Spinneret (30 page)

He turned toward Perez; and as if that was the signal they'd been waiting for, the aliens finally moved, stepping away from the table and moving generally toward the door that opened onto the landing field. “Well, at least that's settled,” Perez commented, hoping to deflect Meredith from awkward questions about what he was doing here. The Ctencri, he noted, had paused to touch fingers to the Orsphis's pine cone-shaped tusks and to speak for a moment with the Whist. “And we gained another drop of social information in the bargain: the aliens' pecking order.”

“You mean the order in which they accepted the agreement?” Carmen asked, collecting her papers together. “Hardly. My guess is that that was simply in order of increasing distance between Astra and their capitals.”

“Oh.” Across the room, the Ctencri was following the M'zarch outside. “Well, I suppose I'd better get back to the mainland. See you both later.”

He caught up with the Ctencri a few meters past the door. “I'd like to speak to you for a moment, sir, if I may,” he said, falling into step beside the alien.

The Ctencri stopped abruptly, twittering. “Certainly,” the disk around his neck said.

Perez swallowed. Standing there together, in full view of a dozen soldiers, he felt painfully conspicuous. “I would like to ask a favor of you and your people,” he told the alien. “I have some messages I would like to have quietly delivered to various people on Earth—that is, delivered without knowledge of the UN authorities.”

“You wish for us to perform messenger service for you?”

“I doubt it'll be all that much work,” Perez said dryly. “By now you must have built up a network of human informants in various parts of the world. My envelopes are sorted by nation; you need merely to distribute them to your agents, who can stamp and mail them.”

The Ctencri seemed to be considering that. “And what payment do you offer for this service?” he asked.

“I'm sure we'll be able to work that out later,” Perez told him. “A certain quantity of Spinneret cable, most likely.”

“A valuable payment for so small a task.”

So the Ctencri were good enough businessmen to be suspicious of something-for-nothing deals. “Not really … because there's a bit more to this. A number of these people—perhaps all of them—will be wanting to come here to Astra, something the Earth governments would probably try to stop if they knew about it. I'm counting on you to provide quiet transport for them.”

The alien's facial features shifted, his crest simultaneously stiffening. Perez felt his leg muscles tighten in automatic response, wondering if he'd said something wrong. “You ask a great deal,” the Ctencri said at last. “Have you the authority to guarantee payment?”

Perez began breathing again. “Yes, I believe I do. I am a member of the Astran Council, and am influential in other ways, as well. If you carry out your end properly, you will be adequately paid.”

“Give me the messages.”

Reaching under his coat, Perez dug out the fat envelope and handed it over. “You should be prepared to hear from these people within a few days after you mail the letters. I presume there are channels they can go through to get to you?”

“There are; and we will record their names for reference before the messages are delivered.”

“Good. I'll expect to see the first of them here within a couple of weeks. And remember: this
must
be kept secret from the authorities.”

“I remember. Is that all?”

“Uh … yes.”

“Good-bye.” Without any parting gesture Perez could detect, the Ctencri turned and continued on his way. Perez watched him a moment, then started back toward the docks.
Well, that's that,
he thought, feeling strangely nervous about the whole transaction.
In a few weeks I'll either present Meredith with a
fait accompli,
or be up to my neck in trouble. Or both.

“A package?” Meredith asked quietly, holding his phone close to his mouth. “What sort of package?”

“About twenty centimeters by ten by maybe five,” the soldier said. “Looked soft, like paper or wrapped disks instead of some kind of hardware. They talked for a couple of minutes, but we weren't able to get an eavesdropper lined up on them in time. Do you want Perez picked up, or the Ctencri shuttle barred from launching?”

