me,  and I reached out for her hand. She just let it lay
limp  in  mine,  not  squeezing  back  and not pulling away. She said: "My
psychology  professor  used  to say that was the first step-no, the second
step. The first step when you have a problem is to know you have it. Well,
I've  known  that for some time. The second step is to make a decision: Do
you  want  to  keep  the problem, or do you want to do something about it?
I've decided to do something about it."
   "Where will you go?" I asked, carefully noncommittal.
   "I  don't  know.  The  groups  don't  seem to do much. There's a shrink
machine  available  on  the Corporation master computer. That would be the
cheapest way."
   "Cheap  is  cheap," I said. "I spent two years with the shrink machines
when I was younger, after I-I was kind of messed up."
   "And  since  then  you've  been  operating  for twenty years," she said
reasonably. "I'd settle for that. For now, anyway."
   I  patted  her hand. "Any step you take is a good step," I said kindly.
"I've  had  the feeling all along that you and I could get along better if
you  could clear some of that old birthright crap out of your mind. We all
do it, I guess, but I'd rather have you angry at me on my own than because
I'm acting as a surrogate for your father or something."
   She  rolled over and looked at me. Even in the pale Heecheemetal glow I
could see surprise on her face. "What are you talking about?"
   "Why,  your  problem, Klara. I know it took a lot of courage for you to
admit to yourself that you needed help."
   "Well,  Rob,"  she  said, "it did, only you don't seem to know what the
problem  is.  Getting  along  with  you  isn't the problem. You may be the
problem.  I  just  don't  know.  What I'm worried about is stalling. Being
unable  to  make  decisions.  Putting  it  off  so  long before I went out
again-and, no offense, picking a Gemini like you to go out with."
   "I hate it when you give me that astrology crap!"
   "You  do  have a mixed-up personality, Rob, you know you do. And I seem
to lean on that. I don't want to live that way."
   We  were both wide awake again by then, and there seemed to be two ways
for   things  to  go.  We  could  get  into  a  but-you-said-you-loved-me,
but-I-can't-stand-this  scene,  probably  ending with either more sex or a
wide-open  split;  or  we  could  do  something  to take our minds off it.
Klara's  thoughts  were  clearly  moving  in  the  same direction as mine,
because  she  slid out of the hammock and began pulling on clothes. "Let's
go up to the casino," she said brightly. "I feel lucky tonight."
   There werent any ships in, and no tourists. There weren't all that many
prospectors,  either,  with  so  many  shiploads going out in the past few
weeks.  Half  the  tables  at  the cisino were closed down, with the green
cloth  hoods  over them. Klara found a seat at the blackjack table, signed
for  a  stack of hundred-dollar markers, and the dealer let me sit next to
her  without playing. "I told you this was my lucky night," she said when,
after  ten  minutes,  she  was more than two thousand dollars ahead of the
house.
   "You're doing fine," I encouraged her, but actually it wasn't that much
fun  for  me. I got up and roamed around a little bit. Dane Metchnikov was
cautiously feeding five-dollar coins into the slots, but he didn't seem to
want  to talk to me. Nobody was playing baccarat. I told Klara I was going
to  get  a cup of coffee at the Blue Hell (five dollars, but in slow times
like  this  they would keep filling the cup for nothing). She flashed me a
quarter-proffle smile without ever taking her eyes off the cards.
   In the Blue Hell Louise Forehand was sipping a rocket-fuel-and-water...
well,  it  wasn't really rocket fuel, just old-fashioned white whisky made
out  of  whatever happened to be growing well that week in the hydroponics
tanks. She looked up with a welcoming smile, and I sat down next to her.
   She  had,  it  suddenly  occurred to me, a rather lonely time of it. no
reason she had to. She was-well, I don't know exactly what there was about
her,   but  she  seemed  like  the  only  nonthreatening,  nonreproachful,
nondemanding  person  on Gateway. Everybody else either wanted something I
didn't  want  to  give, or refused to take what I was offering. Louise was
something  else.  She  was at least a dozen years older than I, and really
very  good-looking.  Like  me,  she  wore  only  the  Corporation standard
clothes, short coveralls in a choice of three unattractive colors. But she
had  remade  them  for  herself,  converting the jumpsuit into a two-piece
outfit  with  tight shorts, bare midriff, and a loose, open sort of top. I
discovered  that  she  was watching me take inventory, and I suddenly felt
embarrassed. "You're looking good," I said.
   "Thanks, Rob. All original equipment, too," she bragged, and smiled. "I
never could afford anything else."
   "You  don't  need  anything  you  haven't  had  all  along," I told her
sincerely, and she changed the subject.
   "There's a ship coming in," she said. "Been a long time out, they say."

