Spinneret (36 page)

It had started as a technical discussion regarding the boosting of power to some instrument in order to get past the effects of all the cable material in the area. But within a few minutes the problem was solved … and Hafner listened with growing astonishment as two voices—one unknown, one all too familiar—held a brief conversation.

“The Spinner cavern is now in our hands,” the unknown voice said without preamble once the connection was made. “We have both the tunnel entrance and the cavern entrance booby-trapped and are setting up gun emplacements from which we'll be able to fire at anyone approaching us.”

“Excellent.” Msuya's voice was faint and tinny, but nonetheless recognizable. “The
Hammarskjöld
joined us twelve hours ago; together we have fifty UN troops we can land to reinforce you—”

“Negative,” the other interrupted. “Your troops will stay right where they are.”

“Come now, Major—you can't hold out forever there by yourselves.”

“I know that. That's why the
Hammarskjöld's
going to head back to Earth and bring me a contingent of American soldiers. I'll turn the cavern over to a properly authorized officer of the United States Army—no one else.”

There was a short pause. “So you're unilaterally scrapping our agreement, are you?” Msuya said. To Hafner's ears he didn't sound all that surprised. “Suppose I refuse to send the
Hammarskjöld
back? What then?”

“Oh, you won't refuse,” the major said confidently. “As matters stand now you have no leverage at all on Astra; with the planet under U.S. control you'll at least have a chance to get what you want here by putting on the pressure back home.”

“I don't trust America farther than I can shift the Zambezi,” Msuya told him. “Allerton is as good at weaseling as any other Western politician, and I have no interest in turning legitimate UN interests over to his charity. No, Major—right now we have our best chance to reestablish UN control of the Spinneret, and I'm going to take it. You can cooperate or else.”

“Or else what?” the major shot back. “You going to sit back and let Meredith get back in when our supplies give out? Don't be silly. You'll do as I say and be satisfied with the crumbs the U.S. gives you.”

“I see I underestimated your ambitions,” Msuya said coldly. “I assumed you'd be satisfied with the heartfelt thanks of the people of the world; but you apparently think you can become the Hero of Astra to the next generation of American schoolchildren.”

“Your sarcasm is wasted, Msuya—your only miscalculation was in thinking Americans weren't patriotic anymore. You assumed I could be bought like some petty Third World dictator if you dangled enough empty promises in front of me. I trust you've learned differently now.”

“I've learned you can't be trusted, but that's no great revelation. What now keeps me from offering aid to Meredith in taking the cavern back from you?”

“What for, the hope that our noble colonel will be grateful to you for abandoning your own coup?” the major snorted.

“It would be your word against mine,” Msuya said. “From here I can destroy all traces of the transceiver you're using; you'd never be able to prove you'd been in contact with me. And as for Meredith's thanks, I think we could manage something more substantial once my troops were on the ground.”

“I doubt it. You see, I brought a little insurance in here with me: Dr. Peter Hafner, one of the five people who has access to the main Spinneret machinery. Still think you're going to charge in here with blazing semi-auts?” He paused, but Msuya remained silent. “On the flip side, with Hafner as part of the bargain a peaceful takeover is now more important to you than ever—and the only way you're going to do that is with U.S. troops. So why not quit wasting time and get the
Hammarskjöld
burning up space back to Earth?”

“You seem to leave me without a reasonable choice,” Msuya spat. “Very well, you'll get your American troops. But the matter will not end there.”

“Maybe not—but it won't be you and me handling it, and I'd put President Allerton up against Saleh any day of the week. Good-bye, Msuya; let me know when my relief arrives.”

There was a click and the scraping of a chair as the major got up and walked toward a sort of hammering sound in the near distance. His step seemed springy, and Hafner got the impression he was satisfied with the way the confrontation had gone.
Idiot,
Hafner thought.
Msuya'll just bring back UN troops in U.S. uniforms or something.

But that wouldn't happen for at least a week. Meredith had until then to take the cavern back … and his chances would be greatly enhanced if the major's prize hostage could arrange to disappear.

