Spinneret

The Pom's tentacles rippled. "You're familiar with such devices? Astonishing!"

"Only the theory," Carmen admitted, dredging her memory for any details she may have squirreled away. "We worked that out—oh, at least half a century ago, I think. I don't know if we never came up with anything strong enough to build it or if someone found a flaw in the theory or what."

"There are no theoretical flaws, but we've found no material strong enough for our needs. Until now."

"Yes, the cable would be ideal, wouldn't it?" Was that what the Spi

"I suppose that's not unreasonable," Waywisher said after a short pause. "Very well. Our first clues came from the Rooshrike heat tests on their first cable. As you know, it becomes superconducting at relatively low temperatures, distributing the applied heat evenly through its mass. What you may not know is that at higher temperatures it begins to show an almost black-body radiation spectrum, but with gaps that resemble absorption lines for various metals. At higher temperatures still the lines disappear."

"Yes, the Rooshrike report mentioned all that. There were some lines like those of simple molecules, too—titanium oxide, I think, and one or two others. I didn't know they'd given the data to anyone but us."

"They didn't. But they did their tests in space, and we had a probe nearby."

"Ah." It was becoming increasingly hard for Carmen to maintain her old image of the Poms as gentle, guileless creatures. "They seemed to think it indicated the presence of nontransmuted metals in the cable skin."

"Not true. The strength of the cable indicates it to be a perfectly homogeneous material."

"Why? A lot of alloys are stronger than their constituent metals."

"True. But alloys ca

Carmen's skin prickled. The Poms' mastery of nuclear forces was supposed to be what had allowed them to develop an underwater technology in the first place, and it was a secret they'd guarded jealously from other races. If that was what they were offering … "You've done that kind of bonding yourselves?" she asked, as casually as possible.

"Yes." Waywisher's fins and tentacles ripped restlessly, a mute indication of how much this revelation was costing him. "The theory is quite straightforward, though application can be difficult, and under it the 'glue' can also be partially explained as a stepwise-enhanced edge effect. The absorptionlike spectrum lines would then be due to weak force-electromagnetic coupling between nuclear fluctuations and the electron shell response. Is all of this translating properly?"

"I think so," Carmen said, the taste of irony in her mouth. All the talk on Astra of protecting the Spi

Waywisher barked, an almost seal-like sound the translator didn't touch. "We've mastered the technique only for the lightest metals; the difficulty, as well as the material's final strength, increases rapidly with atomic weight. If our theory is correct, the Spi

Which was, Carmen realized with a shiver, a thousand times as strong as the lower limit the Rooshrike had established for it. "I don't believe it," she murmured.

"The numbers are accurate to within ten percent."

"No, I didn't mean that—I was just talking to myself." She took a moment to get her brain back on its rails. "You've got the whole thing—theory, numbers, speculations—all written out for us?"

"I have it with me now. It's on a disk compatible with the reader we delivered to Colonel Meredith four days ago."

"All right, then," Carmen nodded. "A trillion dollars in cable for the disk. You still have to supply however many tons of metal that'll come to, I'm afraid."

"That will be acceptable." Waywisher's left tentacle probed into his harness, emerged with a flat package. "I don't suppose I have to warn you that this information is a great secret of the Pom people, and that its contents are not to be given to any other people."

"Of course," Carmen nodded, taking the package gingerly. "The very fact we've got it at all will only be known by a few select people. We, uh, are honored by your trust."

"We have little choice." Waywisher's fins were undulating gently, and Carmen suddenly realized the two of them had begun drifting toward the outer lock and her waiting shuttle. "You have something we need; it isn't trust to offer something of equal value in exchange for it. Besides, your military weakness prevents you from the casual betrayal an empire might consider. Should you do so, your destruction would follow quickly."

Carmen swallowed. "And we value your friendship, too," she murmured.

With a flip of his tail Way wisher drove them the last meter to lock, steadying Carmen with one tentacle as he worked the mechanism with the other. "Good-bye, Miss Olivero. We look forward to a long and harmonious relationship between our peoples."

"As do we," Carmen nodded, kicking backward into the lock. "Good-bye, Waywisher."

Especially, she added to herself as the lock door slid shut, a long one.

Lieutenant Andrews was looking more than a little worried when she finally emerged from the lock's air dryer into the shuttle passenger bay. "You all right?" he asked, helping her maneuver the weightless but massive oxygen tanks into their jury-rigged latches.

"Sure," she said, exchanging her fins and mask for a pair of soft boots. "Why do you ask? Just because you lose your monitor for a few—"

"So you knew about that, did you?" His eyes probed her face, flicked to the package Waywisher had given her. "It wasn't equipment failure, then, I take it.

Waywisher really meant it when he asked for a private chat?"

"Something like that. I'm not at liberty to discuss it with anyone but Colonel Meredith. I'm sorry."

Andrews shrugged. "It's okay by me—secrets I can't tell anyone else just add frustration to my life, anyway. You might as well go back and change, though," he added as she headed for one of the crash chairs. "We're going to be up here for another orbit."

She frowned. "Why?"

He gri

"VIPs? You mean … ?"

"Yep. Perez's little gamble paid off. The scientific cavalry has arrived."