Spinneret

"More likely they were where the antigrav stabilizers were located," Hafner spoke up. "Even rotating, the sphere's position isn't really stable; they'd need some way to make periodic corrections." He hesitated. "And they must also be where the sphere's heaters are set up."

They all turned to face him. "The what!" Perez asked.

Hafner took a deep breath. "We were wrong about the sphere's purpose. Even if it collected and radiated every bit of the interior sun's light, it couldn't possibly get any hotter than about three hundred degrees absolute—room temperature, essentially. But in fact it's at least ten times that hot. There's no way that could happen without a massive input of energy."

"That's ridiculous," Perez snorted. "You must have made some order-ofmagnitude error."

Hafner shook his head. "I almost wish I had. But it's a perfectly straightforward Stefan-Boltzma

"All right, then, let's assume you're right," Meredith said. "Can you give a reason why they'd go to that kind of trouble?"

"It wasn't just to heat their planet up," Hafner said. It was odd, a small observer in his brain noted, how even now he avoided simply coming out and saying it.

"Orbiting reflectors could have done that. A smaller sphere would have done if they'd decided they wanted a red sky. It wasn't built to live on; they wouldn't have needed to heat it like that and I suspect we'll find the main shell is too thin to support much weight." He paused. "Colonel Meredith … what would you do if you knew there was an enemy looking for your position and you didn't have the strength to fight him?"

Meredith's eyes gazed unblinkingly into his. He's figured it out. Hafner thought. I was right, then: it does make sense. God help them … and us. "I would retreat," the colonel said quietly. "Or else try and camouflage myself. Is that it?"

"No," Carmen whispered. "You don't mean—they built the sphere to make themselves look like a red giant star system?" Hafner nodded. "It fits, doesn't it?

The superconducting shell to spread the heat out evenly; the missing spectral lines you mentioned undoubtedly corresponding to those of a real red giant. The hard edge wouldn't be noticed at any real distance, even if they thought to look for it."

Perez stirred. "And the lack of completion … "He left the sentence unfinished.

"The holes aren't entrance ports, then, are they?"

"Blast damage," Meredith murmured. "Whoever they were afraid of found them too soon."

For a long moment there was silence. The edge of the sphere was slowly receding, and looking ahead Hafner thought he could see a small dot of reflected light a few degrees from the sun. Spi

"But why!" Loretta finally voiced the question Hafner knew they were all thinking. "Why did they sit here and let themselves get blown up? Surely they knew these enemies were coining—they had to be centuries building this thing.

Why didn't they use the time to build up their armaments, or even just pick up and leave?"

"Maybe they had nowhere else they could go," Carmen said. "Their star drive only allows them limited choices, remember."

"What about Astra?" Loretta countered. "It must have been habitable before they drained all the metals out of it."

"I think Carmen's essentially correct," Hafner said, "except that it may not have been a matter of conscious choice. I think they were so tied to their own world that they simply couldn't relocate elsewhere."

"Ridiculous," Loretta snorted.

"You're forgetting the Spi

"You're right, Dr. Williams; they could have lived on the surface while building and operating the Spi

You shake your head; but remember we're not talking about human beings but about aliens. They're under no obligation to think and react like we do."

"Or vice versa?" Perez's smile was bitter. "You're too kind to our species, Colonel.

How many wars have been fought, do you suppose, because two groups of people each considered the same little plot of land to be theirs? How many people have died in battle or withered in refugee camps because they would not move over to a new place that was often every bit as good as the one their ancestors had lived on?

You have an affluent, mobile American's view of land, I think. The rest of the world differs from the Spi

"Point," Meredith admitted. "But you're too kind in turn to modern Americans. I might not be willing to die for any given acre of land, but I would do so for my country as a whole. And when my car was stolen once I genuinely wanted to machine-gun the guy who did it." He looked out at the sphere.

"You see what that means, of course," Hafner said, the words trying to stick in his throat. "We can't allow humanity to get stuck in a single spot like the Spi

The others all looked at him. "You mean that?" Perez asked, frowning. "You're changing sides?"

"Don't flatter yourself," Hafner snapped. "I still think bringing a bunch of people into what's essentially a make-work situation is stupid. But putting our eggs in two baskets is at least a little better than leaving them in one. So go ahead: bring in your spies and parasites. I don't care anymore."

"I care," Perez shot back, glancing once at Loretta. "I was the one who originally worried about spies stealing our secrets, remember. And I don't want to bring people to Astra just for the sole purpose of having warm bodies lying around. If we can't get useful jobs for them—"

"Ease up, both of you," Meredith interrupted. "You'll wind up adopting each other's basic politics in a minute. I brought you here to end this battle, not to start it over again backward."

Perez cocked a suspicious eyebrow. "I thought we came to learn about the Spi

"We did; but since all the information I wanted probably got blown up with the rest of the planet, I'm going to have to try something else. Let's start with the problem and go from there."

Briefly, he outlined how possession of the Gorgon's Head security code opened up the possibility for terrorist attack. Hafner felt a shiver climb his spine; he hadn't realized they were that close to solving the code, and he certainly hadn't thought through all the implications. "As long as we don't know how to correct any sabotage that gets done to the control settings, we're extremely vulnerable to a Dunlop-style attack," Meredith concluded. "And the stronger the political tensions on Astra, the more likely that kind of operation becomes. What we have to do is drastically tone down the disharmony, at least past the election and probably a year or so beyond; and what that means is eliminating these budding political parties."

"And how do you intend to do that?" Perez asked. "A ban by royal decree?"

"No, I'm simply going to knock the props out from under them. Since they're both single-issue groups, all we need is for their leaders to publicly come out for a compromise. That'll take the wind out of everyone's rhetoric, at least until the new Council is elected."