Timothy Zahn - Spinneret

Perez blinked; it was about the last thing he would have expected the colonel to ask his advice on. "I take it you don't want the whole crowd to stay up there?"

"The Rooshrike don't. They're within an ace of kicking the whole raft of them out of the system and taking over all security duties themselves."

"Not a good idea—especially after you and Carmen have been holding secret meetings with them."

"That's what I told them," Meredith nodded. "We've talked them into giving us a week to come up with a better solution."

"Hm. Well … perhaps a lottery drawing or something would be seen as fair—" He broke off as Meredith's phone buzzed. The colonel answered, and Perez let his eyes and mind drift out the window and up into the cloudless sky. Six alien races, all of them jockeying for position to get at the Spinneret. He'd talked glibly to Carmen about playing them off against each other, but the more he thought about it, the trickier it sounded. What sort of psychologies were they dealing with, for starters? Could they even assume all the aliens saw profit and loss in the same way? Surely there was overlap of some kind— they all did trade together, after all.

But for a prize as unique as the Spinneret any of them could easily suspend their normal business methods … to say nothing of their treaties or ethics—

"—wait there; do you understand? Do not attempt to—ah, continue until I arrive."

Perez's attention snapped back at the intensity in Meredith's voice. One glance at the colonel's expression told him instantly something was up. "Are we being attacked?" he stage-whispered.

Meredith waved irritably for silence. "I'll bring everything we'll need. You just stay put. Right." He broke the connection, punched another number. "Major Barner? Colonel Meredith. Green-seven-go; right away. Rendezvous with me west of target for directions … right. Out."

Meredith stood up, punching another number, and glanced at Perez. "We'll have to continue this conversation some other—"

"What is it?" Perez interrupted, stepping to block Meredith's path to the door.

"Dr. Hafner's team's uncovered a door in one of the hills near the Dead Sea. It may be the entrance to the Spinneret machinery." He moved his phone closer to his mouth. "Colonel Meredith. I want a flyer ready for me in fifteen minutes … no, thanks, I'll fly it myself. Thank you."

He dropped his arm to his side and made to go around Perez. "Let me go with you," Perez said, blocking his way again.

Meredith glared at him … then abruptly nodded. "All right. But stay out of our way." Sidestepping the other, he disappeared through the door.

Perez followed, lengthening his own stride to catch up. Maybe now, he thought, we'll finally find out what this whole Spinneret thing was for.

It seemed like forever before the flyer swooped in out of the west to settle down among the low hills, but Hafner knew it had actually been less than half an hour since his call. His four-man team had made good use of the time, though, uncovering enough of the double doors to get an idea as to how big they really were. In the silence that followed the flyer's landing, Hafner could hear the sound of approaching cars, and he wondered uneasily just how big a crowd Meredith was bringing. He debated heading out to the flyer to ask, decided not to waste the effort. Meredith and that pain Perez had emerged from the flyer; any questions could wait until they reached the doors.

As it turned out, everyone arrived at the same time: the two from the flyer plus six cars bursting at the seams with soldiers. "What's all this for?" Hafner demanded as the troops piled out and began taking up positions around the hill. Organizing things, Hafner saw, was Major Barner from Crosse.

"Security," Meredith said briefly, striding past the geologist and stopping in front of the doors.

Hafner joined him, trying to ignore the racket behind them. Moments like this should be celebrated with champagne, not machine gun emplacements. "We've been trying to enlarge the hole so that the doors will have room to open," he told the colonel. "You can see from that hinge over there that they swing outward."

"Um." Meredith ran his fingertips a few centimeters along the door. "Feels awfully smooth for something that's been buried this long."

"The Spinners seem to have built things to last," Perez commented, coming up behind them.

"Yeah." The colonel turned away and looked around. "Well, let's get them clear.

Sergeant! Digging team, on the double!"

The caravan had come well equipped with shovels, and within two minutes a double handful of soldiers were making the din fly. It was relatively fast work, the crumbly ground offering little resistance; but had the doors been as tall as their five-meter combined width would have suggested, it would still have taken a good part of the day to uncover them. As it was, the doors proved to be just under four meters high, and the process took only an hour.

"Now what?" Perez asked when Meredith had taken as many pictures of the exposed doors as he seemed to feel was necessary.

The colonel deferred to Hafner. "Doctor? Can you suggest a way to get them open?"

"Well … " Hafner stepped to the hairline crack separating the twin panels and carefully prodded a raised design that spanned the doors at eye level. "This is the obvious candidate for lock or doorknob. The problem is … it doesn't seem to want to move in any direction."

Meredith joined him and tried it himself. "Mm. You think we've been deliberately locked out?"

"Hard to tell." Hafner stepped a few paces back and peered at the edges of the hill.

"This particular mound looks like a simple case of particle accumulation—dust and sand collecting first on the lee side of an obstacle and slowly growing to cover the entire thing."

"You're saying the entrance wasn't deliberately concealed?" Perez asked.

"I don't think it was, no."

"Then chances are it's not deliberately locked, either," Perez concluded. "What do we try first: sledgehammer or dynamite?"

"Perhaps you'd prefer a small nuclear device," Hafner snapped. "It's faster and gives a much more satisfying boom."

"I wasn't suggesting we break down the doors," Perez replied mildly. "Obviously, anything that's lasted this many years isn't going to be bothered by a couple of blasting caps. I was thinking more of seeing if we could dislodge any sand that may have gotten into the latch mechanism."

"Oh." Hafner felt like an idiot.

"May be worth a try," Meredith grunted, squinting at the raised design. "Looks like a small crack between this thing and the doors that dust could've gone through."

"Let's try something a bit less drastic than dynamite first, though," Hafner said as the colonel started to signal one of the soldiers.

"Such as?"

"Hydrofluoric acid. We can squirt it into the crack or dribble it in from above. It should take care of any dust, and shouldn't affect the actual mechanism."

He regarded it as a small personal triumph when Meredith agreed.

And with a crunch like a steamroller on gravel, the doors slowly swung open.

"Get down!" Meredith snapped. Hafner, backing rapidly out of range of the huge panels, was yanked down into a crouch by a nearby soldier. Behind the doors was a dark tunnel that seemed to angle downward. Nothing moved back there, at least not that Hafner could see from his angle, and for a moment he considered standing up and telling Meredith there was no danger. But the soldier still had a solid grip on his arm, and with a mental sigh he resigned himself to waiting.

He didn't notice the faint sound of a motor until it cut off into silence, leaving the doors standing parallel to each other like extensions of the tunnel's walls. From somewhere behind him a car-mounted searchlight probed the gloom, reflecting briefly off dull metal as it danced around.