Spinneret

Nichols slammed on the brakes, and Hafner heard the double click of two pistol safeties. For a moment there was a tense silence; but as Hafner's eyes adjusted to the light he saw that the tu

"Automatic," Barner muttered. "We hit the Spi

"Yeah." Meredith seemed to take a deep breath. "Well. Nothing seems to be threatening us at the moment. Let's keep going."

Nichols got the car moving again, and Meredith craned his neck to look at Hafner.

"Doctor, you quoted me a minimum time of a hundred thousand years once for how long the Spi

Hafner shrugged as best as he could, squeezed as he was between Perez and the right-hand door. "I really couldn't say for sure. We still know next to nothing about Astra's climatological patterns, let alone the erosion and compacting rates for many of the minerals here. I'd guess we're still talking in the tens to hundreds of thousands of years."

"Does it matter?" Perez put in. "It doesn't seem all that different to me whether a piece of equipment lasts a thousand years or a million."

"The difference—" Meredith broke off. "Never mind. Is that a door off to the left up there?"

It was indeed a door, one as tall as the outside entrance and nearly as wide.

"Looks like it slides open instead of swinging," Barner commented as they climbed out of the car.

Hafner nodded; he'd already noted the lack of visible hinges and the way the door was set back instead of being flush with the tu

This time there was no sand gumming up the mechanism, and it took only a moment for Hafner to discover the eye-level design needed to be pushed in instead of rotated. As the door slid smoothly into the wall a set of interior lights came on, revealing a vast, empty-looking room.

"Looks like a high-school gymnasium," Perez commented as the others joined Hafner. "Floor markings and everything."

"You'd never play basketball here, though," Hafner muttered, eying the four-meterhigh ceiling.

Nichols had taken a step into the room. "Boxes off in the corner, Dr. Hafner," he a

"Where?" Meredith asked, moving alongside. He still held his pistol loosely in his hand, Hafner noted with some uneasiness. " … Ah. Interesting." The colonel looked at the opposite side of the room, then back to the boxes. "Yes. See how they're not really arranged in rows? If the floor pattern's symmetric on both sides, it looks like they're set out along one of the French curves back there."

"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, but not nearly as important as the control room for the Spi

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 Spi

"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 Spi

"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 continued, "that technology is staying on Astra. Period. Unless 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 ru

Hafner's i

"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?"