Spinneret (23 page)

“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, 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.”

“The Rooshrike?” Hafner frowned. “I thought the Ctencri handled all trade with Earth.”

“They do,” Meredith said. “That's one of the reasons we're going through the Rooshrike.”

Hafner thought about that for a long moment, not liking any of the implications that came with it. Clearly, important things had been happening while he'd been occupied with digging up the Astran landscape; just as clearly, Meredith wasn't interested in giving out details. He wondered if Carmen knew what was going on, and made a mental note to get in touch with her as soon as possible.

“But as for the gravity nullifier and leecher,” Meredith you have objections?”

“None at all,” Perez answered. “Though I would actually go further and say we shouldn't even study the equipment too closely. The minute you begin to store such knowledge you invite its theft, and we can't afford to lose Astra's secrets.”

“I expect Drs. Hafner and Nichols would take a somewhat dim view of that philosophy,” Meredith ventured. “Or would the scientists here be happy working with a machine that's running on black magic?”

Hafner's inner ear signaled a change in direction. “We've leveled out,” he announced, glad of an opportunity to short-circuit the argument. “I think I see a cross corridor up there, too.”

“You do,” Meredith confirmed, craning his neck to see the car's odometer. “About six kilometers from the end … puts us something like one to two hundred meters underground. Hm. Odd that the Rooshrike metal detectors didn't pick up the place; they're supposed to have a half-kilometer range.”

“Maybe it's all made of the same stuff as the cable,” Barner suggested. “That doesn't register well on detectors, remember.”

“Won't work,” Hafner said. “Cable metal's fine for structure and power cables, but the electronics have to use normal metal.”

“Why?” Perez asked.

“You need both normally conducting metals and semiconductors for any kind of electronics,” Hafner told him. “Cable metal either conducts perfectly or terribly. More likely the walls here shielded the electronics in some way.”

They'd reached the cross corridor now, and on Meredith's orders Nichols brought the car to a stop. “Anything look interesting either direction?” the colonel asked, sending his own gaze back and forth.

“Looks like the hall just dead-ends at a single big door on this side,” Barner reported.

Hafner leaned forward to look past Perez. Sure enough, it did … and suddenly he had an idea what they'd find behind that door. “Let's take a look,” he suggested.

Meredith shot him an odd look over the front seat, but nodded. “If you think it's worth doing. Major, how's contact with the outside world holding up?”

“It's been fading steadily, but we've still got them.”

“Warn them we'll be moving in and out of corridors from now on and likely only have erratic contact. All right, Nichols; drive us over there.”

Hafner's hunch proved to be correct. Behind the door was another corridor, parallel to the entrance tunnel and with perhaps four times its cross-section. Mounted up off the floor, disappearing away to infinity in both directions, was a huge solenoid.

“A particle accelerator?” Nichols whispered as they stood and stared at the monster coil.

“Who knows?” Hafner shrugged. “All we know for certain is that it knocks out repulser plasmas.”

Meredith muttered something; apparently, he hadn't made the connection. “You mean some sort of resonance effect with this thing is what wrecked our flyers?”

“Or with one of the pieces of equipment you can see hooked into the solenoid in places,” Hafner said. “Must be a tremendous field inside the coil if the stuff that leaks out is that strong.”

“Wonder what it's for,” Barner said. “Any ideas?”

“Could be practically anything.” Hafner shook his head. “This whole place is incredible. Why on Earth would anyone go to the trouble to build something like this?”

“Maybe it was their normal mining method,” Perez suggested. “This is impressive, certainly, but so are off-shore oil rigs and the Exxon Tower.”

“Then where's the rest of their civilization?” Nichols objected. “They should've left
some
other traces behind.”

“After a hundred thousand years?”

“We find fossils older than that on Earth.

“Actually, the Spinners probably weren't native to this system,” Meredith interjected. “Possibly not to this entire region of space. Let's get back to the car and move on.”

“What's your evidence the Spinners were strangers here?” Perez asked when they were again driving down the main tunnel. “Lack of fossils hardly counts—nobody's really been looking for them.”

“How about lack of other cable-material structures?” Meredith countered. “Not just here, but elsewhere in the system? Remember, the Rooshrike did a pretty complete survey of this place when they first ran across it. Besides, if they lived anywhere near here they ought to at least be hinted at in Rooshrike archaeology or legends.”

“Maybe they are,” Hafner said. “Stories of godlike creatures and all could be references to them.”

“The computer doesn't think so. All the appropriate mythological figures are too similar to Rooshrike themselves to be aliens.”

“But after several thousand retellings—”

“Hold it!” Barner barked, cutting Hafner off and causing Nichols to stomp on the brakes. “On the right, down the corridor we just passed—looked like a hole in the rock.”

Nichols backed the car up the necessary few meters and turned off to the right. Hafner leaned forward, peering over Meredith's shoulder. Sure enough, where the metal walls and lights ended, the tunnel continued on. “You've got good eyes, Major,” he commented.