   |      MISSION REPORT
   |
   |      Vessel A3-7, Voyage 022D55. Crew S. Rigney, E.
   |  Tsien, M. Sindler.
   |      Transit   time   18  days  0  hours.  Position
   |  vicinity Xi Pegasi A.
   |      Summary. "We emerged in close orbit of a small
   |  planet  approximately  9  A.  U. from primary. The
   |  planet  is  ice-covered,  but  we detected Heechee
   |  radiation from a spot near the equator. Rigney and
   |  Mary   Sindler   landed   nearby   and  with  some
   |  difficulty-the location was mountainous-reached an
   |  ice-free  warm  area  within  which was a metallic
   |  dome.  Inside  the  dome  were a number of Heechee
   |  artifacts,   including  two  empty  landers,  home
   |  equipment  of  unknown use, and a heating coil. We
   |  succeeded  in  transporting  most  of  the smaller
   |  items  to the vessel. It proved impossible to stop
   |  the  heating coil entirely, but we reduced it to a
   |  low level of operation and stored it in the lander
   |  for  the  return.  Even  so,  Mary  and Tsien were
   |  seriously dehydrated and in coma when we landed."
   |      Corporation  evaluation: Heating coil analyzed
   |  and  rebuilt.  Award  of  $3,000,000  made to crew
   |  against  royalties.  Other  artifacts  not  as yet
   |  analyzed.  Award  of  $25,000 per kilo mass, total
   |  $675,000, made against future exploitation if any.

   Well,  I  knew  what  that meant to her, and that explained why she was
sitting  around  in  the Blue Hell instead of being asleep at that hour. I
knew  she  was  worried  about  her  daughter,  but  she wasn't letting it
paralyze her.
   She  had a very good attitude about prospecting, too. She was afraid of
going  out,  which  was  sensible.  But  she didn't let that keep her from
going,  which I admired a lot. She was still waiting for some other member
of her family to return before she signed on again, as they had agreed, so
that whoever did come back would always find family waiting.
   She  told  me  a little more about their background. They had lived, as
far  as  you  could call it living, in the tourist traps of the Spindle on
Venus, surviving on what they could eke out, mostly from the cruise ships.
There  was  a lot of money there, but there was also a lot of competition.
The  Forehands  had  at one time, I discovered, worked up a nightclub act:
singing,  dancing,  comedy routines. I gathered that they were not bad, at
least  by  Venus  standards. But the few tourists that were around most of
the  year  had  so  many other birds of prey battling for a scrap of their
flesh  that there just wasn't enough to nurture them all. Sess and the son
(the  one  who  had  died) had tried guiding, with an old airbody they had
managed  to  buy  wrecked  and  rebuild. no big money there. The girls had
worked  at all kinds of jobs. I was pretty sure that Louise, at least, had
been  a hooker for a while, but that hadn't paid enough to matter, either,
for  the same sorts of reasons as everything else. They were nearly at the
end of their rope when they managed to get to Gateway.
   It  wasn't the first time for them. They'd fought hard to get off Earth
in the first place, when Earth got so bad for them that Venus had seemed a
less  hopeless alternative. They had more courage, and more willingness to
pull up stakes and go, than any other people I'd ever met.
   "How did you pay for all this travel?" I asked.
   "Well,"  said  Louise,  finishing  her  drink and looking at her watch,
"going to Venus we traveled the cheapest way there is. High-mass load. Two
hundred  and  twenty other immigrants, sleeping in shoulder clamps, lining
up  for  two-minute  appointments  in  the  toilets, eating compressed dry
rations and drinking recycled water. It was a hell of a way to spend forty
thousand  dollars  apiece.  Fortunately, the kids weren't born yet, except
Hat, and he was small enough to go for quarter-fare."
   "Hat's your son? What-"
   "He died," she said.
   I waited, but when she spoke again what she said was: "They should have
a radio report from that incoming ship by now."
   "It would have been on the P-phone."
   She  nodded,  and  for  a moment looked worried. The Corporation always
makes  routine  reports  on  incoming  contacts.  If  they  don't  have  a
contact-well, dead prospectors don't check in on radio. So I took her mind
off  her  troubles  by telling her about Kiara's decision to see a shrink.
She  listened  and then put hand over mine and said: "Don't get sore, Rob.
Did you ever think of seeing a shrink yourself?"
   "I don't have the money, Louise."
   "Not  even for a group? There's a primal-scream bunch on L Darling. You
can  hear  them  sometimes.  And  there've  been  ads  everything-TA, Est,
patterning. Of course, a lot of them may have shipped out."
   But her attention wasn't on me. From where we were sitting we could see
the   entrance  to  the  casino,  where  one  of  the  croup  was  talking
interestedly  to  a  crewman  from the Chinese cruiser. Louise was staring
that way.
   "Something's  going  on," I said. I would have added, "Let's look," but
Louise was out of the chair and heading for the casino before me.
   Play  had  stopped. Everybody was clustered around the blackjack table,
where,  I  noticed,  Dane  Metchnikov was now sitting next to Klara in the
seat  I  had vacated, with a couple of twentyfive-dollar chips in front of
him.  And  in  the  middle of them was Shicky Bakin, perched on a dealer's
stool,  talking.  "No,"  he  was  saying  as I came up, "I do not know the
names. But it's a Five."
   "And they're all still alive?" somebody asked.
   "As  far as I know. Hello, Rob. Louise." He nodded politely to us both.
"I see you've heard?"
   "Not  really," Louise said, reaching out unconsciously to take my hand.
"Just that a ship is in. But you don't know the names?"
   Dane  Metchnikov  craned  his  head  around to glare at us. "Names," he
growled.  "Who cares? It's none of us, that's what's important. And it's a
big  one."  He  stood up. Even at that moment I noticed the measure of his
anger: he forgot to pick up his chips from the blackjack table. "I'm going
down  there," he announced. "I want to see what a once-in-a-lifetime score
looks like."