Concentrating on keeping his breathing slow and steady, Hafner listened to the sounds around him and tried to come up with a plan.

“He appears to have fifty-two men in there with him,” Carmen said, gesturing to the listing on the computer display they'd set up in the temporary command center half a kilometer from the tunnel entrance. “Thirty-five are from his Ceres contingent; none seems to have any special terrorist or siege training, so we won't have to worry about them anticipating anything clever our teams come up with. I've found you eight men with hostage experience, and at last count two hundred others had volunteered for the assault squads.”

Meredith nodded with grim satisfaction. In the two hours since Dunlop's broadcast not a single Astran had publicly voiced support for the major's attempted coup. Even among those who were planning to leave with the next U.S. ship the mood was reportedly one of anger. Whether out of respect for him or contempt for Dunlop, Meredith didn't know, but either way he was grateful for both their active and passive support. Having to split his attention between commando preparation and civilian crowd control would have badly diminished his ability to handle either. “Good. What news from the Whissst?”

“One of the two UN ships that were in orbit as of this morning left about half an hour ago, heading in the direction of Earth. The other hasn't made any moves at all, and there hasn't been any more activity on that superhigh band since the Orspham picked up the one set of transmissions.”

“Um.” So whatever Dunlop and Msuya had had to say to each other, they'd apparently said it all and shut up. Meredith glanced out the tent flap at the double rank of armed guards facing the tunnel entrance, then looked back at the small group of people seated around the table. “Well. Suggestions? Major?”

Major Barner shrugged. “No way around it: a direct assault is all we've got. There's no way to pump in enough sleeper gas—even if we could get hold of it—to do any good, and the stunners don't have the range we'd need. We might be able to approach the cavern entrance from the side if the solenoid chamber or outer tunnels connect into the main passageway properly, but at that point we'll still just have to put our heads down and charge.”

“What if they've booby-trapped the cavern entrance?” Perez asked from beside Carmen. “Your first line of men won't have a chance.”

“I know,” Barner grimaced. “But I don't see any other way.”

“We have enough sets of body armor to outfit a five-man team,” Andrews spoke up. “If necessary, we could send two or three men in first to deliberately trigger any traps and hope Dunlop went easy on the explosives.”

“Dangerous, and possibly unnecessary.” Perez turned to Meredith. “Colonel, I'd like to volunteer to go in and talk to Dunlop.”

“And say what?” Barner snorted. “Appeal to his better judgment?”

“Hardly,” Perez said coolly. “You forget my early experience with his better judgment. No, I thought I'd try pointing out the impossibility of any UN supplies or reinforcements getting through to him and the disadvantages of either starving to death or getting his head blown off.”

“You won't change his mind,” Barner shook his head.

“I don't expect to. But there would be other soldiers listening in; and some of
them
might reconsider their position.” He shrugged. “You have to admit that fomenting discontent is something I do rather well.”

“A good idea, but risky,” Meredith said. “Unless you stay out of range and communicate by bullhorn he might be tempted to double his haul of hostages. But we may not have to go with the frontal assault, either. There's a chance we can sneak in the back door.”

“Back door?” Barner asked. “You mean the volcano cone?”

“Exactly.” Meredith indicated spots on the cavern diagram spread out before them. “We haven't gotten very far along either of the two tunnels that lead off from the tower side of the Great Wall. One of them has
got
to wind up somewhere under the volcano.”

“But Peter tried to find an entrance through the volcano,” Carmen objected.

“That was before he was an official Spinner supervisor,” Meredith pointed out. “I think it'll be worth taking another look up there now.” He nodded to Barner. “Major, you and Andrews get busy and organize those assault teams; if I find a way in we'll want to move quickly. Carmen, keep tabs on the UN ship and field any questions the aliens might throw at us. Perez, you'll stay here and assist Carmen.”

