Spinneret by Timothy Zahn

working terminal.”
    â€œThat’s all right, Colonel,” Andrews said, pulling out a notebook and sitting down. “I’m fine.” He looked it, too, though Meredith knew for a fact that the other hadn’t had any more sleep lately than he had.
    â€œOkay. First off, I want every scrap of information we’ve got on Cristobal Perez. Not just his colonist file; check to see if any military, educational, or employment records came to Astra with us. Second, I want farm equipment assembly bumped a couple of levels up on the priority charts—and for the time being have some of the planting equipment in Crosse shifted up to Ceres. The farmers in Crosse are sitting on their hands now anyway.”
    He paused. Andrews finished writing and nodded. “Anything else?”
    â€œYes.” Meredith hesitated, then plunged ahead. “I want you to work up a list of possible replacements for CO at Ceres.”
    Andrews looked up in obvious surprise. “You’re transferring Major Dunlop?”
    â€œI don’t know. I haven’t yet made up my mind.”
    Andrews toyed with his pen. “The major’s pretty popular with his men,” he said obliquely. “He has a reputation for sticking up for the common soldier, making sure they get all the rights and privileges they have coming.”
    â€œI know,” Meredith nodded. “But that ‘us versus them’ mentality is exactly what’s going to lose him the support and confidence of the civilians in Ceres. We can’t afford unnecessary friction.”
    â€œI understand that, Colonel. But … you know it’s going to look like you’re giving in to pressure.”
    â€œOf course it is—and I hate the signal that’ll send. If Dunlop hadn’t fired from the hip like he did I’d back him all the way; but as it is I either look like a coward or someone whose orders can be ignored with impunity. Either way, I give someone the wrong idea.” He shrugged. “If you can come up with a better idea I’ll be glad to listen.”
    â€œYes, sir.” Andrews stood up and put away his notebook, and for just a second a smile twitched at his lips. “I’ll see what I can come up with in that department. In the meantime, I’ll get busy on these other things.”
    â€œAppreciate it, Andrews. Good night.”
    It was a walk of only a couple hundred meters to his quarters, but Meredith doubted he had the strength left for even such a short trip. Fortunately, someone had had the foresight to install a cot in a back corner of his office. Flipping off the lights, he stripped to his underwear and stretched out under the light blanket. For a minute or two he watched the pattern of light and shadow on the windowshade, trying to come up with some other solution for the Dunlop/Ceres problem. But no answer came, and he quickly gave up the attempt. Maybe in the morning, was his final thought, things will be clearer.

Chapter 4
    W ITH HER FIFTEEN YEARS of Army experience, Carmen had left Meredith’s office with the depressing certainty that it would take days for the colonel to take any action on the problems she had discussed with him—and that it would be weeks before she saw any of the results. It was therefore a pleasant shock when she arrived at her desk the next morning and found the shifting of extra farm machinery to Ceres already underway. A fast scan of the priority listing showed none of her coworkers had yet taken the job of organizing the assembly of spare farm equipment; keying that job onto her terminal, she set to work.
    It was routine data manipulation—a simple matter of locating the equipment and necessary tools from the computer’s listings and then shuffling work schedules for the right number of qualified mechanics—and as she tapped keys, her mind drifted back to the previous day and her conversations with Perez and Meredith.
    She hadn’t worked