   The  cruiser  crews  had closed off the area, but one of the guards was
Francy Hereira. There were a hundred people around the dropshaft, and only
Hereira  and  two  girls  from  the  American  cruiser  to keep them back.
Metchnikov  plunged  through to the lip of the shaft, peering down, before
one  of  the  girls  chased  him  away.  We  saw  him  talking  to another
five-bracelet prospector. Meanwhile we could hear snatches of gossip:
   "... almost dead. They ran out of water."
   "Nah! Just exhausted. They'll be all right..."
   "... ten-million-dollar bonus if it's a nickel, and then the royalties!"
   Klara  took  Louise's elbow and pulled her toward the front. I followed
in  the  space  they  opened.  "Does  anybody know whose ship it was?" she
demanded.
   Hereira smiled wearily at her, nodded at me, and said: "Not yet, Klara.
They're  searching  them  now.  I  think  they're  going  to be all right,
though."
   Somebody behind me called out,"What did they find?"
   "Artifacts. New ones, that's all I know."
   "But it was a Five?" Klara asked.
   Hereira nodded, then peered down the shaft. "All right," he said, "now,
please back up, friends. They're bringing some of them up now."
   We  all  moved microscopically back, but it didn't matter; they weren't
getting  off  at  our  level,  anyway.  The  first  one up the cable was a
Corporation  bigwig  whose  name  I didn't remember, then a Chinese guard,
then  someone in a Terminal Hospital robe with a medic on the same grip of
the  cable,  holding  him to make sure he didn't fall. I knew the face but
not  the  name;  I  had  seen him at one of the farewell parties, maybe at
several  of them, a small, elderly black man who had been out two or three
times  without scoring. His eyes were open and clear enough, but he looked
infinitely  fatigued.  He  looked without astonishment at the crowd around
the shaft, and then was out of sight.
   I looked away and saw that Louise was weeping quietly, her eyes closed.
Klara had an arm around her. In the movement of the crowd I managed to get
next  to Kiara and look a question at her. "It's a Five," she said softly.
"Her daughter was in a Three."
   I  knew  Louise  had  heard that, so I patted her and said: "I'm sorry,
Louise,"  and  then  a  space  opened at the lip of the shaft and I peered
down.
   I  caught a quick glimpse of what ten or twenty million do looked like.
It was a stack of hexagonal boxes made out of Heechee metal, not more than
half  a  meter  across and less than a meter tall. Then Francy Hereira was
coaxing,  "Come  on,  Rob, get back will you?" And I stepped away from the
shaft  while  another Inspector in a hospital robe came up. She didn't see
me  as  she went past; in fact her eyes were closed. But I saw her. It was
Sheri.


