Spinneret

Chapter 31

Meredith read the report through twice, feeling the tightening of his stomach muscles that had become almost as common as inhaling for him. The bombshell he'd known was coming had done so … and at the worst time he could have imagined. Flicking the page from his screen back to the secure file, he muttered a curse and leaned back, gazing at the snow outside his window.

The timing was ultimately his own fault, of course, which was probably what rankled the most. Carmen had originally suggested Council terms of one year; it had been his idea to cut that to six months. At the time it had seemed harmless enough … but at the time there'd been no Spinneret and no Spinneret profits. Or hot debate as to what to do with them.

The real problem was that both of the main factions had reasonable positions, a fact that made Meredith's job as ultimate decision maker all the stickier. Perez, as usual, was pushing for immediate—if somewhat selective—immigration, arguing that while trapped in unfair sociopolitical systems the poor of Earth had no chance to improve themselves, no matter how much aid was given them. On the other hand, the group adopting Hafner's "In Loco option" pointed out the vulnerability of the Spinneret to takeover and possibly sabotage, and claimed to have developed a method by which unfair Third World governments could be successfully bypassed in giving assistance to their people. With Hafner on his crutches as their symbol and most credible spokesman, they were successfully cultivating the xenophobia that had simmered at a low level ever since the UN had tried to take over back in August. With only three weeks left before the election, the campaigning was beginning to get uncomfortably warm … and relationships between the five supervisors increasingly strained.

And now this.

Raising his wrist, Meredith punched Carmen's number into his phone. There was no answer; disconnecting, he keyed for the Spinner cavern duty officer and left a message. Then, pulling his chair up to the desk again, he called up the main supply inventory and started to assemble the equipment he half hoped he wouldn't be needing.

He'd finished that job and was busy typing in a detailed interim instruction list when Carmen arrived. "You wanted to see me?" she asked, closing the door behind her.

"Yes." Meredith waved to a seat. "I need the lifeboat ready to fly before morning.

Can it be done?"

Carmen froze halfway down to the chair seat, her eyes widening. "By morning!"

"Yes. You know how to handle it yet?"

Slowly, she sank the rest of the way to the chair, expelling a breath through pursed lips. "I don't know what to say. Yes, we've got all the controls relabled, and the operating manual we found on the computer makes the thing sound absurdly easy to run. But there's no way to check the engines or other gear until we understand how they work, and that's a long way in the future."

Meredith nodded. "It's a risk we'll have to take—though given the Spinneret's performance record I think it's a pretty safe one. All right. I want you, Dr. Hafner, and Dr. Williams to go back in there immediately, do all the checking you can and try to figure out the launch sequence. You said once that the navigation system was designed for children—does that still hold?"

She nodded. "The computer displays your choices on a map and all you have to do is indicate which one you want. The selection's sort of odd; it includes only a few of the stars shown, but all of them are listed as being only five to fifteen days'

flight away."

"Maybe it only lists the places emergency facilities were available," Meredith grunted. "All right. I'll be there sometime tonight with the supplies we'll need and our other passenger."

"Yes, sir." Her tongue flicked across her lips. "Uh … may I ask … what's going on?"

Meredith sighed. "What's going on is the collision of three major events: the upcoming elections, the discovery of that Spinner lifeboat"—he hesitated—"and the cracking of the Gorgon's Head security system this morning."

Carmen's jaw dropped. "You mean the supervisor programming? I didn't realize Udani and Ermakov were that close."

"Apparently they were," Meredith said, sliding over the details. There were some things he didn't yet want Carmen to know. "You see the potential crisis, I'm sure.

The five of us supervisors no longer have exclusive power over control tower access. We can now give everyone on Astra the ability to walk into restricted areas if we want to."

"Or anyone from the UN," she added quietly. "Is that what you're afraid of, that someone will leak that information to Msuya and bring down an attack?"

"That, and the nasty political games that could be played with it right here.

Dunlop's coup failed largely because his only access to the tower was an untrustworthy hostage. What would happen if Perez, say, sneaked a dozen of his allies in there and made them supervisors?"

"Cris wouldn't do a thing like that," Carmen defended the other. But she nevertheless looked uncomfortable.

"Then those dozen fanatics haul him bodily into the tower and do the job themselves," Meredith shrugged. "The end result's the same."

Carmen nodded reluctantly. "I don't suppose we could classify the details or something."

