“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.
Chapter 23
THE 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: t
wo 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.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Barner said quietly. “The door won’t open anyway. It seems to have locked itself.”
Hafner stared at him, then let out a quiet sigh and turned away.
The solenoid ran for another two hours before finally shutting both itself and the door safety interlocks off. The two men who’d been inside were found in contorted positions against the door, dead.
And at sundown, in full mechanical indifference, the Spinneret sent its cable out toward the equally uncaring stars.
Two more men, Meredith thought wearily, his eyes fogging slightly as he read the report. Two more men.
Sighing, he leaned back in his chair and stared out the open window into the darkness outside. It was late, and he knew he’d pay for that the next day, but his mind was far too keyed up to sleep. The whole event had come off virtually without a hitch: they’d successfully produced a cable to order, had taken disks and disks’ worth of data on the Spinneret’s operation, had obtained their first clues as to what boards in the tower controlled which activity.
And the deaths of two men had turned it all to ashes.
There was a tap at his open door, and Meredith looked up to see Carmen standing there. “Up late, aren’t you?” he asked, waving her to a chair and flipping his terminal to standby.
“I saw your light and thought I’d drop in on my way home,” she said, sitting down and handing him a disk. “You might be interested to know we now have an official balance with the Rooshrike of just over one point eight billion dollars.”
“Which makes us either a fair-sized corporation or a small country,” he grunted, plugging in the disk and scanning the financial data recorded there. “That’s, what, two billion minus the hydroponics tanks?”
She nodded. “And we’ve got several hundred million in other stuff on order, so this won’t last very long. But for the moment, at least, we’re rich.”
“Um.” Ejecting the disk, he handed it back. “I trust the Rooshrike are happy with their new plaything?”
“Delighted. Last I knew they’d caught one end of it and were starting a long, leisurely turn toward the proper shift direction.”
“I hope the cable shifts with them.”
“It should. Sileacs tal Mors kith indicated they’ve done some tests with normal cables trailing behind starships. Besides, the Spinners obviously got the stuff out of the system.” She paused, her eyes searching his face. “I understand we lost a couple of men today.”
Meredith nodded grimly. “Burned-out brains or something—none of our doctors are really sure of the exact mechanism.”
“I didn’t realize electric fields could kill.”
“Neither did I. Neither, apparently, did anyone else.” He sighed. “Looks like Perez is going to turn out right again. We’re simply not going to be able to handle everything here by ourselves. The colony population was designed for geological studies and fanning—period. Dr. Hafner and the others have made some damn good guesses all the way down the line, but none of us really knows what we’re doing down there. It’s a wonder more people haven’t gotten themselves killed.”
“So what’s the answer?” Carmen asked after a moment. “Import experts from Earth?”
“It’s that or let the aliens in on it. The real question is whether Saleh will be hard-nosed about it and lump people in with everything else he’s embargoing.”
“You’re going to be making a list of people you’d like to invite?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You’ve been talking to Perez, have you? Ah”—he added as the light dawned—“it was you who pulled the Scientific Directory out of cold storage for him to give to the Ctencri, wasn’t it?”
She blushed violently, but almost instantly the color vanished into a look of surprise. “He did what? But—he said he only wanted to make up his own list for the scientists to vote on.”
“Apparently he decided to skip the procedural details,” Meredith said dryly. “He must have given the Ctencri a stack of invitations to deliver. I wonder how he expects them to get the UN to provide transport.”
Carmen still looked confused. “But how did you know—I mean—”
“We checked his computer usage after he gave a packet to the Ctencri at the security meeting. He hadn’t gotten around yet to clearing the file you dumped the Scientific Directory into.” He smiled briefly as she suddenly looked stricken again. “Don’t worry; I’m not mad at you for doing it—he would have gotten in one way or another. There’s probably no real harm done, though I’m going to wring his tail for bypassing me like that.”
“Only if I don’t get to him first,” Carmen growled. “That smooth-talking—”
“Save your anger,” Meredith advised. “Consider him as now owing you a big favor, and make sure he knows it. It may help keep him in line.”
“I doubt it.” Carmen shook her head. “I just can’t figure him out, Colonel. One minute he’s on our side, and the next minute he’s pulling something underhanded like this.”
Meredith shrugged. “He’s never been on our side; we’ve just occasionally been on his. He has a vision for Astra and has been pushing us toward it ever since he got here.”
Carmen’s lip twitched. “Yes—his paradise for the poor of Earth. Probably want to put a duplicate of the Statue of Liberty in orbit somewhere.”
“Actually, as matters stand now, his huddling masses are probably the only new colonists we’re likely to get. Permission to leave Earth lies with individual nations and, ultimately, the UN, and Saleh’s not likely to let us lure away the brightest and best.”
“Which means,” Carmen said slowly, “that unless the Ctencri are personally bringing Cris’s scientists here, they’re probably not coming.”
“Probably.” Meredith glanced at his watch. “Well, I’d better let you get home. You’re bound to be busy takin
g orders tomorrow after the way today’s operation went.”
“Yes.” Carmen sighed and got to her feet. “Are we going to have a proper funeral, or are you going to keep the deaths secret from the aliens by giving them a private burial somewhere?”
“We’ll have a funeral. We don’t have to advertise how they died.” Hitching his chair closer to the desk, he reactivated his terminal. Taking the cue, Carmen left.
For a moment Meredith stared through the terminal, wondering for the millionth time why this burden had fallen to him. I never asked for this, he reminded the universe resentfully. I wanted to make Astra a modest success, collect my brigadier’s star, and go home. Why the hell couldn’t the Spinners have turned off their damned voodoo machine when they left?
The terminal had no answer for him. Shaking his head, Meredith cleared his mind of questions and got back to work. At least, he told himself, he’d soon have some experts here to help share the load—presuming, of course, that the Ctencri came through on their end of Perez’s deal.
Loretta Williams was just putting the vegetables on the stove when the doorbell rang. “Kirk, can you get that?” she called, grabbing the potholders. “I’ve got to get the roast out.”
“Sure, Mom,” the teen’s laconic voice came from their tiny living room.
Preoccupied with the roast, Loretta didn’t hear the door open; but the next thing she knew, Kirk was standing in the kitchen doorway. “Couple of guys to see you,” he announced. “They say they’re from the government.”
Her first thought was that it had something to do with her latest grant request; but even as it occurred to her that National Science Foundation officials worked a strict nine-to-four day, she turned and got her first look at the men behind her son … and all thoughts of science evaporated. Attired in common business suits, they could have been bureaucrats from anywhere in Washington … until you saw their faces. …
“Dr. Williams?” the taller of the two asked.
“Yes,” Loretta acknowledged, stepping forward and handing Kirk the potholders. IRS? she wondered. Or even FBI? The second man looked vaguely Iranian; could this be about that pottery fragment she’d brought back from the Dasht-i-Kavir?