"Absolutely nothing," I said. "Oh, except that dinner is going to be readysoon.
Thought you might want to join us."
"What are we having?" he asked.
"No idea," I admitted. "However, Chort's in charge of preparation, so I expectit'll at least be palatable."
"Probably," Everett said, wincing slightly as he shifted his leg.
"Unfortunately, I don't know if I'm up to the walk."
"Really," I said, frowning, as I squatted down beside him. "I didn't realizeit was bothering you that badly or I wouldn't have jumped on you earlier. Sorry."
He waved the apology away. "Don't worry about it. You were right—it should bemostly healed by now. Maybe it's the cold and lower air pressure up herethat's bothering it."
"Then the lodge and a real bed are exactly what you need," I said briskly, straightening up and reaching down to him. "Come on—I'll give you a hand."
"No, that's all right," he said. "Let me just rest it a while longer, and I'll come up later."
"You're going to join us for dinner, Everett," I said firmly. "This is thefirst decent meal we'll have had since I don't know when, and you and your legaren't going to miss out on it."
"Look, I appreciate the thought. But—"
"Besides, we have to have a serious talk about what we're going to do after weleave here," I said. "And that's going to concern all of us. So, bottom line: Either you let me help you up to the lodge, or I'm going to send Nicabar andIxil to carry you. Your choice."
"You win," he said, putting down the listing and smiling wryly. "They wound upmostly carrying me back to the Icarus on Palmary, and I'm not in any hurry torepeat the experience."
We made our way around the curve of the hull and into the wraparound.
Everett's leg didn't seem to be giving him all that much trouble that I could see, but Inevertheless kept a hand ready to assist if it should suddenly go weak on him.
I turned on the entryway floodlights for better lighting and preceded him downthe ladder. He reached the ground safely, and we headed toward the lodge.
A gentle breeze had started up since I'd entered the Icarus, stirring up thecold mountain air and making it feel that much colder, and Everett's legreacted by stiffening up even more. It took us over ten minutes to cross the fourhundred meters to the lodge, and by the time we made it up the steps to theportico he had given his pride a vacation and was leaning heavily on my arm.
"Sorry about this," he puffed as I steered us to the main door. "I guess Ishould have let Ixil carry me after all."
"Not a problem," I assured him. "You'll be better once we get you out of allthis cold night... damn."
"What?" he asked.
"The lights," I said, turning around to look behind us. Sure enough, theIcarus was beautifully bathed in the backwash from the floodlights. "I wasn't eventhinking. Too used to always leaving them on in port, I guess."
"You going to go back and turn them off?" Everett asked.
"Unless we want to advertise our presence to anyone who happens to pass by," Isaid, getting the door open and helping him limp over the threshold. Thedelicate aromas coming from the kitchen area made my stomach growl. "Go onin—the dining area's off to the left, around that corner and through a sort ofrectangular archway. I'll be back in a minute."
"Better grab a flashlight for the way back," he warned as I headed back acrossthe portico. "That ground's pretty uneven in places."
"I will," I called back over my shoulder. "Assuming I can remember where westashed them. Make sure Chort saves me some of whatever that is, all right?"
"Sure," he called. "Well, probably."
Between the portico lights behind me and the floodlights in front of me I hadno problem traversing the terrain this time around. I climbed up the ladder andshut off the floodlights, then headed forward into the main sphere.
Contrary to what I'd implied to Everett, I knew exactly where the flashlightswere, and it was the work of ten seconds to unearth one from the pile ofmachine-shop equipment. But now that I was finally alone in the ship therewere other more urgent matters that needed to be attended to, and the excuse of hunting for a flashlight should give me the time I needed.
I tackled the helm and nav systems first, my familiarity with them permittingme to finish the job in probably two minutes. Tera's computer was next on mylist, another relatively quick and easy job given how much time I'd spent around itlately. After that, making sure to stay well back in the wraparound as Islippedpast the open hatchway, I headed back into the engine section.
Even with full lighting the maze of cables and conduits back there was a painto get through. With only a flashlight, and one that had been adjusted to itslowest setting yet, such a safari was downright dangerous. But I made itthroughto the control station without garroting myself, and five minutes later I wasdone.
The hidden access to the inner sphere was sitting wide-open, just as I'dinstructed Ixil to leave it. I shined my light briefly inside, but there wasnothing to be seen except the usual tangle of wiring. I looped a few turns ofconduit over the hinged breaker panel, just to make sure no one thoughtlesslyclosed it, then left the engine section, making sure that the door to thewraparound was also locked open.
I left my flashlight off as I slipped out of the hatchway and climbed down theladder. Everett or someone else might be looking in this direction, and Istill had one last task to perform before I could head back up for dinner. Carefulof my footing, I circled the aft end of the ship and made my way around to theship's starboard side.
With the tree branches towering over me blocking out the starlight, this sideof the ship was even darker than the port side had been. Even so, it wasn'tdifficult to locate the set of latch grooves I'd spotted on my firstinspectionof the ship back at Meima, the grooves I'd later learned Cameron had anchoreda collapsible ladder into for his backdoor entrance into the ship that morning.
Probing carefully with my little finger, I felt in one of the two bottomgroovesfor the piece of guidance tag I'd wadded up and put inside.
The folded piece of plastic was no longer wedged halfway down the opening asI'd left it. Instead, it had been jammed all the way to the bottom of the groove.
A
quick check of the other groove showed the other half of the tag had likewisebeen crammed into the bottom.
Feeling my way along the side of the ship, I circled around the drivethrusters and worked my way back to the base of the ladder. Then, and only then, did Iturn on my flashlight and head up to the lodge.
Everett was not, as I'd expected, waiting for me in the expansive foyer whereI'd left him. He had instead found his way to the dining room and seatedhimself at the far end of one of the rustic hewn-wood tables. Shawn, Tera, and Nicabarhad reappeared from their rooms and were in the process of choosing seats oftheir own at the table, with Chort and Ixil just lugging in a large steamingstewpot containing whatever it was I'd smelled earlier. Four seats were still empty: one on each side of Everett at the far end, one beside Shawn, thefourth at the end of the table closest to me, the seat facing away from the entrancearchway. Choosing that one, leaving Chort and Ixil to fight over the otherthree chairs, I sat down.
Dinner was a curious affair, full of odd contrasts. The couple of hours ofprivacy had done small but noticeable wonders for the civility level among thegroup, particularly for Tera and Shawn, who mentioned that they'd spent theirtime catching up on badly needed sleep. The fact that the quiet surroundingslent themselves to a sense of security was also undoubtedly a calming factor.
At the same time, though, there was an underlying tension permeating the wholeevent, a tension that showed up in a hundred little ways, from the slightlystilted conversation and long uncomfortable silences to the way everyone'seyesperiodically and suddenly darted to the archway behind me as if expecting theentire population of the Patth homeworld Aauth to suddenly come charging in onus. Tera seemed the worst in this respect, though Shawn's natural twitchinessbrought him in a close second. By a sort of unspoken mutual consent we avoidedthe topic of the rest of our trip, and our chances of actually getting toEarth with the whole Spiral breathing down our necks.