When there was no reply from Cobweb, Dominus brought new data on-line. A communications silence for the past twenty-four hours was noted for Cobweb Station. That was correlated in turn with the pattern of energy use, and a signal showing that the Mattin Link system at Cobweb Station had been activated, although not yet used for either matter or signal transmission.

Dominus flashed an attention alert to the main control displays at Ceres headquarters and scanned all probes beyond Neptune. The nearest high-acceleration needle was nearly a billion kilometers away from Cobweb — seventeen hours at a routine hundred gee.

Dominus dispatched the needle probe just a few seconds before the problem first came to human attention. The technician on duty at Ceres checked the status flags, noted the time, and approved both the increased energy drain and the use of the needle probe. She did not, however, call for a report on the reason for the energy use on Cobweb Station. The anomaly appeared minor, and her mind was elsewhere. The end of the shift was just a few minutes away, and she had an after-work date with a new possible partner. She was looking forward to that. Staying overtime to study minor power fluctuations, far away in the Outer System, formed no part of her evening plans.

Her actions were quite consistent with her responsibilities. That she would later become the first scapegoat was merely evidence of the need for scapegoats.

When the needle probe was halfway to Cobweb Station, energy demand flared higher. That surging rise by another two orders of magnitude finally pushed the problem to a high-priority level. Dominus signaled for an immediate increase to emergency probe acceleration and began the transfer to probe memory of all structural details of Cobweb Station.