, scowling at the meter-square opening into the sphere, a
disguised access panel that Tera had luckily known how to open. "And theynever got more than a couple of meters inside?"
"No," she said. "They were afraid of crossing circuits or damaging somethingelse along the way. You can see for yourself what a maze of conduits and loosewires it is in there."
I stretched flat along the hull beside the hole and shined a light in. She wasright: It was a jungle in there. "Reminds me of the engine room," I said, playing the light around some more. It looked like there were panels ofglowinglights on what little I could see of the wall through the wiring. "I wonder ifit was planned that way or if all the cable ties just fell apart over theyears.
You said there was another access from the other side of the sphere?"
"Yes, behind the secondary breaker panel in the engine room," she said. "Theyput hinges on the breaker panel so that it swings right out."
"Has it got a better view than this one?"
"Not really." She gestured toward the access hole. "They tried sending inprobes, but the umbilicals kept getting caught on the wiring and Dr. Chou wasafraid they'd tear something trying to get them loose. They had one self- guidedprobe that got in a little farther, but something confused its sensors and itfroze up completely."
"Well, we're not going to get anywhere without a complete idea of what's inthere," I said.
"I hope you're not suggesting one of us go inside," she said darkly. "If theprobes couldn't make it through, you certainly won't."
"I like to think I'm a bit more competent at working my way through tangledwiring than someone tugging blindly on a probe control," I told her. "As ithappens, though, I was thinking of starting with someone slightly smaller."
She frowned. "Who?"
I nodded in the direction of the engine room. "Go get Ixil," I said, "and I'll show you."
Ixil wasn't any more enthusiastic about my idea than Tera was. "I don't know, Jordan," he said, stroking Pax's head uneasily as he crouched on his leftforearm and hand. "Every design of Stardrive I've ever heard of has had ahalf-dozen high-voltage sites and shock capacitors associated with it. If Paxtouches one of those, it'll kill him."
"He goes through power conduits all the time," I reminded him. "How does heavoid insulation breaks and short circuits there?"
"He knows what to look for with our stuff," Ixil said. "This is an unknownalien design, with an entirely different set of cues. For that matter, even thelower-voltage lines may have lost their insulation over the years. You and Iare big enough to survive a minor shock like that. Pax isn't."
"I know," I said. "And I wish there were another way. But there isn't. We haveto see what's in there; and Pix and Pax are the only eyes we've got."