Perez followed, lengthening his own stride to catch up. Maybe now, he thought, we'll finally find out what this whole Spinneret thing was for.
Chapter 17
It seemed like forever before the flyer swooped in out of the west to settle down among the low hills, but Hafner knew it had actually been less than half an hour since his call. His four-man team had made good use of the time, though, uncovering enough of the double doors to get an idea as to how big they really were. In the silence that followed the flyer's landing, Hafner could hear the sound of approaching cars, and he wondered uneasily just how big a crowd Meredith was bringing. He debated heading out to the flyer to ask, decided not to waste the effort. Meredith and that pain Perez had emerged from the flyer; any questions could wait until they reached the doors.
As it turned out, everyone arrived at the same time: the two from the flyer plus six cars bursting at the seams with soldiers. "What's all this for?" Hafner demanded as the troops piled out and began taking up positions around the hill. Organizing things, Hafner saw, was Major Barner from Crosse.
"Security," Meredith said briefly, striding past the geologist and stopping in front of the doors.
Hafner joined him, trying to ignore the racket behind them. Moments like this should be celebrated with champagne, not machine gun emplacements. "We've been trying to enlarge the hole so that the doors will have room to open," he told the colonel. "You can see from that hinge over there that they swing outward."
"Um." Meredith ran his fingertips a few centimeters along the door. "Feels awfully smooth for something that's been buried this long."
"The Spinners seem to have built things to last," Perez commented, coming up behind them.
"Yeah." The colonel turned away and looked around. "Well, let's get them clear.
Sergeant! Digging team, on the double!"
The caravan had come well equipped with shovels, and within two minutes a double handful of soldiers were making the din fly. It was relatively fast work, the crumbly ground offering little resistance; but had the doors been as tall as their five-meter combined width would have suggested, it would still have taken a good part of the day to uncover them. As it was, the doors proved to be just under four meters high, and the process took only an hour.
"Now what?" Perez asked when Meredith had taken as many pictures of the exposed doors as he seemed to feel was necessary.
The colonel deferred to Hafner. "Doctor? Can you suggest a way to get them open?"
"Well … " Hafner stepped to the hairline crack separating the twin panels and carefully prodded a raised design that spanned the doors at eye level. "This is the obvious candidate for lock or doorknob. The problem is … it doesn't seem to want to move in any direction."
Meredith joined him and tried it himself. "Mm. You think we've been deliberately locked out?"
"Hard to tell." Hafner stepped a few paces back and peered at the edges of the hill.
"This particular mound looks like a simple case of particle accumulation—dust and sand collecting first on the lee side of an obstacle and slowly growing to cover the entire thing."
"You're saying the entrance wasn't deliberately concealed?" Perez asked.
"I don't think it was, no."
"Then chances are it's not deliberately locked, either," Perez concluded. "What do we try first: sledgehammer or dynamite?"
"Perhaps you'd prefer a small nuclear device," Hafner snapped. "It's faster and gives a much more satisfying boom."
"I wasn't suggesting we break down the doors," Perez replied mildly. "Obviously, anything that's lasted this many years isn't going to be bothered by a couple of blasting caps. I was thinking more of seeing if we could dislodge any sand that may have gotten into the latch mechanism."
"Oh." Hafner felt like an idiot.
"May be worth a try," Meredith grunted, squinting at the raised design. "Looks like a small crack between this thing and the doors that dust could've gone through."
"Let's try something a bit less drastic than dynamite first, though," Hafner said as the colonel started to signal one of the soldiers.
"Such as?"
"Hydrofluoric acid. We can squirt it into the crack or dribble it in from above. It should take care of any dust, and shouldn't affect the actual mechanism."
He regarded it as a small personal triumph when Meredith agreed.
And with a crunch like a steamroller on gravel, the doors slowly swung open.
"Get down!" Meredith snapped. Hafner, backing rapidly out of range of the huge panels, was yanked down into a crouch by a nearby soldier. Behind the doors was a dark tunnel that seemed to angle downward. Nothing moved back there, at least not that Hafner could see from his angle, and for a moment he considered standing up and telling Meredith there was no danger. But the soldier still had a solid grip on his arm, and with a mental sigh he resigned himself to waiting.
He didn't notice the faint sound of a motor until it cut off into silence, leaving the doors standing parallel to each other like extensions of the tunnel's walls. From somewhere behind him a car-mounted searchlight probed the gloom, reflecting briefly off dull metal as it danced around.
"All right, everyone; at ease," Meredith called. The hand on his arm loosened, and Hafner stood up, turning to face the colonel. Only then did he see the double semicircle of soldiers behind him, their weapons only now shifting away from the tunnel mouth as they rose from prone and kneeling firing positions. My Lord! he thought, his hands starting to tremble. What if the Spinners had left something behind to greet visitors? They would've cut it in half!
"So. Even their doors still work," Meredith commented as he came to Hafner's side. "Smells sort of strange."
Skin crawling with the thought of the guns at his back, Hafner took a step nearer the tunnel and sniffed. "Probably just very stale air," he said. "I've opened caves on Earth that were a lot worse. We can do an analysis, though, if you'd like."
"Please." Meredith stepped to one of the doors and began studying the inside surface. Easing his way past the soldiers, Hafner went to get his air-test kit.
The smell was already dissipating by the time he was set up to begin, and a fast check showed that the air composition was indeed basically Astran normal. "Some trace things that look like metal oxides and a slightly higher concentration of radon gas are the only anomalies I get," he told Meredith. "There could be alien bacteria, I suppose; we don't have the equipment to test for organic contaminants."
"Given the rest of Astra, I don't think that's a real danger," Meredith countered dryly. "All right. Let's go see what all the Spinners left us." He gestured toward Major Barrier and started back toward the cars.
"Just a moment, Colonel," Hafner stopped him. No telling how Meredith would take this, but Hafner's conscience demanded he bring it up. "How many of these soldiers were you planning to take in?"
Meredith cocked an eyebrow. "Three squads—that's thirty men. Don't worry; I'm sure they can handle anything we run up against."
"Exactly my point. They'll handle things, whether those things actually need handling or not."
The colonel frowned. "What?"
"I doubt very seriously if there's anything dangerous in there, provided we keep our hands off any equipment," Hafner said. "I'm more worried about someone shooting up something irreplaceable because it reflected a flashlight beam back at him."
"Come on, Doctor—my men aren't that trigger happy—"
"Furthermore, I think this is the right moment to set a precedent here." Hafner waved at the tunnel. "If we want the other races around us to treat the Spinneret as a peaceful manufacturing device, we've got to make it a civilian matter right from the start. You put soldiers inside here and everyone's going to jump to the wrong conclusion."