"The floor looks a little more scuffed here," Meredith said. He touched the edge of the countertop experimentally, exerted some pressure—
And with a crack, a section several centimeters long disintegrated into a cloud of white dust.
Perez clamped his mouth hard over the exclamation that wanted out and backed hastily away as the cloud drifted toward him on the eddy breezes. Meredith had dropped into a crouch, pistol ready. Perez held his breath, listening, but he heard nothing.
"I was right," Meredith stage-whispered a moment later, straightening up and brushing the remnants of the ceramic off the dull metal edge beneath. "Cable metal, almost certainly."
"Uh-huh," Perez nodded. He glanced around the room. "You suppose this place was a store or something?"
"A store, or a fast-food restaurant or bar," Meredith murmured. "Maybe the Spinners liked to stand up while eating. Let's check out those other doors—and keep your voice down, huh?"
"What exactly are you worried about running into here, anyway?" Perez asked.
The crumbling of the countertop had put his ghost town fears back into perspective, reminding him once more how old this place was. Even ghosts disappear after a few centuries.
"It occurs to me," Meredith replied, "that there's another possible reason the Spinners might not have worried about leaving their doors open: they may have had some very good antiburglar equipment."
"After all these years—"
"The digging machine was still functional."
Perez swallowed. "Right. Well … nothing's attacked us yet."
"Yet," Meredith echoed. "Let's check out those doors and then move on. I don't think we're really going to find anything in this part of town."
They were halfway across the room when Meredith's short-range radio beeped quietly. "Meredith," the colonel answered it. " … Where is it?"
Perez stepped to his side, close enough to hear Barrier's voice." … -dred meters away and closing. It's not terrifically fast, but it may be armed."
"Yeah. Pull back as quietly as you can; let's see if it's us the thing's after."
Meredith moved to the front door, sent a quick glance outside. "Looks like the basic structure's cable metal," he said, stepping back again. "Perez: check out that door. See if it leads outside."
Perez broke his paralysis and tiptoed to the side door. Opening it, he found another room, much smaller than the first one but equipped with the same sparsely laden shelves. There were no doors, but one of the windows facing the street looked big enough to get through quickly. If we can open it. he added to himself, sidling along the wall to check. Keeping his head low, he reached up to try and find a latch … and as he did so, he got his first look at the machine bearing down on them.
It was as if someone had built a giant mechanical spider, fitted it with a turtle shell, and grafted a nest of snakes on top of the result. A walking Gorgon's head, Perez thought, suppressing a shudder … and it was, indeed, heading for their building. Across the street, he caught a glimpse of Barrier and the others crouched beside one of the other houses.
"Perez!"
Perez jerked violently before his brain could register the fact that the stage whisper from behind him was Meredith's. "It's coming, Colonel," he breathed. "I can see it!"
"I know, but we've got at least a minute before it gets here. Does that window come open?"
Perez's hands remembered their task. "Uh … I think I feel the latch here … there.
It moved about a quarter turn." He glanced cautiously out again. "I'd rather not try pushing it just yet."
Meredith was crouched beside him now, fingering the window himself. "Yeah …
well, we'll just have to hope it's not stuck." He raised his radio. "Major, the minute it's inside here I want all of you in the car ready to take off. No covering fire unless it seems necessary; the last thing we want is to attract any more of them."
He got an acknowledgment and slid the radio back into its pocket. "Wait here," he told Perez. "When I fire, shove the window open and get out. If it sticks, hit the floor and yell and I'll try an armor-piercer on it."
Perez nodded silently, and Meredith moved back across the room. Closing the door to a crack, he stood peering out, his pistol held tightly at the ready in a twohanded marksman's grip. Perez bit at his lip, staring at the gun and hoping the colonel hadn't wasted any of the six spots in his number-two clip on flare shells or something equally useless. Though will even armor-piercers do anything against cable-metal? he wondered suddenly. A vulnerable spot—there has to be a vulnerable spot for him to hit—
From the other room came the clip-clip-clip of metal feet. Perez caught his breath
… and Meredith fired.
The blast of the shell was deafening in the enclosed space, its echoes almost drowning out the sounds of Meredith's next two shots. A snowstorm of ceramic dust erupted from the walls and ceiling as the building shook to the explosions.
Perez threw one arm up to protect his eyes from the dust as he stood and shoved with his full weight against the window. It held an instant and then gave with a screech. Grabbing the edge, Perez vaulted through, banging his shoulder in the process and nearly losing his balance when he hit the ground. Meredith was right behind him, giving him a shove in the proper direction and shouting something he couldn't catch. Running full tilt, he got his eyes clear of duet and tears just in time to skid to a halt by the open car door and dive into the back seat beside Hafner.
Meredith hit the front seat an instant later, and Perez was abruptly jammed into the cushions as Nichols stomped on the accelerator. The car jumped ahead, throwing Perez back and forth as Nichols fought to keep the car on the winding street.
"You all right?" Meredith asked.
"I think so." Perez fished out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. There was a grunt from the other side of the car, and he looked up to see Barner slide awkwardly in through the window, where he'd apparently been sitting in rearguard position.
"As far as I could tell it never fired a shot," he said, twisting to look out the back window.
"I'm not sure it wasn't for lack of trying," Meredith replied grimly. "At least two of those snakes were tracking me from the second it came through the door."
Barner grunted. "You get it?"
"Wasn't trying to. I was firing at its feet, trying to knock it over long enough for us to get out."
"Maybe all the dust helped, too." Barner turned back to face forward. "The local police force, you suppose?"
"Or else a burglar alarm," Hafner offered.
"Burglar alarms are usually set up in the individual house," Perez said, coughing ceramic dust.
"Ours are," Hafner said. "But the whole setup of this town seems pretty cozy by human—well, at least by Western culture standards. It's quite possible that a gregarious people like the Spinners would go with a centralized burglar-proofing system."
"A police force by any other name," Barner said, dismissing the distinction. "And the real question then is how many more of them are still functional."
The car hit a tight curve and fishtailed a bit getting around it. "I think you can slow down now, Nichols," Meredith said.
The unfamiliar architecture and geography of the Spinner cavern made distances deceptive, and it turned out that the wall was both farther and higher than it had looked from the tunnel entrance. Rising a good six meters above them, its surface an intricate pattern of subtle colors, it was as if a hundred rainbows had been caught and smashed together into the leading edge of a glacier. Meredith grimaced; the image was an oddly unsettling one.