Timothy Zahn - Spinneret

"Go ahead, but I doubt it'll do any good," Meredith said, eyeing the wall thoughtfully. "So far we've never come upon a Gorgon's Head that couldn't get out of its cubbyhole when it wanted to. I suspect the door's not jammed but locked, and we're expected to know how to open it."

"I don't see anything that looks like the buttons of a digital lock," Nichols said slowly. "An ID card in one of the slots?"

"More likely a verbal command—you wouldn't want some worker to get trapped in the cone with no way out." An extremely foolish idea was beginning to take shape in the back of his mind. "On the other hand, you may also not want the average Spinner who has no business up here just wandering in and out like they can with the Dead Sea entrance."

"Well, then, what are we going to do? We're a long way from deciphering the written language, let alone the spoken one."

"Let's try the acid and then maybe firing a few explosive shells around—just in case it is stuck. After that … well, we'll talk about it then."

Neither the acid nor explosions seemed to make any difference to either the door or the hidden Gorgon's Head … and eventually Meredith was forced to climb out of the crater, make contact with Carmen in the command center, and lay out his plan.

She didn't like it. Neither, when consulted, did Nichols, Perez, Barner, and Andrews.

"Ridiculous," was Carmen's immediate response. "Ridiculous and suicidal and you're not going to do it."

"Out of the question," Barner seconded. "It's too long a shot to gamble your life over."

"I'll be in no danger," Meredith assured them.

"What do you mean, 'no danger'?" Barner retorted. "You know half the safety interlocks in this mechanized anthill are gone—look at what happened to the men in the solenoid tunnel."

"There weren't any Gorgon's Heads present then, and the men weren't supervisors," Meredith pointed out. "Besides, even if it doesn't work I ought to be safe enough against the wall. Safer than the first troops through the main entrance would be, anyway."

"If it's so safe," Perez said suddenly, "then let me do it instead of you."

"No. It's my idea, and I'm going to do it. Period. Carmen, you'll make the proper arrangements immediately."

"Yes, sir." Carmen's voice was sullen; but she clearly recognized an order when she heard one.

Or maybe she, too, recognized that they had no other choice.

They'd been inside for nearly a day when Hafner was abruptly shaken out of a deep sleep. "What's going on?" Major Dunlop's voice demanded.

Squinting in the light streaming through the open tent flap, Hafner tried to chase the cobwebs out of his brain. "Going— what do you mean—?"

"That rumbling—can't you hear it? What's Meredith up to?"

Frowning, Hafner listened for a moment. The sound, though, wasn't hard to place.

"He's not up to anything. That's just the Spinneret starting into its production cycle."

His eyes had adjusted enough now to see Dunlop's face … and the expression on that face was one of tense suspicion. "What do you mean, production cycle? He's making a cable? Now?"

"Why not? Probably demonstrating to the aliens out there that Astra's still in business … that you aren't really in control of anything except a few square kilometers of underground real estate."

The last dig may have been a mistake. Dunlop's brow darkened and the fingers clenching his bolstered pistol gun tightened noticeably. "Perhaps we should prove otherwise," he ground out. "What do you say we go out to the tower and start pushing buttons until it shuts off?"

Hafner felt his mouth go dry. "I say that if you mess up the settings or erase some program in the process, Colonel Meredith will make a fortune selling tickets to your disemboweling," he said as casually as he could. "You'd probably have everyone from the Rooshrike to the M'zarch offering suggestions on technique, too."

Dunlop glowered at him for a moment, then turned on his heel and stalked away, letting the tent flap close behind him.

With a relieved sigh, Hafner checked his watch and settled hack to try and catch another hour of sleep. / wonder, he thought as the darkness closed in, just what the colonel is up to.

The last glint of sunlight had vanished from the inner lip of the volcano cone when the gravimeter fastened to the edge of Meredith's helmet began to change.

"It's started," he announced quietly into his microphone. "Two percent down and picking up steam."

"Your restraints set?" Barner asked, his voice barely discernible over the static that was beginning to fill the radio bands.

"Yes," Meredith told him, trying to sound more confident than he felt. The lines and bracing bars fastening him to the inner cone wall near the air vent weren't nearly as secure as he'd hoped to make them—unlike the Spinneret cable itself, which stuck to other things with a vengeance, the flat panels with which the volcano cone and cavern structures had been built were made of a very inert substance. Depending on the gradient of the zero-gee field, it was conceivable Meredith would wind up being shot into space along with the latest batch of cable.

With a conscious effort, he put the thought out of his mind and reached out to press his bare hand against the air vent again. The gentle breeze that was starting to spring up kept him from hearing any scratching, but he was sure the Gorgon's Head behind the wall had detected and identified him. What it would do with that knowledge, though, was still an unknown.

The gravity was dropping rapidly now, and the local atmospheric pressure was beginning to follow. Cool air hissed behind Meredith's head, filling the pressure suit that covered all of the colonel except his hands. The general medical consensus was that such a limited exposure to vacuum would be safe enough for a reasonable length of time, but no one on Astra really knew what the limits actually were. Keeping one eye on the air vent and the other on his gravimeter, Meredith gritted his teeth and waited.

Brought up on a diet of American cliff-hanger drama, he was rather expecting the Gorgon's Head to wait until the last second before taking action … and it was therefore almost anti-climactic when, with the gravity only down to point four gee, a section of wall suddenly slid back and down, exposing the short-tunnel-andelevator- shaft arrangement that had also been used in the cavern control tower.

Meredith hit his harness release with one hand, reaching out with the other to try and get a grip on the edge of the opening. He needn't have bothered; from an alcove just off the tunnel a tentacle snaked out to wrap itself around his neck, and before he could do more than get his hands up to grip the metal hose he'd been pulled inside the tunnel and released. Massaging his throat, he watched the door slide shut again and, giving silent thanks to the Gorgon's Heads' programmer, set to work locating the inside controls.

Half an hour later the static cleared and he was able to reassure the anxious listeners that the gamble had worked. Twenty minutes after that, Andrews and the ten-man commando team had joined him. Together they crowded into the elevator and started down.

It was a long trip. Meredith hadn't until that moment had a real feeling for how far below Astra's surface the Spinner cavern was—the gentle slope of the entrance tunnel had effectively masked that fact—and he was beginning to get fidgety by the time the elevator finally stopped. Moving quietly, the men fanned out, weapons ready.

They were, as Meredith had anticipated, in an unexplored area of the cavern complex. The room they'd entered was as large as the storerooms leading off the main entrance tunnel, but without the curlicue floor designs and with a much higher ceiling. At either end of the room were huge doors; and linking them—