“They're no better than yours,” Barner replied, a bit tartly. “I just use mine, that's all.”

Hafner reddened and shut up.

The corridor ended in what had once been a T junction with another hallway; the rough tunnel Barner had spotted led through the crossbar of the T, as if someone had planned to extend the corridor and never completed the job. “Sloppy work,” Nichols commented, running his fingers over the rough stone within the hole. “Must've had their funding cut.”

“I don't think so,” Meredith said. “Note that the whole wall's been left open to the rock here, as if they'd
planned
to drill into it.”

Hafner stepped back and looked down the hallway. “You're right—looks like another hole down there, just past that vertical support bar.”

Meredith produced a flashlight from his pack and aimed it into the tunnel. “Goes pretty deep … well, well. Looks like there's something metallic back there.” Shifting the light to his left hand, he ducked his head and stepped carefully into the passageway. “Everyone wait here and keep your eyes open. I'll be back in a minute.”

It was more like five minutes before the colonel reappeared. “Well?” Perez demanded as Meredith put away his light.

“Hard to be sure, of course, with an alien design,” Meredith said, “but the thing back there seems to be an automated digging machine.”

“So they
were
extending this tunnel,” Nichols said.

“Or else mining the rock for the nonmetallic elements the leecher doesn't get,” Hafner suggested. “Maybe hauling the digger out would give us a clue.”

“I wouldn't recommend that,” Meredith said. “The thing's still active.”

They all turned to face him. “It's
what?”
Hafner said, cocking an ear toward the tunnel.

“Oh, it's not actually running—there's a rock jammed between two of the track links. But there's something that looks like a display panel in the rear, and a half-dozen lights are still showing on it.” Meredith brushed at the dust that had collected on his shoulders and headed back toward the car. “Come on; let's keep moving.”

They returned to the main corridor and continued on inward, driving for the most part in silence. It shouldn't have been such a shock, Hafner told himself—they all knew, after all, that the main spinneret machinery was still operational. Somehow, though, he'd always pictured the Spinneret as an essentially solid-state apparatus, barely surviving through the grace of multiple redundancies. For a small peripheral unit—and a
tunneling
machine, at that—to be in equally good shape was both awesome and just a little bit creepy.

The corridor made a thirty-degree angle to the left … and without warning, they were abruptly in a new world.

“Snafu on toast,” Barner gasped, craning his neck to look up. “What the hell is this?”

L
IKE BARNER, HAFNER'S EYES
were drawn first upward, to the impossible blue sky overhead. Fluffy white clouds drifted visibly by, occasionally cutting across the shining yellow sun midway to zenith … it was nearly a minute before he could tear his gaze away and focus on the village scene around them.

His immediate impression was that they'd driven into a replica of Jerusalem's old city. White-walled, domed buildings squeezed closely together along narrow, winding streets, while in the near distance a decorative wall cut in front of a minaretlike tower. A closer look, though, showed him the myriad of architectural differences between these buildings and anything he'd ever seen on Earth. The shapes and positioning of the windows, the elaborate carvings on doors and archways, even the faint iridescence of the walls themselves all emphatically marked the place as
alien.

Perez broke the spell first, with a murmured Spanish phrase that sounded simultaneously blasphemous and awe-struck. “This is impossible!” he whispered. “The sky—but we were a hundred meters underground!”

“It's artificial,” Meredith said, and Hafner had to admire the confidence in the other's voice. The geologist had stared at the sky for an entire minute without finding any flaws in the simulation. It
was
a simulation, of course; it
had
to be. “Probably a hologram or something projected on a domed ceiling,” Meredith continued. “Looks like the Spinners were settling in for a long stay here.”

“But why underground?” Perez asked, clearly still shaken. “Why not on the surface where they could have
real
sunlight?”

“Probably wanted a place where they could burn their steaks in peace,” Nichols said, sneezing violently. “Or can't you smell that mess?”

Hafner sniffed cautiously. He hadn't really noticed the odors drifting in on the breeze, but now that he was paying attention he discovered Nichols was right. A faint smell that indeed resembled burnt meat was dominant; but beneath it he could detect traces of jasmine, sulfur, and something like a cross between rusty iron and oregano. “Whoo-ee,” he said. “Smells like someone burned down a kitchen pantry.”

“Again, probably artificial.” Meredith pointed to a bare patch of ground Hafner hadn't noticed. “I'd guess that used to be a garden or small park. You can see that whatever used to be there is long gone. Anything that could possibly have decayed did so centuries ago.”

The wind died and began again from a slightly different direction, changing with equal subtlety the mixture of scents. Hafner glanced upward; the phantom cloud, too, had shifted direction. “Someone went to an awful lot of trouble to make the workers feel at home.”

“Yeah.” Meredith pointed toward the minaret in the distance. “Let's leave a marker at this entrance and head over toward that tower. I want a look at that wall, too.”