“Thank all the powers that be that they’re there,” Cabot said fervently. “It’ll take an hour or two to organize things here. Oh, by the way, we also had a few messages across the river early yesterday morning. Didn’t notice until about noon today. Hit the southern edge of Bordeaux. We gave Pat and his crew a hand. All’s safe here.” With that, he rang off, leaving Paul dumbfounded.

“After our little brush with the stuff,” Cabot said when he arrived in person, “I’m beginning to appreciate the gravity of the colony’s situation.” A hopeful smile, not echoed by the expression in his keen gray eyes, curved his strong mouth. “Is it as bad as rumor has it?”

“Probably. Depends on the source of the rumor,” Paul answered with an honest grimace.

“Depends on whether you’re an optimist or pessimist,” Jim Tillek added. “I’ve been in worse fixes on the asteroid runs and come out with life and lung. I prefer to have a planet; to maneuver in, on, over. And the seas.”

Cabot’s smile faded as he regarded the five people gathered discreetly in the met tower.

“Most of what we know,” Paul said, “is negative. But—” He began to refute the prevalent rumors by ticking them off on his strong, work-stained fingers. “The Threads are unlikely to be the forerunner of an alien invasion. It was not unique to this area. It did strike the planet in much the same way, to judge by the EEC records, almost exactly two hundred years ago. It may or may not emanate from the eccentric planet, which has a two-hundred-and-fifty-year orbit. And although we do not know what its life cycle is, or even if it does have one—that is the most viable theory—Thread is not the initial stage of tunnel snakes, for example, who have a much more respectable lineage, nor of any of the other kinds of life we’ve had a look at so far.”

“I see.” Cabot slowly nodded his handsome leonine head as he fingered his lips in thought. “No reassuring forecast available?”

“Not yet. As Tom here recommends, we need a forum in which to air grievances and correct misconceptions,” Paul went on. “It didn’t miss Boca Stake because Paul Benden owns it, or drop on Sadrid because they’re the newest, or stop short of Thessaly because Gyorgy was one of the first charterers to claim his stake. We can, and will, survive this hazard, but we cannot have the indiscriminate conscriptions of technicians and able-bodied workers. It is apparent to anyone pausing to think that we also cannot survive if everyone hares off in opposite directions. Or if some of the wilder notions, including Tubberman’s, are not dismissed and morale restored.”

“In short, what you want is a suspension of autonomy?”