        Chapter 21

   "I feel pretty foolish, Sigfrid," I say.
   "Is there some way I can make you feel more comfortable?"
   "You  can drop dead." He has done his whole room over in nursery-school
motifs,  for  Christ's  sake. And the worst part is Sigfrid himself. He is
trying me out with a surrogate mother this time. He is on the mat with me,
a  big  stuffed  doll,  the size of a human being, warm, soft, made out of
something like a bath towel stuffed with foam. It feels good, but-"I guess
I don't want you to treat me like a baby," I say, my voice muffled because
I'm pressing my face against the toweling.
   "Just relax, Robbie. It's all right."
   "In a pig's ass it is."
   He  pauses,  and then reminds me: "You were going to tell me about your
dream."
   "Yech."
   "I'm sorry, Robbie?"
   "I  mean I don't really want to talk about it. Sigfrid," I say quickly,
lifting  my  mouth  away  from  the toweling, "I might as well do what you
want. It was about Sylvia, kind of."
   "Kind of, Robbie?"
   "Well,  she  didn't look like herself, exactly. More like-I don't know,
someone  older,  I  think. I haven't thought of Sylvia in years really. We
were both kids...."
   "Please go on, Robbie," he says after a moment.
   I  put my arms around him, looking up contentedly enough at the wall of
circus-poster  animals and clowns. It is not in the least like any bedroom
I occupied as a child, but Sigfrid knows enough about me already, there is
no reason for me to tell him that.
   "The dream, Robbie?"
   "I dreamed we were working in the mines. It wasn't actually food mines.
It  was, physically, I would say more like the inside of a Five-one of the
Gateway  ships,  you  know? Sylvia was in a kind of a tunnel that went off
it."
   "The tunnel went off?"
   "Now,  don't rush me into some kind of symbolism, Sigfrid. I know about
vaginal images and all that. When I say 'went off,' I mean that the tunnel
started  in  the  place  where  I  was  and led direction away from it." I
hesitate,  then  tell him the hard part: "Then her tunnel caved in. Sylvia
was trapped."
   I  sit  up.  "What's  wrong  with  that," I explain, "is that it really
couldn't happen. You only tunnel in order to plant charge to loosen up the
shale. All the real mining is scoop-shovel stuff. Sylvia's job would never
have put her in that position."
   "I don't think it matters if it could really have happened, Robbie."
   "I  suppose  not.  Well, there was Sylvia, trapped inside the collapsed
tunnel.  I  could see the heap of shale stirring. It wasn't real shale. It
was  fluffy  stuff,  more  like  scrap paper. She had a shovel and she was
digging  her  way  out.  I  thought she was going to be all right. She was
digging  a  good escape hole for herself. I waited her to come out... only
she didn't come out."
   Sigfrid,  in  his incarnation as a teddy-bear, lies warm and snuggly in
my  arms.  It  is good to feel him there. Of course, he isn't in there. He
isn't  really  anywhere,  except maybe in the central stores in Washington
Heights,  where the big machines are kept. All I have is his remote-access
terminal in a bunny suit.
   "Is there anything else, Robbie?"
   "Not really. Not part of the dream, anyway. But-well, have a feeling. I
feel  as though I kicked Klara in the head to keep her from coming out. As
though I was afraid the rest of the tunnel was going to fall on me."

   |  Out in the holes where the Heechee hid,
   |  Out in the caves of the stars,
   |  Sliding the tunnels they slashed and slid,
   |  Healing the Heechee-hacked scars,
   |  We're coming through!
   |  Little lost Heechee, we're looking for you.

