The Icarus Hunt Read Online Free PDF Page A

checking my collar once to make sure the tag Cameron had given me was still there. I hadn’t spotted Cameron himself in the crowd, which either meant he was waiting at a different gate or that whoever had been searching his archaeological dig last night had already picked him up. Either way, I still planned to check out the
Icarus
, if only to see which species was standing guard over it.
    A heavy, aromatic hand fell on my shoulder. “Captain Jordan McKell?”
    I turned. Two of the Ihmis wardens had come unglued from their posts and were standing behind me, impressive and intimidating in their ceremonial helmets. “I’m McKell,” I confirmed cautiously.
    “Come with us, please,” the Ihmisit with his hand still on my shoulder said. “Port Director Aymi-Mastr would like to speak to you.”
    “Sure,” I said as casually as I could manage with a suddenly pounding heart as they gestured to the side and we worked our way across the pedestrian stream toward the Meima Port Authority building just inside the fence twenty meters away. Our papers were in order, our cargo cleared, our fees paid. Had someone finally backtracked one of Brother John’s cargoes to the
Stormy Banks?
If so, we were going to have some very awkward explaining to do.
    I’d never been in this particular Port Authority before, but I’d logged enough hours in Ihmis hotels and tavernos to have a pretty good idea what to expect. And I was mostly right. The friendly lighting, extremelycasual furniture, and smiling faces were hallmarks of the Ihmis style, all designed to put visitors at their ease.
    From what I’d heard, all those same friendly touches remained cheerfully in place right up to the point when they strapped you to the rack and started cranking.
    “Ah—Captain McKell,” a deep voice called as I was led across the bustling main room to a large and cluttered desk in the corner. Director Aymi-Mastr was typical of the species, with bulging, froglike eyes, four short insectoid antennae coming up from just above those eyes, and costal ridges around the sides of the face and neck. A female, of course; with Ihmisits the females were generally the ones with the organizational skills necessary to run a zoo like this. “Good of you to drop by. Please sit down.”
    “My pleasure, Director,” I said, sitting down in the chair at the side of the desk, deciding to pass over the fact that I hadn’t had much choice in the matter. One of the other Ihmisits set my bag on the desk and started rifling through it; I thought about complaining, decided against it. “What’s this about?”
    “To be perfectly honest, Captain, I’m not entirely certain myself,” she said, selecting a photo from the top of a stack of report files and handing it to me. “A message has come down from my superiors to ask you about this person.”
    It was a picture of Arno Cameron.
    “Well, he’s a human,” I offered helpfully. So it wasn’t Brother John’s cargo they wanted after all. At the moment I couldn’t decide whether that was good or bad. “Aside from that, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before.”
    “Really,” Aymi-Mastr said, dropping the pitch of her voice melodramatically. She leaned back in her chair and steepled her fingers in front of her—like the melodramatic tone, an annoying habit many Ihmisits had picked up from the old Earth movies they consumedby the truckload. “That’s very interesting. Particularly given that we heard from a witness not fifteen minutes ago who claims you were talking to him last night in a Vyssiluyan taverno.”
    A family of Kalixiri ferrets with very cold feet began running up and down my spine. “I hate to impugn the integrity of your witness,” I said flatly, tossing the photo back onto the desk. “But he’s wrong.”
    The frog eyes narrowed. “The witness was very specific about your name.”
    “Your witness was either drunk or a troublemaker,” I said, standing up. That taverno had been crowded, and after