Spinneret

Probably makes pickup a lot easier, especially if a bunch of them drift into the Lagrange points."

"Um," Meredith nodded. "Though at this point I'd say pickup was already the simplest part of the whole operation Hafner gave him a wry smile. "Or in other words, our progress out at Olympus has been less than remarkable."

"Still no sign of an entrance?"

"None. However the crater opens up to let the cable out, it doesn't seem designed to let people in"

"Maybe your' re just overlooking it," Meredith said with a shrug. "Three hundred square meters of cone floor plus a hundred more of interior wall around it is a pretty good-sized area to hide a secret entrance in."

"Except that I don't think it was designed to be especially hidden, and service doors usually are set up to be at least visible."

"What do you mean, 'not hidden'?" Andrews spoke up. "It's disguised to look like a volcano, isn't it?"

"I'm starting to think the form is accidental," Hafner replied. "The short piece of cylinder inside the cone is relatively smooth—made of something like the cable material, I think, minus the stickum—and the outer surface really doesn't look like igneous rock. The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that the Spinners—"

"Spinners?" Meredith frowned.

"Oh, that's the hypothetical race that built the whole thing," Hafner explained, looking a bit sheepish. "Dr. Chang's team calls the apparatus the Spinneret, you know, and the other just came naturally. Anyway, I'm convinced the Spinners just piled up the stuff they'd dug out in making their underground factory, and that heat from the central shaft gradually fused the loose stone into its present form."

"Yes—this underground work area," Meredith said, finally getting to the topic he'd called Hafner in to discuss in the first place. "In the report you and Miss Olivero filed this morning you state that you'd like permission to search the area around the Dead Sea for the entrance. Isn't that going just a bit far afield? We're talking some ten kilometers, minimum, between the Sea and the volcano cone."

Hafner shrugged. "The spot where the M'zarch flyers lost their repulsers was nearly that far from the cone."

"But at least a kilometer west of the Sea."

"True. But unless the Spinners went to the trouble to put in a stage elevator in the middle of nowhere, the only convenient place to put an entrance is among the hills bordering the Sea."

Across the desk, Andrews held his phone up and murmured something. Eyes and half his attention on his aide, Meredith said, "You have to understand, Doctor, that while I appreciate the need to learn more about this—ah, Spinneret, I also don't have the resources to spare for the kind of long, drawn-out search you're requesting. We've again lost every bit of metal fertilization and are going to have to either harvest prematurely or lay down more fertilizer. The latter would have to be done immediately and mostly by hand—" He broke off as Andrews looked back up. "Well?"

"Colonel, the Pathfinder reports two Rooshrike ships have left orbit and are moving to intercept the cable."

Meredith nodded slowly, thinking. It was immediately obvious that he could either like it or lump it, that the chances of the Pathfinder interfering with the Rooshrike retrieval were essentially zero. Anyway, with the departure of the M'zarch ground troops still underway, it wouldn't be a good time to antagonize the cavalry who'd come to Astra's rescue. "Have Radford inform the Rooshrike that we're giving them the cable in return for their timely help and all that—he can figure out how to phrase it."

"Yes, sir."

Meredith turned back to Hafner, half expecting an argument. But the scientist nodded agreement. "Good idea. They'll see through it, of course, but it shows them we understand politics. Incidentally, did the first cable disappear when the leecher went on?"

"No, it didn't seem to be bothered."

"Um. Well … Am I to take it, then, that I'm not getting any more men to help with my search?"

Meredith spread his hands. "We've got to do something about those crops immediately, as I said. After that's taken care of we're going to be building some giant plastic-lined window-box contraptions to see if those could be a possible long-term defense against the leecher. And all of that's on top of all of our other work. I can assign you a car and a reasonable amount of digging gear, but that's all. You can take it or leave it."

Hafner shrugged. "I'll take it, of course. But I have to say, Colonel, that you seem pretty indifferent toward what is clearly an incredibly valuable find."

"Then you haven't been paying attention," Meredith said, some of his annoyance creeping into his voice. "If I didn't care about it you and your fellow scientists would have spent the last two months working in fields or on construction crews instead of poking around Olympus. I'm not stupid, Doctor; I understand what we've got here. But the survival of the people comes first. The Aurora will be here in a week or two, and Radford said it should be bringing all the extra supplies we asked for. If he's right—if the Hill's penny pinchers haven't cut out half of it—then things may loosen up a bit. But I'll believe it when I see it."

"I understand." Hafner got to his feet. "It occurs to me, though, that the problem with the crops might be most simply handled by finding the Spinneret's controls and turning the leecher off."

With that he left. Sighing, Meredith looked at Andrews. "I could get very sick of having scientists under my command," he told the other, shaking his head. "Every one of them suffers from tunnel vision."

Andrews shrugged. "Actually, that last didn't seem like such a bad idea to me, sir.

Assuming we'd be able to turn the leecher back on again if we wanted to, of course."

"Which is by no means guaranteed. But even if we find something as dead simple as an on-off switch … " Meredith grimaced. "No telling what kind of groundmonitoring equipment the Rooshrike have up there. Or the M'zarch, for that matter—and we don't know they'll be leaving as soon as their troops are all aboard."

"And you think that when we find the entrance to the Spinneret," Andrews said slowly, "they'll know about it, too. Is that what the delaying tactic is all about?"

"Mainly. We really don't have any extra manpower, but some of the projects could be put off without major trouble. But for the moment I think we'd do better to stall."

There was a short pause. "I hope you're not expecting the Pentagon to rush lots of defensive weaponry to us," Andrews said. "Even if Congress didn't debate the issues for six months, they'll practically have to invent the kind of material we'd need."

"I know—space war weapons that do fine against spy satellites would be pretty useless against M'zarch cruisers. No, I'm counting on the people who already have the weapons."

"The Rooshrike?"

"And the Poms and Orspham and Whissst," Meredith said, nodding. "Tell me, what would you do as President if the Spinneret had been discovered in, say, Upper Volta and you heard that the Chinese had made a grab for it?"

"Send two squadrons of F-26's for their use and offer them anything else they wanted," Andrews said promptly. "So you want to stall long enough for all the aliens in the area to hear about the M'zarch attack?"

"Bull's-eye. I suspect the Rooshrike may spread the word on their own; if not, we'll send a message to the Ctencri trading group at Earth and let them do it."

Andrews nodded slowly. "Three weeks one-way for the Pathfinder. Any idea how fast Rooshrike ships are?"

"No, but we already know the Ctencri scrimped on the technology they sold us way back when. I'm going to guess— oh, a month at most for the other aliens to get ships here for close-range analysis of the situation. Until then we'll have to hope the Rooshrike can hold off any other bargain hunters."