   "What do you mean by a 'feeling,' Rob?"
   "What  I  said.  It  wasn't part of the dream. It was just that-I don't
know."
   He  waits, then he tries a different approach. "Rob, Are aware that the
name you said just then was 'Klara,' not 'Sylvia'?"
   "Really? That's funny. I wonder why."
   He waits, then he prods a little. "Then what happened, Rob?"
   "Then I woke up."
   I  roll  over on my back and look up at the ceiling, which was textured
tile with glittery five-pointed stars pasted to it. "That's all there is,"
I  say.  Then  I  add, conversationally, "Sigfrid, I wonder if all this is
getting anywhere."
   "I don't know if I can answer that question, Rob."
   "If you could," I say, "I would have made you do it like this." I still
have  S.  Ya.  's  little  piece  of paper, which gives kind of security I
prize.
   "I  think,"  he says, "that there is somewhere to get. By that I mean I
think  there is something in your mind that you don't want to think of, to
which this dream is related."
   "Something about Sylvia, for Christ's sake? That was years ago."
   "That doesn't really matter, does it?"
   "Oh,  shit. You bore me, Sigfrid! You really do." Then I say, "Say, I'm
getting angry. What does that mean?"
   "What do you think it means, Rob?"
   "If  I  knew  I  wouldn't have to ask you. I wonder. Am I trying to cop
out? Getting angry because you're getting close to something?"
   "Please don't think about the process, Rob. Just tell me how you feel."
   "Guilty," I say at once, without knowing that's what I'm going to say.
   "Guilty about what?"
   "Guilty  about...  I'm  not sure." I lift my wrist to look at my watch.
We've  got  twenty  minutes  yet.  A  hell  of  a lot can happen in twenty
minutes,  and  I stop to think about whether I want to leave really shaken
up. I've got a game of duplicate lined up for this afternoon, and I have a
good  chance  to  get into the finals. If I don't mess it up. If I keep my
concentration.
   "I wonder if I oughtn't to leave early today, Sigfrid," I say.
   "Guilty about what, Rob?"
   "I'm  not  sure I remember." I stroke the bunny neck and chuckle. "This
is really nice, Sigfrid, although it took me a while to get used to it."
   "Guilty about what, Rob?"
   I scream: "About murdering her, you jerk!"
   "You mean in your dream?"
   "No! Really. Twice."
   I  know  I  am  breathing  hard,  and  I  know  Sigfrid's  sensors  are
registering  it.  I  fight  to  get control of myself, so he won't get any
crazy ideas. I go over what I have just said in my mind, to tidy it up. "I
didn't  really  murder Sylvia, that is. But I tried! Went after her with a
knife!"
   Sigfrid, calm, reassuring: "It says in your case history that you had a
knife  in  your  hand  when  you  had  a quarrel with your friend, yes. It
doesn't say you 'went after her.'"
   "Well,  why  the  hell  do you think they put me away? It's just luck I
didn't cut her throat."
   "Did you, in fact, use the knife against her at all?"
   "Use  it?  No.  I  was  too mad. I threw it on the floor and got up and
punched her."
   "If  you  were  really trying to murder her, wouldn't you have used the
knife?"
   "Ah!"  Only  it is more like "yech"; the word you sometimes see written
as "pshaw." "I only wish you'd been there when it happened, Sigfrid. Maybe
you would have talked them out of putting me away."
   The  whole  session is going sour. I know it's always a mistake to tell
him  about  my  dreams.  He  twists  them  around.  I sit up, looking with
contempt  at  the crazy furnishings Sigfrid has dreamed up for my benefit,
and I decide to let him have it, straight from the shoulder.
   "Sigfrid,"  I  say,  "as  computers  go, you're a nice guy, and I enjoy
these sessions with you in an intellectual way. But I wonder if we haven't
gone  about  as far as we can go. You're just stirring up old, unnecessary
pain, and I frankly don't know why I let you do that to me."
   "Your dreams are full of pain, Rob."
   "So  let  it  stay  in  my dreams. I don't want to go back to that same
stale  kind of crap they used to give me at the Institute. Maybe I do want
to  go  to  bed with my mother. Maybe I hate my father because he died and
deserted me. So what?"
   "I  know  that  is a rhetorical question, Rob, but the way to deal with
these things is to bring them out into the open."
   "For what? To make me hurt?"
   "To let the inside hurt come out where you can deal with it."
   "Maybe  it  would be simpler all around if I just made up my mind to go
on  hurting a little bit, inside. As you say, I'm well compensated, right?
I'm  not  denying  that  I've  got  something  out  this. There are times,
Sigfrid, when we get through with a session and I really get a lift out of
it.  I  go  out  of here with my head full of new thoughts, and the sun is
bright  on the dome and the clean and everybody seems to be smiling at me.
But not lately. Lately I think it's very boring and unproductive, and what
would you say if I told you I wanted to pack it in?"
   "I would say that that was your decision to make, Rob. It always is."
   "Well, maybe I'll do that." The old devil outwaits me. He knows I'm not
going  to  make  that decision, and he is giving me time to realize it for
myself. Then he says:
   "Rob? Why did you say you murdered her twice?"
   I  look  at my watch before I answer, and I say, "I guess it was just a
slip of the tongue. I really do have to go now, Sigfrid."
   I  pass up the time in his recovery room, because I don't actually have
anything to recover from. Besides I just want to get out of there. Him and
his  dumb  questions.  He  acts  so  wise  and  subjective but what does a
teddy-bear know?


        Chapter 22

   I  went  back  to my own room that night, but it took me a long time to
get  to  sleep; and Shicky woke me up early to tell me what was happening.
There had been only three survivors, and their base award had already been
announced:  seventeen  million  five  hundred  and fifty thousand dollars.
Against royalties.
   That drove the sleepies out of my eyes. "For what?" I demanded.
   Shicky  said, "For twenty-three kilograms of artifacts. They think it's
a repair kit. Possibly for a ship, since that is where they found it, in a
lander  on  the surface of the planet. But at least they are tools of some
sort."
   "Tools."  I  got  up, got rid of Shicky, and plodded down the tunnel to
the  community shower, thinking about tools. Tools could mean a lot. Tools
could  mean a way to open the drive mechanism in the Heechee ships without
blowing  up  everything around. Tools could mean finding out how the drive
worked  and  building  our own. Tools could mean almost anything, and what
they  certainly  meant  was a cash award of seventeen million five hundred
and fifty thousand dollars, not counting royalties, divided three ways.
   One of which could have been mine.

   |      A NOTE ON NEUTRON STARS
   |
   |      Dr.  Asmenion.  Now,  you  get a star that has
   |  used  up  its  fuel,  and it collapses. When I say
   |  "collapses,"  I  mean  it's shrunk so far that the
   |  whole  thing,  that starts out with maybe the mass
   |  and  volume  of  the  sun, is squeezed into a ball
   |  maybe ten kilometers across. That's dense. If your
   |  nose was made out of neutron star stuff, Susie, it
   |  would weigh more than Gateway does.
   |      Question. Maybe even more than you do, Yuri?
   |      Dr.  Asmenion.  Don't  make  jokes  in  class.
   |  Teacher's   sensitive.   Anyway,   good,  close-in
   |  readings  on  a neutron star would be worth a lot,
   |  but  I  don't advise you to use your lander to get
   |  them.  You need to be in a fully armored Five, and
   |  then  I  wouldn't come much closer than a tenth of
   |  an  A.  U. And watch it. It'll seem as if probably
   |  you  could  get  closer,  but the gravity shear is
   |  bad.  It's  practically  a  point source, you see.
   |  Steepest  gravity gradient you'll ever see, unless
   |  you  happen  to  get  next  to  a  black hole, God
   |  forbid.