“What about my idea of talking to them?” Perez asked. “As long as I stay back or with an armed escort—”

“If we find another entrance there won't be any need for sowing dissension,” Barner told him gruffly. “Come on, Lieutenant.”

“I know. But you might be able to use a diversion.”

Barner and Andrews paused halfway to the tent entrance, turning to look at Perez. Meredith didn't share their surprise; he'd seen where the Hispanic's line of thought was leading. From the look on Carmen's face she'd expected the offer, too … and didn't like it at all.

But this decision, at least, could be put off. “We'll discuss it
after
we've found a way in,” he told Perez. “I'm heading to the cone; let me know immediately if there's any change in the situation.”

The flyer that had ferried Meredith and Carmen in from Unie was parked a hundred meters away, out of any possible line of fire from the tunnel. Meredith jogged over to find Nichols and the four assistants he'd requested already aboard. Giving the pilot landing instructions, he spent the short flight conferring with Nichols on the methods he and Hafner had used on their previous attempts to find a way in. It was a brief talk, and didn't tell him very much.

The cone steepened fairly rapidly at the very summit, but the original searchers had left behind a piton-secured ropeladder bridge over the rim, and within a few minutes the six men were assembled together at the edge of three hundred square meters of unmarked floor.

Meredith glanced around, noting the TV monitors still pointed down at them from the volcano rim. “Did you ever get the shots of the last cable operation clear enough to show where the floor opened up?” he asked Nichols.

“No,” the other shook his head. “None of the enhancement techniques could do anything with them. We think whatever produces the zero-gee fouled up either the camera or film. Or both.”

“All right, then, I guess we do it the hard way.” He pointed to his left. “I want you and two of the others to work that direction around the circle. Run your hands over the wall, poke at any crevices you find, and otherwise try to spark some kind of reaction. I'll go around the other way. Observers, you're to watch for anything Nichols or I might miss. Everyone understand? All right. Take it slow and don't miss anything.”

Slow it certainly was; slow and frustrating. Half a dozen times in the first twenty minutes Meredith found himself wondering if he was giving in to wishful thinking in his old age. Certainly nothing in the Spinner cavern had suggested that their “supervisor” status extended any farther than the Gorgon's Head network, and whatever security system was hiding the entrance he was counting on finding was likely to be independent of the snake-topped machines. But giving up the search would lead directly to Barner's frontal assault, and he wasn't yet ready to concede the inevitability of that approach.

And then, with nearly two thirds of the wall covered, Nichols hit pay dirt.

“If you rest your hand right here for a second or two you get a faint scraping noise from behind the wall,” the geologist told Meredith, indicating a section of wall pocked with tiny fissures. “We never noticed anything significant about these cracks before, but I wonder now if it could be an air intake of some kind.”

“With a Gorgon's Head on the other side?” Gingerly, Meredith placed his palm over the spot. Sure enough, the scratching was just barely audible. Gorgon's Head snakes against the wall?

“Wouldn't an air vent show a more regular pattern?” one of the others objected.

“You haven't seen the Spinners' love of squiggles,” Meredith told him, testing various sections of wall immediately around the vent. “Seems pretty solid. Let's check around, see if the door is offset or something.”

A search of the five meters to either side proved fruitless. “If there's a door here it looks like we're going to have to persuade it to open,” Nichols said at last. “I've got some hydrofluoric acid; we could try it in the air vent.”

“Go ahead, but I doubt it'll do any good,” Meredith said, eyeing the wall thoughtfully. “So far we've never come upon a Gorgon's Head that couldn't get out of its cubbyhole when it wanted to. I suspect the door's not jammed but locked, and we're expected to know how to open it.”

“I don't see anything that looks like the buttons of a digital lock,” Nichols said slowly. “An ID card in one of the slots?”

“More likely a verbal command—you wouldn't want some worker to get trapped in the cone with no way out.” An extremely foolish idea was beginning to take shape in the back of his mind. “On the other hand, you may also not want the average Spinner who has no business up here just wandering in and out like they can with the Dead Sea entrance.”