Spinneret

Chapter 27

"… call on all loyal citizens of the United States of America to join us in reversing this clear and heinous act of treason that Colonel Meredith has committed,"

Dunlop's voice came through the phone speaker, its imperious tone masked somewhat by the dull roar of vehicles behind it. "Those who do not will share the massive guilt and the punishment—"

"Enough," Meredith barked, slipping on his jacket and sitting down on his bed to fasten his boots.

At the other end of the connection Lieutenant Andrews shut off the recording, and Dunlop's harangue vanished in midadjective. "Went out over the whole PA system, you said?" Meredith growled.

"Plus the civilian phone net," Andrews said. "Apparently decided he already had all the soldiers that were on his side."

"I hope so—I like having all my enemies bunched together in one place. Any idea how many there are?"

"The guards on duty at the time were all stunned, but I saw at least one truck go in after the dead-man alarm went off, so there could be forty or more of them plus a fair supply of materiel. They're only about ten minutes ahead of us, though, and I've got a team ready to go after them as soon as the demolitions men can get the other truck out of the way."

"Tell them to go easy on that thing," Meredith snapped. "I doubt even a nuke could bother the tunnel, but if Dunlop wasn't lying about the size of the bomb in there it'll kill everyone in the area if it goes off."

"I know, sir." Andrews sounded simultaneously miserable and furious. "We're getting people clear as fast as we can, but—well, there are a lot of civilians among them."

Who move slowly and ask unnecessary questions and otherwise waste time, Meredith thought bitterly. "Well … don't let it get to you. There's not a lot Dunlop can do in there except dig in and prepare for a siege. There isn't anyone at the op cent or in the tower, is there?"

"We don't think so, sir, but we don't know for sure. Again, the guards are unconscious, and they could have passed someone through—"

He was interrupted by the high-pitched squeal of the emergency breaker.

"Colonel, this is Major Barner. Dr. Hafner's not in his quarters. No evidence of any struggle, but his phone is still here."

Meredith felt something icy trickle down his spine. "Check on Perez and Nichols immediately," he told Barner. If Dunlop had barricaded himself in there with three of the Spinneret's five supervisors—

But it wasn't quite that bad. "They've already reported in," Barner said. "Heard Dunlop's broadcast and called to find out what was going on. I told them both to stay put till I could get them escorts."

"Good." Not as bad as he'd feared, but bad enough. With Hafner as a hostage, Dunlop's options were no longer limited to digging in near the cavern entrance.

The entire cavern, tower included, was open to him now. "Major, I want you to take charge of clearing out the area around the tunnel and then stay clear yourself.

Andrews, start a full ID check—I want to know exactly who Dunlop's got in there with him. Feed the list through to Carmen Olivero at the admin complex here—I'll let her know it's coming. Also, have the demolitions crew slow down. We're not going to catch Dunlop before he's had time to deploy his men anyway, and I don't want them cutting corners and blowing themselves into orbit."

"Yes, sir."

"Keep me informed; I'll be there in a while." Breaking the connection, Meredith snatched up his gunbelt and hurried outside. The eastern sky was showing a faint glow now; stopping momentarily, he punched Carmen's number onto his phone before continuing his jog toward his office.

She answered on the first ring. "I heard the announcement," she said after Meredith had identified himself. "I figured it'd be better to wait until you called instead of bothering you with questions."

"Good thinking. How fast can you get to your office?"

"Thirty seconds; I just came through the front door. You want me to alert the Whissst and Orspham?"

Silently, Meredith blessed her quick mind. "Yes, but don't tell them anything except that the UN ship is not to launch any shuttles or come in closer itself. I don't have any proof yet, but this stinks of collusion and I don't want Msuya's people available to reinforce Dunlop's play. Then run a check of our military personnel and see if anyone's had counterterrorist or hostage-rescue training or experience."

"Hostage rescue?"

He grimaced. "Yes. We think they took Dr. Hafner in with them."

There was no startled gasp or exclamation … but when Carmen spoke again, her words were packed in ice. "Understood, Colonel. How many commando teams will you want formed?"

"Two, possibly three. I'll be there before you get that far, though." He hesitated.

"Don't worry; Hafner's worth an incredible amount to them alive and nothing at all dead. Even Dunlop wouldn't be stupid enough to hurt him."

"Yes, sir," she replied in that same cold voice. "I'll expect you soon, then."

Breaking the connection, Meredith increased his pace, swearing gently under his breath. If you're behind this, Msuya, he thought toward the sky, you and the whole UN are going to pay a heavy price. Count on it.

