Timothy Zahn - Spinneret

It was routine data manipulation—a simple matter of locating the equipment and necessary tools from the computer's listings and men shuffling work schedules for the right number of qualified mechanics—and as she tapped keys, her mind drifted back to the previous day and her conversations with Perez and Meredith.

She hadn't worked under Meredith for long, and aside from a brief interview when she'd been accepted for the colony, her personal knowledge of him was limited to the Ceres trip. Still, military bases had their fair share of gossip, and the stories she'd heard about the colonel had invariably painted him as honest and fair, which made his quick dismissal of Perez's allegations seem out of character. True, he was under a lot of pressure—and, admittedly, she wasn't convinced Perez had a case either—but it still seemed like an investigation was in order. As for Dunlop's dismissal, she couldn't make up her mind which way she hoped Meredith would decide.

In one corner of the terminal screen a yellow light blinked on. Startled, Carmen looked at what she'd just typed, realized with mild annoyance that in her reverie she'd tried to shift a worker who was already on a higher priority job. She blanked the command, the yellow light disappearing as she did so. Keying for the next page, she resumed scanning the job assignments.

One thing she was sure of, though, was that part of her responsibility to Astra was to do her bit to lower tensions and friction … and to that end she was determined to push her town council idea as hard as she could. Meredith's scorn notwithstanding, it seemed to her the simplest way to make the civilians feel more at home. Besides which, if the colony survived it would eventually shift to civilian government anyway, and having such a setup already in place would undoubtedly ease the transition.

Without warning, a red-bordered rectangle appeared in the middle of her screen, the words TOP PRIORITY MESSAGE flashing above it. Frowning, Carmen watched as words began filling the box … and felt her eyebrows climbing her forehead as she read them.

ATTENTION: ALL PERSONNEL: SATELLITE ARRAY HAS

DETECTED ROOSHRIKE SPACECRAFT APPROACHING ASTRA. NO

HOSTILITIES—REPEAT, NO HOSTILITIES—ARE EXPECTED, BUT

ALL MILITARY PERSONNEL ARE TO REMAIN ALERT.

LEGAL/ORGANIZATIONAL STAFF WILL IMMEDIATELY PREPARE

LISTING OF KNOWN ROOSHRIKE CUSTOMS AND RITUALS FOR

TRANSMISSION TO COLONEL MEREDITH'S OFFICE.

Carmen read the message twice before blanking it from her screen. "Hell in a Stealth," someone behind her muttered. The astonished chatter was just starting when Carmen's superior cut it off.

"All right, all right; delete the noise," she growled from her own terminal. "Smith, Hanson—start a Legal File search; Barratino, you check military records; Eldridge, start a general search for anything that's gotten buried in odd corners.

Olivero, you organize and format everything as it comes in."

The room fell silent, except for the steady sleet-on-a-window sound of computer keys. What rotten luck. Carmen thought as she waited for the data flow to begin.

Stuck in a little room twenty kilometers from the landing field when I could be out there catching my first glimpse of a real live alien.

Though come to think of it, perhaps it wasn't such bad luck, after all. The Rooshrike had contacted humans once before … and that time they'd opened fire.

The Rooshrike attack on the Celeritas was also on Meredith's mind as he watched the shiny dot driving over the ocean toward Martello Base, the feeling of being a massive sitting duck adding stiffness to his back as he sat in the lead vehicle of the five-car welcoming committee. The chances that this was a sneak attack were small—after all, over half of Astra's rental fee had yet to be paid—but business logic had only minimal effect on Meredith's combat reflexes. Trying to pretend that the sweat collecting on his forehead was due solely to the warm day, he squinted into the bright blue of the sky and waited.

Radar had already shown that the ship was considerably larger than the shuttles Martello's landing strip had been designed for, but the Rooshrike pilot had assured Meredith that that wouldn't be a problem, and as the arrowhead-shaped craft made its final descent, the colonel saw why. Unlike the largely horizontal approach used by American shuttles, the Rooshrike's was predominantly vertical, reminding Meredith momentarily of the old single-use space capsules. He winced, recalling the helplessness of those ancient craft; but at nearly the same instant the image vanished as white spears of repulser fire erupted from beneath the ship. Even at their supposedly safe distance Meredith distinctly felt the heat wave of that ignition, and with a silent prayer for the runway's permcrete, he watched the alien touch down. A minute later, he ordered the motorcade forward.

The Rooshrike ship had deployed a debarkation ramp by the time the humans reached the area. The ramp, designed to bypass the hottest sections of permcrete, was considerably shorter than the ones the Ctencri who'd landed on Earth had used, and Meredith decided the description of the Rooshrike as hot-planet aliens hadn't been overstating the case.

The Rooshrike itself, when it appeared, wasn't particularly impressive; but then, as Lieutenant Andrews would comment later, there wasn't a lot even aliens could do with basic spacesuit design. Apart from the oddly shaped face just barely visible through the dark visor, the creature descending the ramp might almost have been a slightly misproportioned human.

It came alone. Taking the cue, Meredith left the cars and went forward, moving as close to the ramp as he could stand. The alien reached the end of the ramp and stopped expectantly.

Meredith cleared his throat. "I greet you," he called to the alien, "and welcome you to Astra. I am Colonel Lloyd Meredith; I speak for my people."

There was a barely discernible pause as the Rooshrike's translator caught up, and then the alien stepped off the ramp and started forward. Meredith started breathing again; apparently he'd gotten the formal greeting right.

Or else the Rooshrike was being tolerant with the new race.

The alien stopped a couple of meters in front of Meredith. "I greet you in turn," it said, its voice hitting the same slight mispronunciations Meredith had heard from the Ctencri translator computers on Earth. "I am Beaeki; I speak for my people."

"We're pleased to have you here," Meredith told him, easing back a few centimeters. The alien's spacesuit was noticeably hot; Meredith wondered what the internal temperature was. "I regret we cannot offer proper accommodations for your stay, but our information concerning your environmental needs is incomplete."

"I will not require accommodations; my visit will be brief. And your lack of complete information is per our instructions to the Ctencri."

Not much for the odd polite lie, Meredith thought. That'll be a welcome change. "I see. Would you care to explain why? After all, we're neighbors now, and either of us might someday crash a ship in the other's territory."

"Your argument is unidirectional. Should a Rooshrike ship be distressed in this system a rescue team from the inner planet would provide aid."

"You have a colony in this system?" Meredith asked carefully. The Ctencri hadn't mentioned that.

"A mining base only; the surface is too dry for practical colonization. The base is adequately defended against attack, however."

Meredith let the implication pass without comment; a stiff denial that Astra had any militaristic intentions might be misconstrued. "I see. May I ask how long you intend to stay here? I would like to give you a tour of our colony and the facilities we are setting up to mine the mineral deposits near here." A sudden thought struck him. "I take it you referred to liquid sulfur when you spoke of your mining base being too dry. Our analysis indicates that sulfur is the third most common element in our soil. Perhaps when we get our mining and separating equipment going you'd be interested in purchasing some of the sulfur from us."