Meredith pursed his lips, glancing past the phone. Beaeki nul Dies na and the Pom representative had, by prearrangement, stayed behind the general exodus for a short talk, and he didn't really want to keep them waiting. Especially not to haul the Ctencri in for some sort of questioning. Besides, at the moment neither Perez nor anyone else on Astra had any information that could possibly be considered classifiable. Once they figured out some of the Spinneret's controls … but that was still months or longer in the future. “No,” he told the soldier. “Let them both go. I'll have someone check on Perez's recent movements and computer usage later. You're sure nothing passed the other way?”

“Positive, sir. Perez's hand wasn't in position to even palm something small.”

“All right. Let me know if Perez goes anywhere but the docks; otherwise just go back to normal duty. And that was a nice bit of observation, Sergeant; expect to find a commendation logged on your record for it.”

“Thank you, Colonel,” the other said, pleasure clearly evident in his voice. “Just doing my job, sir.”

“Carry on, then. Out.”

He clicked off the phone, his irritation at Perez somewhat mollified.
For everyone like Perez, there's at least one more like Sergeant Wynsma,
he decided … and for the moment, at least, Astra's military force seemed pretty solidly on his side.

Of course, if things started getting tight, some of that loyalty could wear a little thin.

Carmen, sitting by the two aliens, must have been keeping at least half an eye on him, and as he lowered his arm she nodded. “All set, sir,” she said. “Beaeki nul Dies na can get the tanks to us by the day after tomorrow—their mining base on the inner planet has a complete set of spares. And Waywisher says they can have a full-sized ship for our use within a month.”

“Excellent.” Meredith looked at Beaeki. “You've considered the fact that our plants will be very different chemically from yours?”

“We have dealt extensively with carbon-based life,” the Rooshrike said. “The tanks will be perfectly compatible with your flora, especially as the lower temperatures here will make the tank materials even more inert.”

Meredith nodded and turned his attention to the glass-enclosed Pom. “Waywisher, we're under no illusions as to how much rental of your ship will cost. Are you aware we can offer payment only in Spinneret cable?”

“We have need for vast amounts of your cable,” the Pom's deep-voiced translator said. “We are happy to assist you in this matter as a way to defray the costs we will soon be incurring.”

“I see,” Meredith said, feeling a brief flicker of uneasiness. Aside from their spacecraft, the Poms supposedly built little if anything requiring great structural strength. Were they embarking on some large-scale space project, such as an orbiting habitat? Or were they planning something else—a fleet of indestructible ships, perhaps?

He put it out of his mind. The Rooshrike had thus far proven themselves to be accurate sources of information, and they'd never given any hint that the Poms were anything but peaceful. “Well, then,” he said to both aliens, “we'll be ready with our end of the project by the time you deliver on yours. I believe, Beaeki nul Dies na, that your first load of metal will be delivered about the same time as the tanks?”

“Yes,” the Rooshrike said. “One hundred ten metric tons, for a cable fifty kilometers in length. I trust you can make one that long?”

“I'm sure we can,” Meredith said, trying to sound confident.
Well, Spinneret Incorporated is now in business,
he thought.
I hope to hell none of the equipment decides to go on strike.

T
HE ROOSHRIKE HYDROPONICS TANKS
actually wound up arriving a day late, but as Astra's microbiologists took that long to get their cultures of gene-tailored algae going anyway, Carmen wasn't inclined to press the point. The Rooshrike ship captain, apparently used to stricter insistence on contractual fine print, seemed greatly relieved at Carmen's leniency. She accepted his thanks gracefully, but made a mental note to learn more about normal interstellar business practices as soon as possible. She didn't mind getting a reputation for fairness, but she didn't want anyone thinking they could get away with murder, either.

The metal delivery was another matter entirely, and clearly under the command of someone who knew what he was doing. The heavy-duty shuttles dropped out of the sky with clockwork precision, each gliding down on its swing-wings to the new landing region north of Mt. Olympus, discharging its cargo of scrap metal, and lifting on repulsers in time for the next shuttle to take its place. The pile of boxes grew; and as it did so, Carmen worried alternately about what would happen if the leecher kicked in prematurely, and what they'd do if it didn't kick in at all.

