Spinneret (6 page)

“No problem,” Meredith assured him, making a mental note to set up new guidelines on such things. “What can I do for you?”

“Well, sir, I've been trying to arrange for a flyer and pilot to run me out to Mt. Olympus, but everyone I've talked to says the flyers have been grounded.”

“You haven't heard about the crash?” Meredith asked sourly.

“Yes, sir, I have; and I'm sorry about the loss of its crew. But everything I've heard indicates the accident was a fluke, some aberration of the plasma itself and not an actual equipment malfunction—”

“Whoa. An aberration caused by
what?”

“Maybe a rogue solar flare or something—
I
don't know. The point is it's very unlikely the other flyers would run into the same problem.”

“Unlikely's not good enough,” Meredith said, shaking his head. “Until we have a better idea of what went wrong you'll just have to make do with cars or the Cessnas.”

“Neither of which will be of much use,” Hafner sighed. “I understand your concern, Colonel, but please recognize I'm not talking about some abstract search for knowledge here. Astra has
got
to have some metal
somewhere,
and if it's not in the crust it must be deeper down. If volcanos like Olympus show any evidence at all of metal content in their rocks, it'll offer a reasonable alternative to the asteroid mining you have planned.”

Meredith held up a hand. “Doctor, it's late and I've had a very hard day. If you'll file a formal request with Martello Base, you'll be put on the list for whenever the flyers are put back into service. Until then, I repeat, the cars and planes are all we have.” A footstep behind him made him turn: Andrews, back from returning their car to the pool. “Now, if you'll excuse us,” he added, “Lieutenant Andrews will escort you out. Good night, Doctor.”

Hafner grimaced slightly, but had the sense not to argue. “Good night, Colonel. Thank you for your time.”

The geologist left, followed closely by Andrews. Unlocking his office door, Meredith ushered in Carmen and waved her to a seat. “Now,” he said, sinking into his desk chair, “tell me about Perez.”

He listened in silence for the few minutes it took to recount her conversation with Dunlop's alleged riot leader. “He seemed pretty sincere, Colonel,” she said when she had finished.

“I'm sure he did,” Meredith nodded. “Whether he was or not is another story. A massive plot to press-gang Hispanics is a bit hard to swallow.”

“I know.” She paused. “There
do
seem to be a lot of Hispanics here, though.”

Meredith shrugged. “The climate here approximates the Southwest, and we needed people experienced in farming sandy soils. That focuses on the area where Hispanics are already concentrated, so what's the big deal?”

Carmen shifted uncomfortably. “Yes, sir. But even if nothing … unfair … has occurred, there's still that perception. I was thinking on the way back … perhaps you could set up something like a city council in each of the towns. Not with any real power,” she added quickly, correctly interpreting his expression. “It would be more of an advisory sort of body, a clearinghouse for complaints and suggestions.”

“We already have channels like that set up,” he reminded her.

“Yes, but …” She pursed her lips. “It's all organized along military lines. The civilians may not feel comfortable with that; I know it took
me
a while to get used to military procedure and I was
raised
in an Army home.”

“What you're suggesting is that I give them the illusion of democracy without the substance.” Meredith shook his head. “It'd be more trouble than it's worth. You'd add top-heaviness to the administrative sector, inject a battalion-worth of unnecessary political maneuvering and infighting, and generally use up man-hours for no net gain.”

“The gain would rest in smoother cooperation between civilians and military,” she countered.

“Technically speaking, Miss Olivero, there
are
no civilians on Astra. Everyone is under military rule and law, and if some of them don't like it, I'm sorry. They'll get used to it in time.” He glanced at his watch. “I'd better let you go; it's getting late. I'll want a formal report from you for the file, but there's no particular rush.”

“Yes, sir.” She recognized the dismissal and stood up, but then hesitated. “Colonel? What are you going to do about Major Dunlop?”

“Whatever I do, it won't be because of Perez's veiled threats,” Meredith told her shortly.

She swallowed. “Yes, sir. Good night, Colonel.”

“Good night.”