Not hardly. "It wouldn't stay classified long enough," he said aloud. "In fact, as soon as it becomes public that we've got the code there's likely to be a political struggle for control of it."

"So how is taking a trip in the Spinner ship going to help?"

"It may allow us to buy some time by defusing the current battle over what we're going to do with our money. I'd rather not say any more about it just now."

Slowly, Carmen got to her feet. "I hope you know what you're doing," she said.

"I'll get Peter and Loretta back to work right away. I presume I can tell them what we're doing once we're back aboard?"

"I suppose you'll have to." Meredith hesitated, then opened his middle desk drawer and withdrew a small stunner. "Neither of them is to return to the cavern once they know," he added quietly, handing her the weapon.

Her face was tight as she accepted it, holding it for a moment before slipping it into her side coat pocket. Then, without a word, she left.

Meredith waited until the door was again closed before exhaling loudly with frustration and relief. He could count on Carmen to do the job he'd given her …

but he wished mightily he hadn't had to drop this on her shoulders. But there were so few people on Astra he could really trust.

And in the next hour he made calls to all of them, giving orders and alerting them to the special files he was setting up. After that he stretched out on his office cot and took a nap in anticipation of the long evening ahead.

It was pitch dark by the time he arrived at the security fence that now surrounded the tunnel entrance and the buildings grouped around it. The sentries passed his car through, and a few minutes later he was driving down the long tunnel, doffing his coat one-handedly as the winter outside gradually changed to the constant late spring of the cavern climate control.

Major Barner was waiting for him at the operations center, and together they drove to the Great Wall. There they transferred the supplies Meredith had brought from Unie into two of the open-roofed golf carts and drove to the tower. Parking next to the two carts already there, they rode the elevator to the top.

"Hello, Colonel; Major," Perez nodded as they walked into the main control room.

"I thought mine was the last shift in here today."

"Something special's come up," Meredith told him, casually eyeing the three scientists working at the control boards. Only Ermakov was able to manage the proper idle interest in the conversation; Udani and the Brazilian physicist, Arias, were several shades too alert. "I need your help with some things downstairs." he told Perez. "Major Barner'll take over your job here for whatever time's left."

Perez shrugged. "Fine with me. Lead on."

"Carmen and Hafner've been doing some work in one of the far chambers,"

Meredith explained as the elevator returned them to ground level. "We're taking a couple of carts of special equipment to them."

"I noticed them heading off in that direction once," Perez said, nodding. "Neither will say anything about what they're doing. Though with the doctor's new interest in isolationist politics, he doesn't talk to me about much of anything."

"You'll find out all about it soon," Meredith promised.

It was no more than a ten-minute drive from the edge of the cavern to the elevator connecting with the lifeboat bay. Loading the boxes into the elevator, they rode down.

"Welcome to Martello Spaceport East," Meredith said as they passed the Gorgon's Heads and triggered the door release.

Perez's reaction was a whispered Spanish oath. "A Spinner ship!" he murmured.

"Incredible!"

"That's what it is, all right. Come on—we've got to get these boxes inside."

The only entrance Meredith knew of was halfway up the curved side, accessible via a narrow accommodation ladder. Together he and Perez manhandled the supplies aboard, stacking them just inside the hatchway. Then, mentally crossing his fingers, he led the way forward.

Carmen, Loretta, and Hafner were waiting in the control room, their expressions tight. "We heard you come in," Carmen said quietly. "Everthing's ready, as far as I can tell."

"Ready for what?" Perez asked suspiciously, his eyes flicking over the room.

"We're taking a short trip," Meredith said, gesturing to a row of seats well away from any of the control boards. "If you three will strap yourselves—"

"A trip where?" Perez interrupted.

"To the Spinners' home world."

Even Carmen's eyes widened at that. "You're not serious," Perez growled. "I, for one, am far too busy to take any trips— certainly in an untested alien craft."

"I'm sure Major Barner and Dr. Nichols can handle cavern duties until we get back," Meredith told him, drawing a stunner from his pocket. "Let's avoid the need for force, shall we? I'd like everyone to be on speaking terms during the voyage."

Perez sent a hard, accusatory look at Hafner and Carmen. "What about the election?" he asked, turning back to Meredith. "Or is this simply an elaborate way of eliminating my influence on Astra?"