What Hafner didn't know about Ctencri stunners would have filled several volumes … but as he lay limply on the ground with his eyes closed he concluded his captors didn't know a whole lot more. Whether they'd misjudged the setting or merely grazed him with the beam he didn't know; but from his lack of restraints it seemed clear they thought he should still be unconscious. All around him he could hear footsteps and muttered commands and the clink of metal on metal as they rushed around building something. Where he was was no problem to figure out—only the Spinner cavern had that particular combination of odors and shifting winds. Probably near the op cent, he tentatively concluded, as occasional echoes from the entrance tunnel reached his ears.

It was the events occurring a bare meter away, though, that he found the most interesting.

It had started as a technical discussion regarding the boosting of power to some instrument in order to get past the effects of all the cable material in the area. But within a few minutes the problem was solved … and Hafner listened with growing astonishment as two voices—one unknown, one all too familiar—held a brief conversation.

"The Spinner cavern is now in our hands," the unknown voice said without preamble once the connection was made. "We have both the tunnel entrance and the cavern entrance booby-trapped and are setting up gun emplacements from which we'll be able to fire at anyone approaching us."

"Excellent." Msuya's voice was faint and tinny, but nonetheless recognizable.

"The Hammarskjold joined us twelve hours ago; together we have fifty UN troops we can land to reinforce you—"

"Negative," the other interrupted. "Your troops will stay right where they are."

"Come now, Major—you can't hold out forever there by yourselves."

"I know that. That's why the Hammarskjold's going to head back to Earth and bring me a contingent of American soldiers. I'll turn the cavern over to a properly authorized officer of the United States Army—no one else."

There was a short pause. "So you're unilaterally scrapping our agreement, are you?" Msuya said. To Hafner's ears he didn't sound all that surprised. "Suppose I refuse to send the Hammarskjold back? What then?"

"Oh, you won't refuse," the major said confidently. "As matters stand now you have no leverage at all on Astra; with the planet under U.S. control you'll at least have a chance to get what you want here by putting on the pressure back home."

"I don't trust America farther than I can shift the Zambezi," Msuya told him. "

Allerton is as good at weaseling as any other Western politician, and I have no interest in turning legitimate UN interests over to his charity. No, Major—right now we have our best chance to reestablish UN control of the Spinneret, and I'm going to take it. You can cooperate or else."

"Or else what?" the major shot back. "You going to sit back and let Meredith get back in when our supplies give out? Don't be silly. You'll do as I say and be satisfied with the crumbs the U.S. gives you."

"I see I underestimated your ambitions," Msuya said coldly. "I assumed you'd be satisfied with the heartfelt thanks of the people of the world; but you apparently think you can become the Hero of Astra to the next generation of American schoolchildren."

"Your sarcasm is wasted, Msuya—your only miscalculation was in thinking Americans weren't patriotic anymore. You assumed I could be bought like some petty Third World dictator if you dangled enough empty promises in front of me. I trust you've learned differently now."

"I've learned you can't be trusted, but that's no great revelation. What now keeps me from offering aid to Meredith in taking the cavern back from you?"

"What for, the hope that our noble colonel will be grateful to you for abandoning your own coup?" the major snorted.

"It would be your word against mine," Msuya said. "From here I can destroy all traces of the transceiver you're using; you'd never be able to prove you'd been in contact with me. And as for Meredith's thanks, I think we could manage something more substantial once my troops were on the ground."

"I doubt it. You see, I brought a little insurance in here with me: Dr. Peter Hafner, one of the five people who has access to the main Spinneret machinery. Still think you're going to charge in here with blazing semi-auts?" He paused, but Msuya remained silent. "On the flip side, with Hafner as part of the bargain a peaceful takeover is now more important to you than ever—and the only way you're going to do that is with U.S. troops. So why not quit wasting time and get the Hammarskjold burning up space back to Earth?"

"You seem to leave me without a reasonable choice," Msuya spat. "Very well, you'll get your American troops. But the matter will not end there."

"Maybe not—but it won't be you and me handling it, and I'd put President Allerton up against Saleh any day of the week. Good-bye, Msuya; let me know when my relief arrives."

There was a click and the scraping of a chair as the major got up and walked toward a sort of hammering sound in the near distance. His step seemed springy, and Hafner got the impression he was satisfied with the way the confrontation had gone.

Idiot, Hafner thought. Msuya'll just bring back UN troops in U.S. uniforms or something.

But that wouldn't happen for at least a week. Meredith had until then to take the cavern back … and his chances would be greatly enhanced if the major's prize hostage could arrange to disappear.

Concentrating on keeping his breathing slow and steady, Hafner listened to the sounds around him and tried to come up with a plan.

"He appears to have fifty-two men in there with him," Carmen said, gesturing to the listing on the computer display they'd set up in the temporary command center half a kilometer from the tunnel entrance. "Thirty-five are from his Ceres contingent; none seems to have any special terrorist or siege training, so we won't have to worry about them anticipating anything clever our teams come up with.

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."

"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.