Timothy Zahn - Spinneret

She sighed. "That sounds like him: great with people but no head at all for economics. We could probably rent M'zarch troop carriers a lot cheaper than buying one of our own."

Hafner made a face. "Well, I hope one of you experts is thinking about where we'd put this flood of fo—flood of people," he corrected himself hastily.

"We recognize the problems," Carmen said, giving him an odd look. "We're not going to rush into anything half-cocked. What kind of flood were you going to call it?"

Silently, Hafner cursed his tongue. "A flood of foreigners," he admitted reluctantly. "Perez wants to recruit people mostly from the poorer Third World nations."

"And?" Carmen prompted, her voice studiously neutral.

"Well, face it—if that happens we original Astrans are going to wind up as a pretty small minority here. Those of us who came here because we wanted to are going to be flooded out by people looking for the ticket window to the galaxy's gravy train."

"Yeah. Maybe." For a moment Carmen gazed out at the waters of the Dead Sea, her forehead furrowed in thought. "I don't know what to say," she sighed at last. "It will change Astra—there's no doubt about that. We're four small villages that are going to become huge cities, and those of us who've sweated through the rough times are likely to get lost in the crowd, But we can't simply live here alone like—well, like the oil barons you mentioned. After all, it's not like this is profit from something we've done ourselves."

"Why do we have to bring all of them here, though?" Hafner grumbled. "Why not just give the money to them right where they are or something? Hey—that may be it."

"May be what?" Carmen asked, eyeing him suspiciously.

"The answer to our dilemma." The thoughts were corning thick and fast now, and Hafner fumbled a bit as he tried to keep up with them. "It'll be like foreign aid—better yet, like a new Marshall Plan. We can runnel a portion of our profit to the poorer countries, probably in the form of credit with the Ctencri, maybe tie the amount to inverse GNP per capita so that it goes to the countries who need it most—"

"And how do you guarantee it goes to the people who need it most?"

"—with a clause to prevent—Um? Oh." The grand scheme seemed to explode into soap suds in front of him. "Yeah. Well … we could write something into the agreements, I suppose."

Carmen smiled sadly. "Half the countries that need that sort of aid already reject help that has any strings attached. Besides, the contract hasn't been written yet that someone couldn't find a loophole in."

Hafner pursed his lips tightly. She had indeed been talking to Perez, he decided; talking and listening. "It'd still be better than trying to bring the starving millions here," he growled. "Most of them don't have any skill except farming, and they sure as potholes aren't going to continue that line of work here."

"I know," Carmen sighed. "And I don't know how we're going to get around that.

All we can do is keep working on it."

"Yeah." Hafner looked down at the half sandwich still clutched in his hand. "So much for our nice, quiet lunch away from the universe," he said, shaking his head.

"Look, why don't we sort of back out and come in again, okay? Let's just enjoy our algae and the lovely gray-brown scenery and forget about politics for a while."

"Sure. I'm sorry I brought up the subject." Carmen smiled wanly and took a bite of her own sandwich. "So … what sort of gossip do you hear lately?"

They talked about people, the rate of progress of the Earth scientists, and other relatively innocuous subjects for the next hour, and when Hafner escorted Carmen back to the Spinneret camp and her waiting vehicle, she professed herself satisfied with the break from the pressures of her work.

He pretended to believe her … but as she drove off toward Unie he felt his own cheerful expression sag into a grimace. Just too dedicated to her job, he thought, shaking his head as he trudged toward his crackerbox apartment to await his earlyevening shift. Probably won't be able to really relax until this whole immigrant thing is resolved. Perez will see to that, I'm sure. The thought of the Hispanic infecting her with his own excessively liberal philosophy was more than a little annoying, but mere wasn't a lot he could do about it.

Except perhaps to offer an alternative to his grand immigration scheme. So far, Hafner had heard nothing that corresponded to his Marshall Plan idea being tossed around during mealtime discussions; and if it truly hadn't occurred to anyone, he really ought to point it out to Colonel Meredith. Despite Carmen's skepticism, it seemed to him the plan had potential merit.

Changing his direction, Hafner headed toward the tunnel entrance. Meredith, he knew, was currently in the tower … and Hafner suspected he'd welcome someone to talk to.

The same three-squiggle pattern showed up over eighty times in the main control room alone … and the pattern of lights and switches associated with it was more than a little suggestive. All right, Loretta thought, tapping at the fist-sized walkabout terminal of the Ctencri translator humming quietly off to one side. Call this "on" or "active" or "functioning." Correlate … ?

She pushed the proper button and watched the translator screen list eight more combinations involving the three-letter pattern and their possible meanings.

Activate, standby—off? Ah—then that tilde would indicate inversion of meaning.

Let's see where else the tilde shows up … Punching in the order, she was rewarded a moment later with an overhead schematic of the semicircular control panel, the tilded labels flashing in red. Referring occasionally to the picture, she walked slowly around the room, looking closely at each of the switches and indicators so identified. The next step would be to choose one or two of them and play through the data file of the last cable production again, watching for anything that might give a clue as to their function. Loretta hadn't done too well so far with that particular method; all the obvious correlations had long since been tabulated, and she lacked the engineers' knack of pulling seemingly unrelated sounds and activities into a coherent whole.

From underneath the control panel came a dribble of muttered Russian. A moment later, Victor Ermakov crawled stiffly out and unfolded into a standing position. "It is thoroughly ridiculous," he grumbled, waving a multimeter for emphasis. "Half the circuits are inert, with no current flow and infinite resistance—and the other half show an absolutely steady current, with no discernible modulation. How do you control something with unchanging current?" He turned to Meredith, sitting quietly next to one of the Gorgon's Heads. "Colonel, the digger is still at work, isn't it?"

"It was as of five minutes ago," the other said. "That's when it dumped its last load into the hopper." He pointed to the blue section of the control panel beneath which Ermakov had been working. "I saw the pattern change."

The Russian scowled at the board. "I'm beginning to think Arias is right, that the Spinners aren't using conventional electronics here at all."

Loretta shrugged. Francisco Arias had tried to explain his theory to her, but his mastery of the more arcane branches of physics didn't include the ability to translate them into laymen's terms. All she'd taken away from the session had been a headache and the fact that too much of the Spinneret equipment was superconducting cable material for it to function along normal electronic lines.

He'd then launched into something about subatomic forces and field waveguides that had lost her completely. "He did seem very sure of himself," she commented.

"He always does." Ermakov shook his head and turned again to Meredith.