He gazed at the closed door for several seconds after she was gone, wondering what exactly he'd done to deserve such a day. Then, with a sigh, he turned to his computer terminal and flicked it on. The screen lit up but remained blank; apparently the underground light-pipe network was still generating problems. Cursing under his breath, he turned the machine off and buzzed for Andrews.

“Yes, sir?” the aide said as he entered.

“I hate to do this to you, Lieutenant, but I've got a couple of projects I want started right away, and I'm just too dog-tired to hunt up a working terminal.”

“That's all right, Colonel,” Andrews said, pulling out a notebook and sitting down. “I'm fine.” He looked it, too, though Meredith knew for a fact that the other hadn't had any more sleep lately than he had.

“Okay. First off, I want every scrap of information we've got on Cristobal Perez. Not just his colonist file; check to see if any military, educational, or employment records came to Astra with us. Second, I want farm equipment assembly bumped a couple of levels up on the priority charts—and for the time being have some of the planting equipment in Crosse shifted up to Ceres. The farmers in Crosse are sitting on their hands now anyway.”

He paused. Andrews finished writing and nodded. “Anything else?”

“Yes.” Meredith hesitated, then plunged ahead. “I want you to work up a list of possible replacements for CO at Ceres.”

Andrews looked up in obvious surprise. “You're transferring Major Dunlop?”

“I don't know. I haven't yet made up my mind.”

Andrews toyed with his pen. “The major's pretty popular with his men,” he said obliquely. “He has a reputation for sticking up for the common soldier, making sure they get all the rights and privileges they have coming.”

“I know,” Meredith nodded. “But that ‘us versus them' mentality is exactly what's going to lose him the support and confidence of the civilians in Ceres. We can't afford unnecessary friction.”

“I understand that, Colonel. But … you know it's going to look like you're giving in to pressure.”

“Of course it is—and I hate the signal that'll send. If Dunlop hadn't fired from the hip like he did I'd back him all the way; but as it is I either look like a coward or someone whose orders can be ignored with impunity. Either way, I give someone the wrong idea.” He shrugged. “If you can come up with a better idea I'll be glad to listen.”

“Yes, sir.” Andrews stood up and put away his notebook, and for just a second a smile twitched at his lips. “I'll see what I can come up with in that department. In the meantime, I'll get busy on these other things.”

“Appreciate it, Andrews. Good night.”

It was a walk of only a couple hundred meters to his quarters, but Meredith doubted he had the strength left for even such a short trip. Fortunately, someone had had the foresight to install a cot in a back corner of his office. Flipping off the lights, he stripped to his underwear and stretched out under the light blanket. For a minute or two he watched the pattern of light and shadow on the windowshade, trying to come up with some other solution for the Dunlop/Ceres problem. But no answer came, and he quickly gave up the attempt.
Maybe in the morning,
was his final thought,
things will be clearer.

W
ITH HER FIFTEEN YEARS
of Army experience, Carmen had left Meredith's office with the depressing certainty that it would take days for the colonel to take any action on the problems she had discussed with him—and that it would be
weeks
before she saw any of the results. It was therefore a pleasant shock when she arrived at her desk the next morning and found the shifting of extra farm machinery to Ceres already underway. A fast scan of the priority listing showed none of her coworkers had yet taken the job of organizing the assembly of spare farm equipment; keying that job onto her terminal, she set to work.

It was routine data manipulation—a simple matter of locating the equipment and necessary tools from the computer's listings and then shuffling work schedules for the right number of qualified mechanics—and as she tapped keys, her mind drifted back to the previous day and her conversations with Perez and Meredith.

She hadn't worked under Meredith for long, and aside from a brief interview when she'd been accepted for the colony, her personal knowledge of him was limited to the Ceres trip. Still, military bases had their fair share of gossip, and the stories she'd heard about the colonel had invariably painted him as honest and fair, which made his quick dismissal of Perez's allegations seem out of character. True, he was under a lot of pressure—and, admittedly,
she
wasn't convinced Perez had a case either—but it still seemed like an investigation was in order. As for Dunlop's dismissal, she couldn't make up her mind which way she hoped Meredith would decide.