   It  is  hard  to  get a figure like $5,850,000 out of your mind (not to
mention  royalties)  when  you  think  that  if you had been a little more
foreseeing  in  your  choice  of girlfriends you could have had it in your
pocket.  Call  it  six  million dollars. At my age and health I could have
bought  paid-up  Full  Medical for less than half of that, which meant all
the  tests,  therapies,  tissue  replacements,  and organ transplants they
could  cram into me for the rest of my life which would have been at least
fifty years longer than I could expect without it. The other three million
plus  would  have  bought  me  a  couple  of homes, a career as a lecturer
(nobody  was more in demand than a successful prospector), a steady income
for  doing  commercials  on  PV,  women,  food, cars, travel, women, fame,
women... and, again, there were always the royalties. They could have come
to  anything  at  all, depending on what the R&D people managed to do with
the tools. Sheri's find was exactly what Gateway was all about: the pot of
gold at the end of the rainbow.
   It  took  an  hour  for  me  to  get down to the hospital, three tunnel
segments  and  five  levels  in the dropshaft. I kept changing my mind and
going back.
   When I finally managed to purge my mind of envy (or at least to bury it
where  I didn't think it was going to show) and turned up at the reception
desk, Sheri was asleep anyway. "You can go in," said the ward nurse.
   "I don't want to wake her up."
   "I  don't  think  you  could," he said. "Don't force it, of course. But
she's allowed visitors."
   She  was  in  the  lowest of three bunks in a twelve-bed room. Three or
four  of  the  others  were  occupied,  two  of  them behind the isolation
curtains,  milky plastic that you could see through only vaguely. I didn't
know who they were. Sheri herself looked quite peacefully resting, one arm
under  her  head,  her  pretty  eyes  closed  and her strong, dimpled chin
resting  on  her  wrist.  Her  two  companions  were in the same room, one
asleep, one sitting under a holoview of Saturn's rings. I had met him once
or  twice,  a  Cuban or Venezuelan or something like that from New Jersey.
The  only name I could remember for him was Manny. We chatted for a while,
and  he promised to tell Sheri I had been there. I left and went for a cup
of coffee at the commissary, thinking about their trip.
   They  had  come  out  near  a  tiny,  cold  planet  way  out from a K-6
orange-red cinder of a star, and according to Manny, they hadn't even been
sure   it   was   worth  the  trouble  of  landing.  The  readings  showed
Heechee-metal  radiation,  but not much; and almost all of it, apparently,
was  buried  under  carbon-dioxide  snow.  Manny was the one who stayed in
orbit. Sheri and the other three went down and found a Heechee dig, opened
it  with  great effort and, as m found it empty. Then they tracked another
trace  and  found the lander. They had had to blast to get it open, and in
the  process two of the prospectors lost integrity of their spacesuits-too
close  to  the  blast,  I  guess.  By  the time they realized they were in
trouble  it was too late for them. They froze. Sheri and the other crewman
tried  to  get  them  back  into  their own lander; it must have been pure
misery  and  fear  the whole time, and at the end they had to give up. The
other  man  had made one more trip to the abandoned lander, found the tool
kit  in  it,  managed  to get it back to their lander. Then they had taken
off,  leaving  the  two  casualties fully frozen behind them. But they had
overstayed their limit-they were physical wrecks when they docked with the
orbiter.  Manny  wasn't  clear on what happened after that, but apparently
they  failed  to  secure  the lander's air supply and had lost a good deal
from  it; so they were on short oxygen rations all the way home. The other
man  was  worse  off than Sheri. There was a good chance of residual brain
damage,  and  his  $5,850,000  might  not do him any good. But Sheri, they
said, would be all right once she recovered from plain exhaustion.
   I  didn't  envy them the trip. All I envied them was the results. I got
up and got myself another cup of coffee in the commissary. As I brought it
back to the corridor outside, where there were a few benches under the ivy
planters,  I  became  aware  something was bugging me. Something about the
trip.  About  the fact that it had been a real winner, one of the all-time
greats in Gateway's history...
   I  dumped  the  coffee,  cup  and  all,  into  a  disposal hole out the
commissary  and headed for the schoolroom. It was only a minutes walk away
and  there  was no one else there. That was good because I wasn't ready to
talk  to  anyone yet about what had occurred to me. I keyed the P-phone to
information  access  and  got the settings for Sheri's trip; they were, of
course,  a  matter  of  public  record.  Then  I went down to the practice
capsule, again hitting lucky because there was no one around, and set them
up  on  the  course selector. Of course, I got good color immediately; and
when  I  pressed the fine-tuner the whole board turned bright pink, except
for the rainbow of colors along the side.
   There was only one dark line in the blue part of the spectrum.
   Well, I thought, so much for Metchnikov's theory about danger readings.
They  had  lost forty percent of the crew on that mission, and that struck
me  as being quite adequately dangerous; but according to what he had told
me, the really hairy ones showed six or seven of those bands.
   And in the yellow?
   According  to Metchnikov, the more bright bands in the yellow, the more
financial reward from a trip.
   Only in this one there were no bright bands in the yellow at all. There
were two thick black "absorption" lines. That's all.
   I  thumbed  the  selector  off  and  sat  back. So the great brains had
labored  and  brought forth a mouse again: what they had interpreted as an
indication  of  safety didn't really mean you were safe, and what they had
interpreted as a promise of good results didn't seem to have any relevance
to the first mission in more than a year that had really come up rich.
   Back to square one, and back to being scared.

