Spinneret

"Yes—this underground work area," Meredith said, finally getting to the topic he'd called Hafner in to discuss in the first place. "In the report you and Miss Olivero filed this morning you state that you'd like permission to search the area around the Dead Sea for the entrance. Isn't that going just a bit far afield? We're talking some ten kilometers, minimum, between the Sea and the volcano cone."

Hafner shrugged. "The spot where the M'zarch flyers lost their repulsers was nearly that far from the cone."

"But at least a kilometer west of the Sea."

"True. But unless the Spi

Across the desk, Andrews held his phone up and murmured something. Eyes and half his attention on his aide, Meredith said, "You have to understand, Doctor, that while I appreciate the need to learn more about this—ah, Spi

"Colonel, the Pathfinder reports two Rooshrike ships have left orbit and are moving to intercept the cable."

Meredith nodded slowly, thinking. It was immediately obvious that he could either like it or lump it, that the chances of the Pathfinder interfering with the Rooshrike retrieval were essentially zero. Anyway, with the departure of the M'zarch ground troops still underway, it wouldn't be a good time to antagonize the cavalry who'd come to Astra's rescue. "Have Radford inform the Rooshrike that we're giving them the cable in return for their timely help and all that—he can figure out how to phrase it."

"Yes, sir."

Meredith turned back to Hafner, half expecting an argument. But the scientist nodded agreement. "Good idea. They'll see through it, of course, but it shows them we understand politics. Incidentally, did the first cable disappear when the leecher went on?"

"No, it didn't seem to be bothered."

"Um. Well … Am I to take it, then, that I'm not getting any more men to help with my search?"

Meredith spread his hands. "We've got to do something about those crops immediately, as I said. After that's taken care of we're going to be building some giant plastic-lined window-box contraptions to see if those could be a possible long-term defense against the leecher. And all of that's on top of all of our other work. I can assign you a car and a reasonable amount of digging gear, but that's all. You can take it or leave it."

Hafner shrugged. "I'll take it, of course. But I have to say, Colonel, that you seem pretty indifferent toward what is clearly an incredibly valuable find."

"Then you haven't been paying attention," Meredith said, some of his a

"I understand." Hafner got to his feet. "It occurs to me, though, that the problem with the crops might be most simply handled by finding the Spi

With that he left. Sighing, Meredith looked at Andrews. "I could get very sick of having scientists under my command," he told the other, shaking his head. "Every one of them suffers from tu

Andrews shrugged. "Actually, that last didn't seem like such a bad idea to me, sir.

Assuming we'd be able to turn the leecher back on again if we wanted to, of course."

"Which is by no means guaranteed. But even if we find something as dead simple as an on-off switch … " Meredith grimaced. "No telling what kind of groundmonitoring equipment the Rooshrike have up there. Or the M'zarch, for that matter—and we don't know they'll be leaving as soon as their troops are all aboard."

"And you think that when we find the entrance to the Spi

"Mainly. We really don't have any extra manpower, but some of the projects could be put off without major trouble. But for the moment I think we'd do better to stall."

There was a short pause. "I hope you're not expecting the Pentagon to rush lots of defensive weaponry to us," Andrews said. "Even if Congress didn't debate the issues for six months, they'll practically have to invent the kind of material we'd need."

"I know—space war weapons that do fine against spy satellites would be pretty useless against M'zarch cruisers. No, I'm counting on the people who already have the weapons."

"The Rooshrike?"

"And the Poms and Orspham and Whissst," Meredith said, nodding. "Tell me, what would you do as President if the Spi

"Send two squadrons of F-26's for their use and offer them anything else they wanted," Andrews said promptly. "So you want to stall long enough for all the aliens in the area to hear about the M'zarch attack?"

"Bull's-eye. I suspect the Rooshrike may spread the word on their own; if not, we'll send a message to the Ctencri trading group at Earth and let them do it."

Andrews nodded slowly. "Three weeks one-way for the Pathfinder. Any idea how fast Rooshrike ships are?"

"No, but we already know the Ctencri scrimped on the technology they sold us way back when. I'm going to guess— oh, a month at most for the other aliens to get ships here for close-range analysis of the situation. Until then we'll have to hope the Rooshrike can hold off any other bargain hunters."

"And that the Rooshrike themselves don't get ideas."

Meredith grimaced. "There's that, too."

"A truly great joke," the young Whist said, snapping his ripper claw with a gesture of extreme pleasure.

"A great joke, indeed," the older Whist facing him on the viewscreen agreed.

"Second only to the finding of the Spi

"True. And the M'zarch are normally such humorless people."

"We should send a representative to Rooshrike space to see this thing."

The young Whist pondered a moment. "But such an action will have no humor at all to it," he said, touching a control with his leftmost ante

"I understand your reluctance, my scion. But you must learn the fact that not all one's actions may be humorous. In this case it is more profitable to have a representative available to observe than to extract a joke from the situation.

Besides"—the older Whist twitched his ante

"True. I would rather take humorous action when dealing with offworlders, but I accept your logic. I will place my calls."

"Good." The screen blanked.

The young Whist wasted no time in keying the first number onto the screen, but even so the monitor informed him there would be a slight delay. Small wonder, with each of his same-year brothers trying to call their assigned less-year kin, each of whom would call five others … and likely other families had received the word and were engaged in similar operations. The pyramid was undoubtedly an efficient way to pass news, but there was no humor whatsoever in its practical application: the lines always jammed.