Fortunately, the need to explain either never arose. The last shuttle was climbing into the sky, and workers were beginning to spread the piles of boxes for better ground contact, when the leecher worked its quiet magic. Carmen was standing next to the Rooshrike project manager as the metal began sinking into the ground; and though his startled comment came out untouched by the translator, she found herself nodding in full agreement.

There were some things that were universal.

In the Spinneret control tower the mood was considerably less philosophical, hovering as it did between excitement and frustration. “It's starting,” Major Barner reported, holding his headphone tight against his ear. “Leecher's gone on.”

Hafner nodded, his eyes sweeping the garish control board and trying to follow the changes in the pattern of lights. It was an unnecessary exercise, of course; the cameras that had been painstakingly set up were recording every square millimeter of the tower's controls, as well as synching their data with a hundred other monitors both above and below ground. But Hafner felt useless enough here as it was, and studying the indicator lights was better than doing nothing.

The short-range radio crackled in his ear. “Got something on level ten,” one of the other observers reported. “Whole bank suddenly lit up. Anything happening to correlate?”

“Hang on, I'll check.” Hafner relayed the message to Barner, then stood chafing as the other checked his own comm net. The most painful part of this, Hafner knew, was that he had originally agreed with Meredith's insistence that only a single long-range radio be allowed at each observation point. From a security standpoint it still made sense; but Hafner hadn't counted on the frustration such an awkward setup would generate.
First a den mother, now an organic telephone relay,
he groused inwardly, staring at the vigilant Gorgon's Heads flanking the doorway.
Why should we really
care
if someone gets a peek at the controls, anyway? How would they get in to
do
anything
—
bribe one of the Gorgon's Heads?

“The long coil's starting up,” Barner announced.

Hafner's mind snapped out of its reverie. “You mean that solenoid that knocks flyers out of the sky?”

“That's the one.” Barner listened a moment longer. “Hope it's all right—it's got a hum they can hear right through the wall, and the pitch has changed twice already.”

Hafner frowned, raised his radio. “Summons? Have those lights changed at all?”

“Yeah: two of 'em have gone out. And listen—I just figured out what the light pattern reminds me of. It's almost like a periodic table with the top right-hand section chopped out—”

“All the nonmetals?” Hafner interjected.

“Yeah. But there's also three more rows of lights underneath where the actinide series usually goes.”

Barner had moved close enough to hear both sides of the conversation. “I thought there were only a hundred and seven elements.”

“Maybe the Spinners found some new ones,” Hafner suggested. “The cable's made out of
something
we don't know about.”

“So what is the coil doing, sorting out the metal that's coming in by element?”

“That'd be my guess,” Hafner said, a little surprised at Barner's quickness. “They could be running the solenoid like a giant linear accelerator, where the frequency of the driving electric fields will depend on both the mass and charge of the ions being accelerated. Either it's keyed to go through each element in sequence, or else the stuff that's coming in determines what goes through first.”

“Mm. You know, this whole place is using up one hell of a lot of power. You had any indication yet where it's coming from?”

“Probably put their generator at the end of a tunnel somewhere. That's sure where
I
—” He broke off as Barner's face abruptly changed. “What's wrong?”

“Doctor,” the major said slowly, “that coil down there. If it can knock out a flyer's repulsers a thousand meters up … what's it doing to the men in the tunnel with it?”

“Why …” Hafner felt his mouth go dry. The medical people
had
okayed all of the observer positions … hadn't they? “But weren't you just talking to them?”

“No—it was the men in the outside hall.” Barner was tapping the call signal. “Edmonds, are you in contact with the men inside? … No, I mean since the humming started? … Damn. Get that door open and—”

“Wait a second,” Hafner interrupted. “Ask them to test first for electric field strength in the hallway where they are. If there's no reading, the wall may be acting as a shield, and they'd better not breech it.”