"You'll note Dr. Hafner is also going with us," Meredith pointed out. "If you don't consider that being evenhanded, I'll simply mention that Major Barner has instructions to postpone the elections until we return."

"So what are you trying to prove? That you're still the man with all the power on Astra?"

"I've got no more power than anyone in this room," Meredith said flatly. Turning the stunner around, he tossed it to Perez. "What I've got is curiosity and a hell of a lot of unanswered questions. We've got the chance now to go see what the Spinners did with all the cable they took from Astra; maybe even find out what ultimately happened to them. It seems to me that anyone who's really interested in Astra's future should be interested in knowing whether the simple fact of owning the cable contributed in some way to their destruction. Doesn't it seem that way to you?"

For a long moment Perez stared at him. Then, without a word, he walked over to the seats Meredith had indicated and sat down, dropping the stunner almost contemptuously on the seat beside him. Meredith stepped past him, retrieving the weapon and putting it away as he joined Carmen by the forward viewport and wraparound control board. "Let's go," he told her.

Turning back to the board, she pressed a handful of buttons. Beneath them, the deck vibrated momentarily; and then they were moving along the tracks toward the double doors. Carmen consulted a screenful of Spinner characters and a translator display that had been set up beside it and adjusted another set of controls. "It appears to be automatic now until we're off the planet," she told Meredith, her voice tight. "After that I just need to indicate where we're going on the map I told you about."

"Right." They were into the next room now and approaching the second set of double doors. Sliding into the seat next to Carmen, Meredith took a minute to puzzle out the alien restraining straps. By the time he looked up again, they were slowing down in a machinery-packed room that seemed to have no ceiling.

"Under the volcano cone," he grunted, eyes probing the jungle of oddly shaped devices and cables surrounding them. "Um—up ahead, by the wall: isn't that a duplicate of the transport cradle we're riding on?"

"Looks like it," Carmen agreed. "Maybe the empty room we passed through originally held a second lifeboat."

"That might explain why this one was never used," Hafner put in quietly behind him. "By the time they left, there weren't enough of them still here to need two ships."

Meredith craned his neck to look at the other. Seated next to Loretta, his injured leg sticking awkwardly out from the ill-fitting Spinner seat, the scientist had the look of someone trying hard not to pass judgment prematurely; and it occurred to Meredith that whether or not he succeeded in holding Astra together he stood a fair chance of losing whatever respect and trust he'd built up with these people.

But it was far too late to regret his decision. "You think there may have been a plague or something?" he asked Hafner.

"Or else they were running with a skeleton crew at the end. I suppose that's one of the things we're hoping to find out, isn't it?"

Meredith nodded and turned back. The lifeboat had stopped now, and a slight movement among the thinner cables outside caught his eye. "Evacuating the air," he muttered. "Must be going to launch us with the gravity nullifier."

The words were barely out of his mouth when the room seemed to tilt away in front of him and, simultaneously, the viewports blackened. "What—?"

"We must be starting up the shaft," Carmen said. "The windows opaque when the boat turns nose up, probably to protect them."

"Nose up?" The deck felt perfectly normal beneath him. "—Ah. So the Spinners could create gravity as well as eliminate it."

"In a craft this size?" Amazement momentarily pulled Perez out of his tight-lipped silence. "Incredible."

"Yeah." Just one more item, Meredith thought grimly, to add to Astra's list of militarily useful hardware.

He hoped to hell the Spinners, whatever had happened to them, had left behind some answers when they went.

"It was pure luck we spotted them," the Trygve Lie's captain told Msuya, his tone indicating he still wasn't sure he should have awakened his superior. "As per instructions we had a telescope trained on Olympus—"

"Yes, yes," Msuya interrupted him, struggling into a robe as his feet searched the floor for his slippers. "Have they shifted yet?"

"No, sir," the other said. "Actually, they seem more like they're heading somewhere in Astra's outer system."

"Or else are trying to get far enough out that we won't be able to get their direction vector when they go," Msuya snarled. It was the sort of precaution he'd expect Meredith to take. "After them, Captain—I want to be right next to them when they shift."

"Yes, sir. We'll leave orbit in five minutes."

Nice try, Colonel, Msuya thought, smiling with grim satisfaction as the alarms sounded their warning of the upcoming activity. But you can't get that ship away from me. It'll be mine … or it'll be no one's.

Lurching a bit as the Trygve Lie's rotation slowed, he headed for the bridge.