Timothy Zahn - Spinneret

"I'll do that," she promised. "Thanks for dropping by."

"Sure. See you later."

She closed the door behind him and went back to the living room, where she watched for a moment as he jogged toward the tunnel. Then, with a sigh, she turned back to the bedroom and her unpacking. For a few moments things had been normal again; she'd just been one normal scientist conferring with another on a project of mutual interest. But that warm, comfortable feeling was fading quickly now. This whole thing would be a lot easier, she though bleakly, if the people at least felt a little phony. Maybe the facade will crack after we've been here for a few days. I sure hope so. But, somehow, she didn't think it would.

"One more good squirt should do it," the young chemist said, his voice muffled by both his filter mask and the natural damping within the cramped tunnel. Perez nodded silently, wishing he hadn't volunteered for this job and simultaneously glad he didn't have to be the one to drip hydrofluoric acid onto the stone blocking the Spinner digging machine's tread. From the shuffling of feet behind him, he gathered he wasn't the only one glad of it.

It had been a dead-dull day all around. Meredith had decided he wanted the diggers looked at, and the four-man group had accordingly been sent out on a grand tour of the Spinneret's outer tunnel network. They'd spent six hours and located eight machines … and in the end only this one—the one Meredith had found on that very first trip—had a hope in hell of being restored without a complete maintenance manual. Perez's part had consisted mainly of standing around watching for Gorgon's Heads that were ranging more and more widely as human activity in the cavern increased. No one knew whether the digging machines were on the Gorgon's Heads' restricted list or not, but it wasn't a smart chance to take. Their single experience with Gorgon's Head enforcement to date indicated the machines were programmed to simply hold potential intruders for questioning; what was still needed was a way to explain the sensitivity of the human neck to them.

"She's moving!" the chemist barked, scrambling a hasty couple of steps backward.

"Come on … there!"

And with a loud crack, the remains of the offending stone were kicked free. A low hum was almost instantly drowned out by a raucous grinding noise as the machine hit the tunnel face and began boring into it. "Just like it'd never quit," the chemist shouted over the noise. "Figured we'd at least have to find a reset switch."

"Probably been monitoring itself, waiting for someone to take the stone out,"

Perez shouted back. The digger was a good couple of centimeters into the rock now, and though Perez couldn't see where the fragments were going, it was clear they weren't simply being scattered around. "Let's get back to the cavern."

They made their way back to their car, parked outside the digger's tunnel, and headed inward toward the main entrance gallery. There was little conversation—everyone seemed equally tired—and Perez took advantage of the quiet to just sit and think. The scientists he'd invited to Astra could be here any time now, and he still had to figure out what he was going to tell Meredith when they suddenly showed up.

An operations center had been set up just inside the Spinner cavern, a sort of openair office that clashed badly with the alien scenery beyond it. Perez turned in their car, was told Meredith wanted him in the tower, and checked the vehicle back out again with a sigh. Driving to the nearest gap in the Great Wall, as it was now generally called, he headed across the open area around the tower on foot. The twenty-minute round trip was an annoying waste of time, but none of the wall's gaps was big enough for a car to fit through. Carmen had ordered some golf cartstyle vehicles from the Ctencri, but they'd been hung up by the need for major modifications, and until they arrived, there was nothing to do but put up with the forced exercise.

Meredith, as he expected, was in the tower's main control room, along with Major Barner, whose shift it was. What he hadn't anticipated was that the two of them would have guests … or who those guests could be.

"Ah, Perez," Meredith nodded. "I have a couple of people here I'd like you to meet. Dr. Bhartkumar Udani, Dr. Victor Ermakov; this is Councillor Cristobal Perez. Doubtless you'll recognize him as the gentleman who wrote you about coming here."

Seldom had Perez run into such a test of his poise, and he would later remember virtually nothing about the next few minutes except that no one seemed to notice anything odd about his behavior. By the time his brain began working again, Meredith had turned the scientists over to Barner and the three of them had left the room.

"Well?" Meredith asked when they were alone. "Not even a simple 'golly, Colonel, what a surprise'?"

Perez cleared his throat; it seemed to help. "I was expecting you to call me while all of them were still in orbit," he said.

"To find out what they were doing here?" Meredith shrugged. "We figured that out a long time ago. You were observed giving that package to the Ctencri, you know."

Perez swallowed. "Oh. I, uh, wasn't expecting you to take it so calmly."

Meredith's expression didn't change … but suddenly there was a look in his eyes that made Perez shiver. "Don't mistake control for calm, Perez," the colonel said coldly. "You didn't like the way I was running Astra, so you forced a new set of rules down my throat—and now you've shown you can't even live by them. By all rights you should be under house arrest right now, or at the very least Astra's first ex-councillor."

"So why aren't I? Because it worked?"

"You think it worked, do you? How many scientists did you send letters to?"

"About a hundred fifty. I wasn't sure all would be able—"

"Only five came."

Perez stared at him. "Five? That's all?"

"Five. Francisco Arias of Brazil, Slobodan Curcic from Yugoslavia, Loretta Williams from the U.S., and the two you just met. I hope you didn't offer anything like a blank check to the Ctencri for this."

Perez shook his head. "The agreement was for an unspecified amount of cable.

Carmen can take the low turnout into account when she hammers out the details."

He cocked an eyebrow. "So again: why aren't I being punished?"

"Because I'd rather make you pay your debts in sweat than in blood," Meredith said. "Algae ship or not, we're likely to be facing some lean times; and I'm going to hold you personally responsible for the behavior of the Hispanics here. I've heard grumblings about profit-sharing or lack of it, and it's going to be your job to make it clear that all 'profits' from the Spinneret are currently going directly into their stomachs."

"You don't have to spell it out, Colonel," Perez told him stiffly. "As long as everyone is treated fairly there won't be any trouble. Credit me—and the other Hispanics—with that much sense."

"All right. Then tell me how the digger search went. Any of them in working condition?"

"Just the one with the stone in its tread," Perez said, relieved by the change of topic. "We got it out, and last we saw it was tunneling cheerfully into the rock. I left word at the op cent for a round-the-clock watch on it."

"Good. We'll want to see where it goes when it's full." He frowned. "You have any estimate on the horsepower of the thing?"

Perez shrugged. "Not really. Between fifty and a hundred, I'd guess. Why?"

"Because the ability to idle or whatever for a hundred millennia and also put out that kind of power means that the digger's either got one hell of a battery pack or else is running off some kind of broadcast power. Either way, it's just one more goody to tempt potential invaders."

Perez shook his head. "You worry far too much about that, Colonel, in my opinion. After the M'zarch fiasco no one's going to be brash enough to launch an invasion. Especially when they don't know exactly what we've got down here that might serve as weapons."