Spinneret

Barner and Andrews paused halfway to the tent entrance, turning to look at Perez.

Meredith didn't share their surprise; he'd seen where the Hispanic's line of thought was leading. From the look on Carmen's face she'd expected the offer, too … and didn't like it at all.

But this decision, at least, could be put off. "We'll discuss it after we've found a way in," he told Perez. "I'm heading to the cone; let me know immediately if there's any change in the situation."

The flyer that had ferried Meredith and Carmen in from Unie was parked a hundred meters away, out of any possible line of fire from the tu

Giving the pilot landing instructions, he spent the short flight conferring with Nichols on the methods he and Hafner had used on their previous attempts to find a way in. It was a brief talk, and didn't tell him very much.

The cone steepened fairly rapidly at the very summit, but the original searchers had left behind a piton-secured ropeladder/ bridge over the rim, and within a few minutes the six men were assembled together at the edge of three hundred square meters of unmarked floor.

Meredith glanced around, noting the TV monitors still pointed down at them from the volcano rim. "Did you ever get the shots of the last cable operation clear enough to show where the floor opened up?" he asked Nichols.

"No," the other shook his head. "None of the enhancement techniques could do anything with them. We think whatever produces the zero-gee fouled up either the camera or film. Or both."

"All right, then, I guess we do it the hard way." He pointed to his left. "I want you and two of the others to work that direction around the circle. Run your hands over the wall, poke at any crevices you find, and otherwise try to spark some kind of reaction. I'll go around the other way. Observers, you're to watch for anything Nichols or I might miss. Everyone understand? All right. Take it slow and don't miss anything."

Slow it certainly was; slow and frustrating. Half a dozen times in the first twenty minutes Meredith found himself wondering if he was giving in to wishful thinking in his old age. Certainly nothing in the Spi

"supervisor" status extended any farther than the Gorgon's Head network, and whatever security system was hiding the entrance he was counting on finding was likely to be independent of the snake-topped machines. But giving up the search would lead directly to Barner's frontal assault, and he wasn't yet ready to concede the inevitability of that approach.

And then, with nearly two thirds of the wall covered, Nichols hit pay dirt.

"If you rest your hand right here for a second or two you get a faint scraping noise from behind the wall," the geologist told Meredith, indicating a section of wall pocked with tiny fissures. "We never noticed anything significant about these cracks before, but I wonder now if it could be an air intake of some kind."

"With a Gorgon's Head on the other side?" Gingerly, Meredith placed his palm over the spot. Sure enough, the scratching was just barely audible. Gorgon's Head snakes against the wall?

"Wouldn't an air vent show a more regular pattern?" one of the others objected.

"You haven't seen the Spi

A search of the five meters to either side proved fruitless. "If there's a door here it looks like we're going to have to persuade it to open," Nichols said at last. "I've got some hydrofluoric acid; we could try it in the air vent."

"Go ahead, but I doubt it'll do any good," Meredith said, eyeing the wall thoughtfully. "So far we've never come upon a Gorgon's Head that couldn't get out of its cubbyhole when it wanted to. I suspect the door's not jammed but locked, and we're expected to know how to open it."

"I don't see anything that looks like the buttons of a digital lock," Nichols said slowly. "An ID card in one of the slots?"

"More likely a verbal command—you wouldn't want some worker to get trapped in the cone with no way out." An extremely foolish idea was begi

"Well, then, what are we going to do? We're a long way from deciphering the written language, let alone the spoken one."

"Let's try the acid and then maybe firing a few explosive shells around—just in case it is stuck. After that … well, we'll talk about it then."

Neither the acid nor explosions seemed to make any difference to either the door or the hidden Gorgon's Head … and eventually Meredith was forced to climb out of the crater, make contact with Carmen in the command center, and lay out his plan.

She didn't like it. Neither, when consulted, did Nichols, Perez, Barner, and Andrews.

"Ridiculous," was Carmen's immediate response. "Ridiculous and suicidal and you're not going to do it."

"Out of the question," Barner seconded. "It's too long a shot to gamble your life over."

"I'll be in no danger," Meredith assured them.

"What do you mean, 'no danger'?" Barner retorted. "You know half the safety interlocks in this mechanized anthill are gone—look at what happened to the men in the solenoid tu

"There weren't any Gorgon's Heads present then, and the men weren't supervisors," Meredith pointed out. "Besides, even if it doesn't work I ought to be safe enough against the wall. Safer than the first troops through the main entrance would be, anyway."

"If it's so safe," Perez said suddenly, "then let me do it instead of you."

"No. It's my idea, and I'm going to do it. Period. Carmen, you'll make the proper arrangements immediately."

"Yes, sir." Carmen's voice was sullen; but she clearly recognized an order when she heard one.

Or maybe she, too, recognized that they had no other choice.

They'd been inside for nearly a day when Hafner was abruptly shaken out of a deep sleep. "What's going on?" Major Dunlop's voice demanded.

Squinting in the light streaming through the open tent flap, Hafner tried to chase the cobwebs out of his brain. "Going— what do you mean—?"

"That rumbling—can't you hear it? What's Meredith up to?"

Frowning, Hafner listened for a moment. The sound, though, wasn't hard to place.

"He's not up to anything. That's just the Spi

His eyes had adjusted enough now to see Dunlop's face … and the expression on that face was one of tense suspicion. "What do you mean, production cycle? He's making a cable? Now?"

"Why not? Probably demonstrating to the aliens out there that Astra's still in business … that you aren't really in control of anything except a few square kilometers of underground real estate."

The last dig may have been a mistake. Dunlop's brow darkened and the fingers clenching his bolstered pistol gun tightened noticeably. "Perhaps we should prove otherwise," he ground out. "What do you say we go out to the tower and start pushing buttons until it shuts off?"

Hafner felt his mouth go dry. "I say that if you mess up the settings or erase some program in the process, Colonel Meredith will make a fortune selling tickets to your disemboweling," he said as casually as he could. "You'd probably have everyone from the Rooshrike to the M'zarch offering suggestions on technique, too."

Dunlop glowered at him for a moment, then turned on his heel and stalked away, letting the tent flap close behind him.

With a relieved sigh, Hafner checked his watch and settled hack to try and catch another hour of sleep. / wonder, he thought as the darkness closed in, just what the colonel is up to.