Timothy Zahn - Spinneret

"All right, everyone; at ease," Meredith called. The hand on his arm loosened, and Hafner stood up, turning to face the colonel. Only then did he see the double semicircle of soldiers behind him, their weapons only now shifting away from the tunnel mouth as they rose from prone and kneeling firing positions. My Lord! he thought, his hands starting to tremble. What if the Spinners had left something behind to greet visitors? They would've cut it in half!

"So. Even their doors still work," Meredith commented as he came to Hafner's side. "Smells sort of strange."

Skin crawling with the thought of the guns at his back, Hafner took a step nearer the tunnel and sniffed. "Probably just very stale air," he said. "I've opened caves on Earth that were a lot worse. We can do an analysis, though, if you'd like."

"Please." Meredith stepped to one of the doors and began studying the inside surface. Easing his way past the soldiers, Hafner went to get his air-test kit.

The smell was already dissipating by the time he was set up to begin, and a fast check showed that the air composition was indeed basically Astran normal. "Some trace things that look like metal oxides and a slightly higher concentration of radon gas are the only anomalies I get," he told Meredith. "There could be alien bacteria, I suppose; we don't have the equipment to test for organic contaminants."

"Given the rest of Astra, I don't think that's a real danger," Meredith countered dryly. "All right. Let's go see what all the Spinners left us." He gestured toward Major Barrier and started back toward the cars.

"Just a moment, Colonel," Hafner stopped him. No telling how Meredith would take this, but Hafner's conscience demanded he bring it up. "How many of these soldiers were you planning to take in?"

Meredith cocked an eyebrow. "Three squads—that's thirty men. Don't worry; I'm sure they can handle anything we run up against."

"Exactly my point. They'll handle things, whether those things actually need handling or not."

The colonel frowned. "What?"

"I doubt very seriously if there's anything dangerous in there, provided we keep our hands off any equipment," Hafner said. "I'm more worried about someone shooting up something irreplaceable because it reflected a flashlight beam back at him."

"Come on, Doctor—my men aren't that trigger happy—"

"Furthermore, I think this is the right moment to set a precedent here." Hafner waved at the tunnel. "If we want the other races around us to treat the Spinneret as a peaceful manufacturing device, we've got to make it a civilian matter right from the start. You put soldiers inside here and everyone's going to jump to the wrong conclusion."

"You're oversimplifying," Meredith said, with obviously strained patience, "not to mention anthropomorphizing. At least two of the species out there don't seem to even make a distinction between military and civilians."

"Then let's do it for ourselves," Hafner insisted. "We make that distinction, and so do all the people back on Earth. In the UN, for instance."

Meredith gazed at him for a long moment, and Hafner wished he had some clue as to what the other was thinking. Certainly the geologist's personal leverage and influence were very near zero, a fact Meredith obviously knew as well as he did.

His only chance was that the colonel might somehow glimpse the various political consequences involved here—consequences Hafner himself only dimly understood—and make his decision appropriately.

And apparently he did. "All right," Meredith said at last, his eyes flicking back toward the troops. "The military presence will be limited to Major Barner and myself. I trust you won't mind if I have a defensive perimeter set up out here?"

The last was definitely sarcasm, but Hafner didn't care. "No, that'll be fine."

"Thank you." Quickly, the colonel issued orders: he, Barner, Perez, Hafner, and Hafner's assistant, Nichols, would go inside for a fast look around. All would be equipped with emergency packs; Meredith and Bamer would be armed as well with stunners and dual-clip pistols. There was some discussion as to whether or not to take a car inside, but the vehicle's ability to carry extra equipment eventually tipped the balance against the traditional military dislike for bunching up. In addition, Bamer would wear a medium-range radio headset.

"We'll stay in continuous contact as long as possible," Meredith told the captain being left in charge of the Crosse contingent. "Don't worry if we fade out, though, because these walls will probably cut off the signal long before we get to the end of the road. If we're not back in four hours contact Major Brown at Martello for instructions and assistance." Climbing into the front passenger seat, the colonel glanced at the others: Barner, Perez, and Hafner squeezed together in back; Nichols at the wheel. "Everyone set? Okay, Nichols; slow and easy."

The young geologist eased the car into the tunnel and started forward. Hafner discovered he'd been right; the floor did angle a couple of degrees downward. He was leaning forward, eyes searching at the limits of the car's headlights, when the tunnel abruptly blazed with light.

Nichols slammed on the brakes, and Hafner heard the double click of two pistol safeties. For a moment there was a tense silence; but as Hafner's eyes adjusted to the light he saw that the tunnel was still empty.

"Automatic," Barner muttered. "We hit the Spinner version of a welcome mat and they turned the lights on for us."

"Yeah." Meredith seemed to take a deep breath. "Well. Nothing seems to be threatening us at the moment. Let's keep going."

Nichols got the car moving again, and Meredith craned his neck to look at Hafner.

"Doctor, you quoted me a minimum time of a hundred thousand years once for how long the Spinneret has been operating. Does the length of time this entrance has been covered up correlate with that number?"

Hafner shrugged as best as he could, squeezed as he was between Perez and the right-hand door. "I really couldn't say for sure. We still know next to nothing about Astra's climatological patterns, let alone the erosion and compacting rates for many of the minerals here. I'd guess we're still talking in the tens to hundreds of thousands of years."

"Does it matter?" Perez put in. "It doesn't seem all that different to me whether a piece of equipment lasts a thousand years or a million."

"The difference—" Meredith broke off. "Never mind. Is that a door off to the left up there?"

It was indeed a door, one as tall as the outside entrance and nearly as wide.

"Looks like it slides open instead of swinging," Barner commented as they climbed out of the car.

Hafner nodded; he'd already noted the lack of visible hinges and the way the door was set back instead of being flush with the tunnel wall. "If you all want to stand back, I'll see if that plate in the center works the same as the one outside did."

This time there was no sand gumming up the mechanism, and it took only a moment for Hafner to discover the eye-level design needed to be pushed in instead of rotated. As the door slid smoothly into the wall a set of interior lights came on, revealing a vast, empty-looking room.

"Looks like a high-school gymnasium," Perez commented as the others joined Hafner. "Floor markings and everything."

"You'd never play basketball here, though," Hafner muttered, eying the four-meterhigh ceiling.

Nichols had taken a step into the room. "Boxes off in the corner, Dr. Hafner," he announced, pointing.

"Where?" Meredith asked, moving alongside. He still held his pistol loosely in his hand, Hafner noted with some uneasiness. " … Ah. Interesting." The colonel looked at the opposite side of the room, then back to the boxes. "Yes. See how they're not really arranged in rows? If the floor pattern's symmetric on both sides, it looks like they're set out along one of the French curves back there."