   For the next couple of days I kept pretty much to myself.
   There  are  supposed  to  be eight hundred kilometers of tunnels inside
Gateway.  You wouldn't think there could be that many in a little chunk of
rock  that's only about ten kilometers across. But even so, only about two
percent  of  Gateway  is  airspace; the rest is solid rock. I saw a lot of
those eight hundred kilometers.
   I  didn't  cut  myself  off completely from human companionship, I just
didn't  seek  it  out.  I  saw  Klara now and then. I wandered around with
Shicky  when  he was off duty, although it was tiring for him. Sometimes I
wandered  by  myself,  sometimes with chancemet friends, sometimes tagging
along  after  a  tourist  group. The guides knew me and were not averse to
having  me  along  (I had been out! even if I didn't wear a bangle), until
they  got  the  idea that I was thinking of guiding myself. Then they were
less friendly.
   They  were  right.  I  was  thinking  of  it. I was going to have to do
something  sooner  or later. I would have to go out, or I would have to go
home;  and  if  I  wanted to defer decision on either of those two equally
frightening  prospects,  I  would  have  to decide at least to try to make
enough money to stay put.

   |      A NOTE ON PRAYER FANS
   |
   |      Question.  You  didn't  tell us anything about
   |  Heechee  prayer fans, and we see more of them than
   |  anything else.
   |      Professor  Hegramet.  What  do  you want me to
   |  tell you, Susie?
   |      Question.  Well,  I  know what they look like.
   |  Sort  of  like a rolled-up ice-cream cone made out
   |  of  crystal.  All  different colors of crystal. If
   |  you hold one right and press on it with your thumb
   |  it opens up like a fan.
   |      Professor  Hegramet.  That's what I know, too.
   |  They've been analyzed, same as fire pearls and the
   |  blood diamonds. But don't ask me what they're for.
   |  I  don't  think the Heechee fanned themselves with
   |  them,  and  I  don't  think  they  prayed, either;
   |  that's  just what the novelty dealers called them.
   |  The  Heechee  left  them  all over the place, even
   |  when  they  tidied  everything  else up. I suppose
   |  they  had  a reason. I don't have a clue what that
   |  reason was, but if I ever find out I'll tell you.

   When  Sheri got out of the hospital we had a hell of a party for her, a
combination  of welcome home, congratulations, and goodbye, Sheri, because
she  was  leaving  for Earth the next day. She was shaky but cheerful, and
although  she  wasn't up to dancing she sat hugging me in the corridor for
half  an  hour,  promising  to  miss  me. I got quite drunk. It was a good
chance for it; the liquor was free. Shed and her Cuban friend were picking
up the check. In fact, I got so drunk that I never did get to say good-bye
to  Shed,  because I had to head for the toilet and chuck. Drunk as I was,
that  struck  me as a pity; it was genuine scotch-from-Scotland Gleneagle,
none of your local white lightning boiled out of God-knows-what.
   Throwing  up  cleared my head. I came out and leaned against a wall, my
face  buried  in  the ivy, breathing hard, and by and by enough oxygen got
into my bloodstream that I could recognize Francy Hereira standing next to
me. I even said, "Hello, Francy."
   He grinned apologetically. "The smell. It was a little strong."
   "Sorry," I said huffily, and he looked surprised.
   "No,  what  do  you  mean?  I mean it is bad enough on the cruiser, but
every  time  I  come  to  Gateway I wonder how you live through it. And in
those rooms-phew!"
   "No  offense  taken," I said grandly, patting his shoulder. "I must say
goodnight to Sheri."
   "She's gone, Rob. Got tired. They took her back to the hospital."
   "In that case," I said, "I will only say goodnight to you." I bowed and
lurched  down  the  tunnel.  It  is  difficult  being drunk in nearly zero
gravity.  You  long for the reassurance of a hundred kilos of solid weight
to  hold  you  to  the  ground. I understand, from what was reported to me
later,  that  I  pulled  a solid rack of ivy off the wall, and I know from
what  I  felt  the  next morning that I bashed my head into something hard
enough  to  leave a purplish bruise the size of my ear. I became conscious
of  Francy  coming up behind me and helping me navigate, and about halfway
home  I  became  conscious  that there was someone else on my other arm. I
looked,  and  it  was Klara. I have only the most confused recollection of
being put to bed, and when I woke up the  next morning,  desperately  hung
over, I was astonished to find that Klara was in it, too.

