Timothy Zahn - Spinneret

Nichols backed the car up the necessary few meters and turned off to the right.

Hafner leaned forward, peering over Meredith's shoulder. Sure enough, where the metal walls and lights ended, the tunnel continued on. "You've got good eyes, Major," he commented.

"They're no better than yours," Bamer replied, a bit tartly. "I just use mine, that's all."

Hafner reddened and shut up.

The corridor ended in what had once been a T junction with another hallway; the rough tunnel Bamer had spotted led through the crossbar of the T, as if someone had planned to extend the corridor and never completed the job. "Sloppy work,"

Nichols commented, running his fingers over the rough stone within the hole.

"Must've had their funding cut."

"I don't think so," Meredith said. "Note that the whole wall's been left open to the rock here, as if they'd planned to drill into it."

Hafner stepped back and looked down the hallway. "You're right—looks like another hole down there, just past that vertical support bar."

Meredith produced a flashlight from his pack and aimed it into the tunnel. "Goes pretty deep … well, well. Looks like there's something metallic back there."

Shifting the light to his left hand, he ducked his head and stepped carefully into the passageway. "Everyone wait here and keep your eyes open. I'll be back in a minute."

It was more like five minutes before the colonel reappeared. "Well?" Perez demanded as Meredith put away his light.

"Hard to be sure, of course, with an alien design," Meredith said, "but the thing back there seems to be an automated digging machine."

"So they were extending this tunnel," Nichols said.

"Or else mining the rock for the nonmetallic elements the leecher doesn't get,"

Hafner suggested. "Maybe hauling the digger out would give us a clue."

"I wouldn't recommend that," Meredith said. "The thing's still active."

They all turned to face him. "It's what?" Hafner said, cocking an ear toward the tunnel.

"Oh, it's not actually running—there's a rock jammed between two of the track links. But there's something that looks like a display panel in the rear, and a halfdozen lights are still showing on it." Meredith brushed at the dust that had collected on his shoulders and headed back toward the car. "Come on; let's keep moving."

They returned to the main corridor and continued on inward, driving for the most part in silence. It shouldn't have been such a shock, Hafner told himself—they all knew, after all, that the main Spinneret machinery was still operational. Somehow, though, he'd always pictured the Spinneret as an essentially solid-state apparatus, barely surviving through the grace of multiple redundancies. For a small peripheral unit—and a tunneling machine, at that—to be in equally good shape was both awesome and just a little bit creepy.

The corridor made a thirty-degree angle to the left … and without warning, they were abruptly in a new world.

"Snafu on toast," Barner gasped, craning his neck to look up. "What the hell is this?"

Like Barner, Hafner's eyes were drawn first upward, to the impossible blue sky overhead. Fluffy white clouds drifted visibly by, occasionally cutting across the shining yellow sun midway to zenith … it was nearly a minute before he could tear his gaze away and focus on the village scene around them.

His immediate impression was that they'd driven into a replica of Jerusalem's old city. White-walled, domed buildings squeezed closely together along narrow, winding streets, while in the near distance a decorative wall cut in front of a minaret-like tower. A closer look, though, showed him the myriad of architectural differences between these buildings and anything he'd ever seen on Earth. The shapes and positioning of the windows, the elaborate carvings on doors and archways, even the faint iridescence of the walls themselves all emphatically marked the place as alien.

Perez broke the spell first, with a murmured Spanish phrase that sounded simultaneously blasphemous and awe-struck. "This is impossible!" he whispered.

"The sky—but we were a hundred meters underground!"

"It's artificial," Meredith said, and Hafner had to admire the confidence in the other's voice. The geologist had stared at the sky for an entire minute without finding any flaws in the simulation. It was a simulation, of course; it had to be.

"Probably a hologram or something projected on a domed ceiling," Meredith continued. "Looks like the Spinners were settling in for a long stay here."

"But why underground?" Perez asked, clearly still shaken. "Why not on the surface where they could have real sunlight?"

"Probably wanted a place where they could burn their steaks in peace," Nichols said, sneezing violently. "Or can't you smell that mess?"

Hafner sniffed cautiously. He hadn't really noticed the odors drifting in on the breeze, but now that he was paying attention he discovered Nichols was right. A

faint smell that indeed resembled burnt meat was dominant; but beneath it he could detect traces of jasmine, sulfur, and something like a cross between rusty iron and oregano. "Whoo-ee," he said. "Smells like someone burned down a kitchen pantry."

"Again, probably artificial." Meredith pointed to a bare patch of ground Hafner hadn't noticed. "I'd guess that used to be a garden or small park. You can see that whatever used to be there is long gone. Anything that could possibly have decayed did so centuries ago."

The wind died and began again from a slightly different direction, changing with equal subtlety the mixture of scents. Hafner glanced upward; the phantom cloud, too, had shifted direction. "Someone went to an awful lot of trouble to make the workers feel at home."

"Yeah." Meredith pointed toward the minaret in the distance. "Let's leave a marker at this entrance and head over toward that tower. I want a look at that wall, too."

Barrier produced a fluorescent orange-and-pink stick-on from his pack and got out of the car. Peering ahead, Nichols sneezed again and shook his head. "I don't understand why they'd bother putting in any walls down here," he said to no one in particular. "What would they want to cut this place in two parts for?"

"It may be simply decorative," Perez suggested. "Or possibly it separates the laborers from the elite."

"Or," Meredith put in, "it could have had a genuine defensive purpose. And if so, we'd better find out fast what they were defending against." He glanced back as Barner climbed into the car, nodded to Nichols. "Let's go, Doctor. Take it real slow and easy."

It was, Perez decided, the ultimate ghost town, raising boyhood memories he'd have preferred to leave buried. Many of the buildings they drove past had open doors, and he found himself peering nervously into each one as they passed, half expecting some lone survivor of the mass exodus to charge out at them.

Originally, he'd applauded Hafner's stand on military participation in this trip; now, he almost wished Meredith had brought those three squads along.

Hafner, at least, seemed to feel some of his same uneasiness. "Looks like they left in a hurry," the scientist murmured, gazing out his window. "A lot of doors and windows were left open."

"Why lock them?" Barner asked reasonably. "Unless they imported their own burglars, too—"

"They also left the Spinneret running," Hafner pointed out.

Bamer shrugged. "You leave a fluorescent light on if you expect to be right back."

"Yeah," Meredith agreed. "So … why didn't they come back?" Tapping Nichols on the shoulder, he pointed ahead. "There; on the left—that wide spot in the road.

Pull over there and let's take a look inside one of these houses."

Nichols did as instructed and they all piled out. The building by the parking space was larger man the ones immediately around it, with inset doors and an archway extending almost to the street. "I'm going inside," Meredith said in a low voice, drawing his pistol. "Major, you and the others stay here. Are we in contact with the outside at the moment?"