Spinneret

Chapter 28

The last glint of sunlight had vanished from the i

"It's started," he a

"Your restraints set?" Barner asked, his voice barely discernible over the static that was begi

"Yes," Meredith told him, trying to sound more confident than he felt. The lines and bracing bars fastening him to the i

With a conscious effort, he put the thought out of his mind and reached out to press his bare hand against the air vent again. The gentle breeze that was starting to spring up kept him from hearing any scratching, but he was sure the Gorgon's Head behind the wall had detected and identified him. What it would do with that knowledge, though, was still an unknown.

The gravity was dropping rapidly now, and the local atmospheric pressure was begi

Brought up on a diet of American cliff-hanger drama, he was rather expecting the Gorgon's Head to wait until the last second before taking action … and it was therefore almost anti-climactic when, with the gravity only down to point four gee, a section of wall suddenly slid back and down, exposing the short-tu

Meredith hit his harness release with one hand, reaching out with the other to try and get a grip on the edge of the opening. He needn't have bothered; from an alcove just off the tu

Half an hour later the static cleared and he was able to reassure the anxious listeners that the gamble had worked. Twenty minutes after that, Andrews and the ten-man commando team had joined him. Together they crowded into the elevator and started down.

It was a long trip. Meredith hadn't until that moment had a real feeling for how far below Astra's surface the Spi

They were, as Meredith had anticipated, in an unexplored area of the cavern complex. The room they'd entered was as large as the storerooms leading off the main entrance tu

"Railroad tracks," Andrews muttered, poking carefully at one with the muzzle of his Stoner 5.56. "Heavy-duty, from the look of them."

Meredith looked back and forth between the two doors. One led directly under the volcano cone, he estimated. The other was flanked by two very familiar-looking bulges … "Let's backtrack it," he said, starting toward that door.

The Gorgon's Heads emerged from their alcoves before the group was within fifteen meters, walking on their spider legs to stand in front of the door release.

"It's all right," Meredith told them soothingly, speaking—he realized belatedly—as if they were a pair of pet Dobermans. Stepping forward, he ran a hand over the top of each, then reached between them to poke the release. The doors slid open … and Meredith found himself facing what could only be a spaceship.

A big ship, too; nothing like the Aurora or Pathfinder, of course, but certainly comparable to the UN's Ctencri-built courier ships. It rested on a transport cradle which, in turn, squatted across the tracks in the floor; and despite their age, Meredith had the feeling that, like the Spi

"At least," Andrews murmured from beside him, "we know now why they needed to make the volcano crater so big. Should we take a look inside, Colonel?"

Meredith swept the room quickly with his eyes, noting the quantities of support gear stacked around the walls. "Not right now," he told the other. "I doubt there's anything here that would help us with Dunlop, and even if there were it'd take us too long to find it. We'll mark the door and bring the experts in later." Stepping back, he looked around for another way out of the first room. "Back to the elevator," he decided. "We must have come down one level too many."

The guess turned out to be right, and a minute later they were moving silently down a corridor in what Meredith hoped was the direction of the cavern.

Assuming they didn't get lost, they should be in range of Dunlop's rebels in a couple of hours.

There had been a long and—or so it had seemed to Hafner— heated debate going on over by the barrier for nearly half an hour now. Digging his spoon into the selfheating can of field ration stew, Hafner strained to pick out as much of it as he could. The topic itself wasn't hard to guess: Perez's latest message, delivered via bullhorn from down the tu

"On your feet, Doctor—if you don't mind," he added in a token effort at courtesy.

"We're moving deeper in."

"Oh?" Deliberately, Hafner scraped one last spoonful out of the can and ate it before leisurely getting up. "I'd have thought the other direction would be smarter."

Dunlop apparently had too much on his mind already for Hafner's pinpricks to have any effect. "We're moving you to the tower," he growled. "From the top we'll have a clear line of fire at anyone who tries to approach—and as you've already pointed out, Meredith won't dare shoot back at us there. Get in that car—we'll be leaving in a few minutes."

Hafner did as he was told, his mind spi