Timothy Zahn - Spinneret

I've found you eight men with hostage experience, and at last count two hundred others had volunteered for the assault squads."

Meredith nodded with grim satisfaction. In the two hours since Dunlop's broadcast not a single Astran had publicly voiced support for the major's attempted coup.

Even among those who were planning to leave with the next U.S. ship the mood was reportedly one of anger. Whether out of respect for him or contempt for Dunlop, Meredith didn't know, but either way he was grateful for both their active and passive support. Having to split his attention between commando preparation and civilian crowd control would have badly diminished his ability to handle either. "Good. What news from the Whissst?"

"One of the two UN ships that were in orbit as of this morning left about half an hour ago, heading in the direction of Earth. The other hasn't made any moves at all, and there hasn't been any more activity on that superhigh band since the Orspham picked up the one set of transmissions."

"Um." So whatever Dunlop and Msuya had had to say to each other, they'd apparently said it all and shut up. Meredith glanced out the tent flap at the double rank of armed guards facing the tunnel entrance, then looked back at the small group of people seated around the table. "Well. Suggestions? Major?"

Major Barner shrugged. "No way around it: a direct assault is all we've got.

There's no way to pump in enough sleeper gas— even if we could get hold of it—to do any good, and the stunners don't have the range we'd need. We might be able to approach the cavern entrance from the side if the solenoid chamber or outer tunnels connect into the main passageway properly, but at that point we'll still just have to put our heads down and charge."

"What if they've booby-trapped the cavern entrance?" Perez asked from beside Carmen. "Your first line of men won't have a chance."

"I know," Barrier grimaced. "But I don't see any other way."

"We have enough sets of body armor to outfit a five-man team," Andrews spoke up. "If necessary, we could send two or three men in first to deliberately trigger any traps and hope Dunlop went easy on the explosives."

"Dangerous, and possibly unnecessary." Perez turned to Meredith. "Colonel, I'd like to volunteer to go in and talk to Dunlop."

"And say what?" Barner snorted. "Appeal to his better judgment?"

"Hardly," Perez said coolly. "You forget my early experience with his better judgment. No, I thought I'd try pointing out the impossibility of any UN supplies or reinforcements getting through to him and the disadvantages of either starving to death or getting his head blown off."

"You won't change his mind," Barner shook his head.

"I don't expect to. But there would be other soldiers listening in; and some of them might reconsider their position." He shrugged. "You have to admit that fomenting discontent is something I do rather well."

"A good idea, but risky," Meredith said. "Unless you stay out of range and communicate by bullhorn he might be tempted to double his haul of hostages. But we may not have to go with the frontal assault, either. There's a chance we can sneak in the back door."

"Back door?" Barner asked. "You mean the volcano cone?"

"Exactly." Meredith indicated spots on the cavern diagram spread out before them. "We haven't gotten very far along either of the two tunnels that lead off from the tower side of the Great Wall. One of them has got to wind up somewhere under the volcano."

"But Peter tried to find an entrance through the volcano," Carmen objected.

"That was before he was an official Spinner supervisor," Meredith pointed out. "I think it'll be worth taking another look up there now." He nodded to Barner.

"Major, you and Andrews get busy and organize those assault teams; if I find a way in we'll want to move quickly. Carmen, keep tabs on the UN ship and field any questions the aliens might throw at us. Perez, you'll stay here and assist Carmen."

"What about my idea of talking to them?" Perez asked. "As long as I stay back or with an armed escort—"

"If we find another entrance there won't be any need for sowing dissension,"

Barner told him gruffly. "Come on. Lieutenant."

"I know. But you might be able to use a diversion."

Barner and Andrews paused halfway to the tent entrance, turning to look at Perez.

Meredith didn't share their surprise; he'd seen where the Hispanic's line of thought was leading. From the look on Carmen's face she'd expected the offer, too … and didn't like it at all.

But this decision, at least, could be put off. "We'll discuss it after we've found a way in," he told Perez. "I'm heading to the cone; let me know immediately if there's any change in the situation."

The flyer that had ferried Meredith and Carmen in from Unie was parked a hundred meters away, out of any possible line of fire from the tunnel. Meredith jogged over to find Nichols and the four assistants he'd requested already aboard.

Giving the pilot landing instructions, he spent the short flight conferring with Nichols on the methods he and Hafner had used on their previous attempts to find a way in. It was a brief talk, and didn't tell him very much.

The cone steepened fairly rapidly at the very summit, but the original searchers had left behind a piton-secured ropeladder/ bridge over the rim, and within a few minutes the six men were assembled together at the edge of three hundred square meters of unmarked floor.

Meredith glanced around, noting the TV monitors still pointed down at them from the volcano rim. "Did you ever get the shots of the last cable operation clear enough to show where the floor opened up?" he asked Nichols.

"No," the other shook his head. "None of the enhancement techniques could do anything with them. We think whatever produces the zero-gee fouled up either the camera or film. Or both."

"All right, then, I guess we do it the hard way." He pointed to his left. "I want you and two of the others to work that direction around the circle. Run your hands over the wall, poke at any crevices you find, and otherwise try to spark some kind of reaction. I'll go around the other way. Observers, you're to watch for anything Nichols or I might miss. Everyone understand? All right. Take it slow and don't miss anything."

Slow it certainly was; slow and frustrating. Half a dozen times in the first twenty minutes Meredith found himself wondering if he was giving in to wishful thinking in his old age. Certainly nothing in the Spinner cavern had suggested that their

"supervisor" status extended any farther than the Gorgon's Head network, and whatever security system was hiding the entrance he was counting on finding was likely to be independent of the snake-topped machines. But giving up the search would lead directly to Barner's frontal assault, and he wasn't yet ready to concede the inevitability of that approach.

And then, with nearly two thirds of the wall covered, Nichols hit pay dirt.

"If you rest your hand right here for a second or two you get a faint scraping noise from behind the wall," the geologist told Meredith, indicating a section of wall pocked with tiny fissures. "We never noticed anything significant about these cracks before, but I wonder now if it could be an air intake of some kind."

"With a Gorgon's Head on the other side?" Gingerly, Meredith placed his palm over the spot. Sure enough, the scratching was just barely audible. Gorgon's Head snakes against the wall?

"Wouldn't an air vent show a more regular pattern?" one of the others objected.

"You haven't seen the Spinners' love of squiggles," Meredith told him, testing various sections of wall immediately around the vent. "Seems pretty solid. Let's check around, see if the door is offset or something."

A search of the five meters to either side proved fruitless. "If there's a door here it looks like we're going to have to persuade it to open," Nichols said at last. "I've got some hydrofluoric acid; we could try it in the air vent."