In one corner of the terminal screen a yellow light blinked on. Startled, Carmen looked at what she'd just typed, realized with mild annoyance that in her reverie she'd tried to shift a worker who was already on a higher priority job. She blanked the command, the yellow light disappearing as she did so. Keying for the next page, she resumed scanning the job assignments.

One thing she
was
sure of, though, was that part of her responsibility to Astra was to do her bit to lower tensions and friction … and to that end she was determined to push her town council idea as hard as she could. Meredith's scorn notwithstanding, it seemed to her the simplest way to make the civilians feel more at home. Besides which, if the colony survived it would eventually shift to civilian government anyway, and having such a setup already in place would undoubtedly ease the transition.

Without warning, a red-bordered rectangle appeared in the middle of her screen, the words
TOP PRIORITY MESSAGE
flashing above it. Frowning, Carmen watched as words began filling the box … and felt her eyebrows climbing her forehead as she read them.

ATTENTION: ALL PERSONNEL: SATELLITE ARRAY HAS DETECTED ROOSHRIKE SPACECRAFT APPROACHING ASTRA, NO HOSTILITIES—REPEAT, NO HOSTILITIES—ARE EXPECTED, BUT ALL MILITARY PERSONNEL ARE TO REMAIN ALERT. LEGAL/ORGANIZATIONAL STAFF WILL IMMEDIATELY PREPARE LISTING OF KNOWN ROOSHRIKE CUSTOMS AND RITUALS FOR
TRANSMISSION TO COLONEL MEREDITH'S OFFICE.

Carmen read the message twice before blanking it from her screen. “Hell in a Stealth,” someone behind her muttered. The astonished chatter was just starting when Carmen's superior cut it off.

“All right, all right; delete the noise,” she growled from her own terminal. “Smith, Hanson—start a Legal File search; Barratino, you check military records; Eldridge, start a general search for anything that's gotten buried in odd corners. Olivero, you organize and format everything as it comes in.”

The room fell silent, except for the steady sleet-on-a-window sound of computer keys.
What rotten luck,
Carmen thought as she waited for the data flow to begin.
Stuck in a little room twenty kilometers from the landing field when I could be out there catching my first glimpse of a real live alien.

Though come to think of it, perhaps it wasn't such bad luck, after all. The Rooshrike
had
contacted humans once before … and
that
time they'd opened fire.

The Rooshrike attack on the
Celeritas
was also on Meredith's mind as he watched the shiny dot driving over the ocean toward Martello Base, the feeling of being a massive sitting duck adding stiffness to his back as he sat in the lead vehicle of the five-car welcoming committee. The chances that this was a sneak attack were small—after all, over half of Astra's rental fee had yet to be paid—but business logic had only minimal effect on Meredith's combat reflexes. Trying to pretend that the sweat collecting on his forehead was due solely to the warm day, he squinted into the bright blue of the sky and waited.

Radar had already shown that the ship was considerably larger than the shuttles Martello's landing strip had been designed for, but the Rooshrike pilot had assured Meredith that that wouldn't be a problem, and as the arrowhead-shaped craft made its final descent, the colonel saw why. Unlike the largely horizontal approach used by American shuttles, the Rooshrike's was predominantly vertical, reminding Meredith momentarily of the old single-use space capsules. He winced, recalling the helplessness of those ancient craft; but at nearly the same instant the image vanished as white spears of repulser fire erupted from beneath the ship. Even at their supposedly safe distance Meredith distinctly felt the heat wave of that ignition, and with a silent prayer for the runway's permcrete, he watched the alien touch down. A minute later, he ordered the motorcade forward.

The Rooshrike ship had deployed a debarkation ramp by the time the humans reached the area. The ramp, designed to bypass the hottest sections of permcrete, was considerably shorter than the ones the Ctencri who'd landed on Earth had used, and Meredith decided the description of the Rooshrike as hot-planet aliens hadn't been overstating the case.

The Rooshrike itself, when it appeared, wasn't particularly impressive; but then, as Lieutenant Andrews would comment later, there wasn't a lot even aliens could do with basic spacesuit design. Apart from the oddly shaped face just barely visible through the dark visor, the creature descending the ramp might almost have been a slightly misproportioned human.