Spinneret

Chapter 25

Loretta Williams would hardly have thought of herself as part of a cavalry, given both the number and loyalty of the group sitting together along one side of the conference table. A five-person guerrilla force, perhaps; a team dedicated to the ultimate overthrow of a depraved dictator and his gang of traitors. It was a noble and—she had to admit it—rather romantic image, one which had been so strongly emphasized during both their training and the voyage to Astra that she'd almost come to believe it.

Except that Colonel Meredith didn't strike her as the depraved dictator type.

It wasn't simply a matter of appearances, either. Loretta had ranged over sizable portions of the world in her fieldwork days, and she'd developed a knack for judging people by speech patterns and body language. Standing at the end of the table, describing the Spi

The meeting took about an hour, and afterward they were taken by flyer to what looked like an army camp next to the lake Meredith had called the Dead Sea. Only a handful of permanent structures were yet in evidence, but each of the five scientists was assigned to one of them. From the outside they looked rather repulsive, enough so that the homey interior Loretta walked into was a pleasant surprise. Her luggage was stacked neatly by her bed—probably searched during

(he meeting, she decided—and after a quick tour through the house's four rooms she began to unpack.

She was interrupted halfway through the second suitcase by a quiet knock at the door. Opening it, she found a pleasant-looking young man in civilian clothing.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Dr. Williams? I'm Al Nichols, one of the people who'll be working with you here. I trust I'm not butting into anything important—like sleep?"

"Oh, no," she assured him. "Please come in, Dr. Nichols."

"Al," he corrected, stepping past her and glancing around the room. "Not bad—I didn't know they'd gotten these places fixed up this nicely. I just dropped by to meet you and welcome you on behalf of Astra's scientific community. I trust you had a good trip?"

"It was all right—not much to do, though. Uh—can I get you something to drink?

Though I'm not sure yet what exactly I've got."

He gri

She smiled, some of his cheerfulness penetrating her mental shield. "Why don't we sit down, then, and you can tell me all about the Spi

"By and large, it's a great alien machine that generates indestructible cables and nervous ulcers," he said, sitting down at one end of the couch as Loretta took the chair opposite. "The Scientific Directory lists you as one of the best paleographers around, but I think you're going to have the challenge of your life in there." He jerked his thumb toward the picture window, where the tu

"I'm looking forward to it," she said. "Are you a linguist, too?"

He snorted. "Hardly. By training I'm a geologist, but since I was stuck with Spi

Luckily, I didn't have to start the whole field from scratch—we've got a very nice translation computer system the Rooshrike bought from the Ctencri for us. I've been busy transcribing the Spi

"I see," she nodded, wondering why he'd been stuck with the job. No one else with any more experience? "Well, I have some practice in figuring out unknown languages. Together we ought to be able to crack it."

"I hope so." Nichols glanced at his watch. "Oops—duty calls. I've got to escort the next shift into the tower." He got to his feet. "Maybe when you're settled in you could give me a call and I could show you what I've been doing," he suggested as Loretta walked him to the door. "My number'll be in your directory, and if I'm in the cavern someone'll take a message."

"I'll do that," she promised. "Thanks for dropping by."

"Sure. See you later."

She closed the door behind him and went back to the living room, where she watched for a moment as he jogged toward the tu

"One more good squirt should do it," the young chemist said, his voice muffled by both his filter mask and the natural damping within the cramped tu

It had been a dead-dull day all around. Meredith had decided he wanted the diggers looked at, and the four-man group had accordingly been sent out on a grand tour of the Spi

"She's moving!" the chemist barked, scrambling a hasty couple of steps backward.

"Come on … there!"

And with a loud crack, the remains of the offending stone were kicked free. A low hum was almost instantly drowned out by a raucous grinding noise as the machine hit the tu

"Probably been monitoring itself, waiting for someone to take the stone out,"

Perez shouted back. The digger was a good couple of centimeters into the rock now, and though Perez couldn't see where the fragments were going, it was clear they weren't simply being scattered around. "Let's get back to the cavern."

They made their way back to their car, parked outside the digger's tu

An operations center had been set up just inside the Spi