"You're oversimplifying," Meredith said, with obviously strained patience, "not to mention anthropomorphizing. At least two of the species out there don't seem to even make a distinction between military and civilians."
"Then let's do it for ourselves," Hafner insisted. "We make that distinction, and so do all the people back on Earth. In the UN, for instance."
Meredith gazed at him for a long moment, and Hafner wished he had some clue as to what the other was thinking. Certainly the geologist's personal leverage and influence were very near zero, a fact Meredith obviously knew as well as he did.
His only chance was that the colonel might somehow glimpse the various political consequences involved here—consequences Hafner himself only dimly understood—and make his decision appropriately.
And apparently he did. "All right," Meredith said at last, his eyes flicking back toward the troops. "The military presence will be limited to Major Barner and myself. I trust you won't mind if I have a defensive perimeter set up out here?"
The last was definitely sarcasm, but Hafner didn't care. "No, that'll be fine."
"Thank you." Quickly, the colonel issued orders: he, Barner, Perez, Hafner, and Hafner's assistant, Nichols, would go inside for a fast look around. All would be equipped with emergency packs; Meredith and Bamer would be armed as well with stunners and dual-clip pistols. There was some discussion as to whether or not to take a car inside, but the vehicle's ability to carry extra equipment eventually tipped the balance against the traditional military dislike for bunching up. In addition, Bamer would wear a medium-range radio headset.
"We'll stay in continuous contact as long as possible," Meredith told the captain being left in charge of the Crosse contingent. "Don't worry if we fade out, though, because these walls will probably cut off the signal long before we get to the end of the road. If we're not back in four hours contact Major Brown at Martello for instructions and assistance." Climbing into the front passenger seat, the colonel glanced at the others: Barner, Perez, and Hafner squeezed together in back; Nichols at the wheel. "Everyone set? Okay, Nichols; slow and easy."
The young geologist eased the car into the tunnel and started forward. Hafner discovered he'd been right; the floor did angle a couple of degrees downward. He was leaning forward, eyes searching at the limits of the car's headlights, when the tunnel abruptly blazed with light.
Nichols slammed on the brakes, and Hafner heard the double click of two pistol safeties. For a moment there was a tense silence; but as Hafner's eyes adjusted to the light he saw that the tunnel was still empty.
"Automatic," Barner muttered. "We hit the Spinner version of a welcome mat and they turned the lights on for us."
"Yeah." Meredith seemed to take a deep breath. "Well. Nothing seems to be threatening us at the moment. Let's keep going."
Nichols got the car moving again, and Meredith craned his neck to look at Hafner.
"Doctor, you quoted me a minimum time of a hundred thousand years once for how long the Spinneret has been operating. Does the length of time this entrance has been covered up correlate with that number?"
Hafner shrugged as best as he could, squeezed as he was between Perez and the right-hand door. "I really couldn't say for sure. We still know next to nothing about Astra's climatological patterns, let alone the erosion and compacting rates for many of the minerals here. I'd guess we're still talking in the tens to hundreds of thousands of years."
"Does it matter?" Perez put in. "It doesn't seem all that different to me whether a piece of equipment lasts a thousand years or a million."
"The difference—" Meredith broke off. "Never mind. Is that a door off to the left up there?"
It was indeed a door, one as tall as the outside entrance and nearly as wide.
"Looks like it slides open instead of swinging," Barner commented as they climbed out of the car.
Hafner nodded; he'd already noted the lack of visible hinges and the way the door was set back instead of being flush with the tunnel wall. "If you all want to stand back, I'll see if that plate in the center works the same as the one outside did."
This time there was no sand gumming up the mechanism, and it took only a moment for Hafner to discover the eye-level design needed to be pushed in instead of rotated. As the door slid smoothly into the wall a set of interior lights came on, revealing a vast, empty-looking room.
"Looks like a high-school gymnasium," Perez commented as the others joined Hafner. "Floor markings and everything."
"You'd never play basketball here, though," Hafner muttered, eying the four-meterhigh ceiling.
Nichols had taken a step into the room. "Boxes off in the corner, Dr. Hafner," he announced, pointing.
"Where?" Meredith asked, moving alongside. He still held his pistol loosely in his hand, Hafner noted with some uneasiness. " … Ah. Interesting." The colonel looked at the opposite side of the room, then back to the boxes. "Yes. See how they're not really arranged in rows? If the floor pattern's symmetric on both sides, it looks like they're set out along one of the French curves back there."
"Odd," Barner murmured. "Some sort of giant board game, you think?"
"Not necessarily," Meredith said. "It could just be their method of storing supplies."
"Seems like that would waste a lot of space," the major said.
"Even if you had them in rows you'd need room for ventilation and forklift maneuvering," Meredith pointed out. "And as for identification purposes, a row number plus pallet number is no simpler than a curve number plus distance along it. I understand in some parts of Japan they still use a similar system for addresses."
Hafner found himself staring at the elaborate floor pattern, trying to visualize a race that would rather think in curlicues than in straight lines. Do the Rooshrike do things that way? he wondered suddenly. Might be worth finding out.
"Should we open one of the crates up, see what's inside?" Nichols asked.
"Not now," Meredith said, turning back toward the car. "The follow-up teams can handle details like that."
They passed several more of the storeroom-type doors in the next two or three kilometers, Meredith vetoing any suggestion that they be examined for contents.
"It's obvious that what we've found is a freight entrance and storage area.
Interesting, but not nearly as important as the control room for the Spinneret machinery."
Perez spoke up. "Just out of curiosity, Colonel, what exactly do you propose to do if and when we learn how all this is done?"
Meredith turned halfway around to look at him. "For starters, I'd like to either shut down or drastically restrict the metal leecher—our attempts at agriculture are going to be limited to hydroponics if we can't do that. It might also answer some questions if we found out whether six-centimeter cables are all the Spinneret can produce, or whether we can make plates of the material as well. Why?—did you have some project of your own in mind?"
"I'm wondering about the basic science involved," Perez said. "Are you going to offer the gravity nullifier for sale, too, for instance?"
Nichols caught the key word before Hafner did. " 'Too'?" he put in before Meredith could answer. "What's going on? What are we selling?"
"We're putting Spinneret cable on the market," Meredith said—rather grudgingly, Hafner thought. "It's not a secret, exactly, but we weren't going to say anything to the rest of the colony until we'd settled with the Rooshrike on terms and prices."