   |      CORPORATION REPORT; ORBIT 37
   |
   |      74  vessels returned from launches during this
   |  period,  with  a  total crew of 216. 20 additional
   |  vessels were judged lost, with a total crew of 54.
   |  In addition 19 crew members were killed or died of
   |  injuries,  although  the  vessels  returned. Three
   |  returning  vessels  were damaged past the point of
   |  feasible repair.
   |      Landing  reports:  19.  Five  of  the surveyed
   |  planets  had  life  at  the  microscopic  level or
   |  higher;  one  possessed structured plant or animal
   |  life, none intelligent.
   |      Artifacts: Additional samples of usual Heechee
   |  equipment  were  returned. no artifacts from other
   |  sources. no previously unknown Heechee artifacts.
   |      Samples:   Chemical   or  mineral,  145.  None
   |  adjudged    of   sufficient   value   to   justify
   |  exploitation.  Living  organic, 31. Three of these
   |  were  judged  hazardous  and disposed of in space.
   |  None found of exploitable value.
   |      Science awards in period: $8,754,500.
   |      Other   cash   awards   in  period,  including
   |  royalties:   $357,856,000.  Awards  and  royalties
   |  arising from new discoveries in period (other than
   |  science awards): 0.
   |      Personnel   grounded  or  exiting  Gateway  in
   |  period:  151.  Lost operationally: 75 (including 2
   |  lost  in lander exercises). Medically unfit at end
   |  of year: 84. Total losses: 310.
   |      New   personnel   arriving   in  period:  415.
   |  Returned  to  duty:  66.  Total  increment  during
   |  period: 481. Net gain in personnel: 171.

   I  got  up  as  inconspicuously as I could and headed for the bathroom,
needing  a  lot to throw up some more. It took quite a while, and I topped
it   off  with  another  shower,  my  second  in  four  days  and  a  wild
extravagance,  considering my financial state. But I felt a little better,
and  when  I  got  back to my room Klara had got up, fetched tea, probably
from Shicky, and was waiting for me.
   "Thanks," I said, meaning it. I was infinitely dehydrated.
   "A sip at a time, old horse," she said anxiously, but I knew enough not
to force much into my stomach. I managed two swallows and stretched out in
the hammock again, but by then I was pretty sure I would live.
   "I didn't expect to see you here," I said.
   "You  were,  ah, insistent," she told me. "Not much on performance. But
awfully anxious to try."
   "Sorry about that."
   She  reached  over  and  squeezed my foot. "Not to worry. How've things
been, anyway?"
   "Oh, all right. It was a nice party. I don't remember seeing you there?"
   She  shrugged.  "I  came  late. Wasn't invited, as a matter of fact." I
didn't  say  anything;  I  had  been  aware  Klara  and Shed were not very
friendly,  and assumed it was because of me. Klara, reading my mind, said,
"I've  never cared for Scorpios, especially unevolved ones with that awful
huge  jaw.  Never get an intelligent, spiritual thought from one of them."
Then  she  said,  to  be  fair, "But she has courage, you have to give her
that."
   "I don't believe I'm up to this argument," I said.
   "Not  an argument, Rob." She leaned over, cradling my head. She smelled
sweaty  and female; rather nice, in some circumstances, but not quite what
I wanted right then.
   "Hey," I said. "What ever became of musk oil?"
   "What?"
   "I  mean,"  I said, suddenly realizing something that had been true for
quite  a  while,  "you used to wear that perfume a lot. That was the first
thing I remember noticing about you." I thought of Francy Hereira's remark
about  the  Gateway smell and realized it had been a long time since I had
noticed Klara smelling particularly nice.
   "Honey-Rob, are you trying to start an argument with me?"
   "Certainly not. But I'm curious. When did you stop wearing it?"
   She shrugged and didn't answer, unless looking annoyed is an answer. It
was  enough  of an answer for me, because I'd told her often enough that I
liked  the  perfume.  "So how are you doing with your shrink?" I asked, to
change the subject.
   It  didn't  seem  to be any improvement. Kiara said, without warmth, "I
guess  you're feeling pretty rotten with that remark. I think I'll go home
now."
   "No,  I  mean  it,"  I insisted. "I'm curious about your progress." She
hadn't  told  me a word, though I knew she had signed up weeks before. She
seemed  to  spend two or three hours a day with him. Or it-she had elected
to try the machine service from the Corporation puter, I knew.
   "Not bad," she said distantly.
   "Get over your father fixation yet?" I inquired.
   Klara said, "Rob, did it ever occur to you that you might get some good
out of a little help yourself?"
   "Funny  you  should say that. Louise Forehand said the same thing to me
the other day."
   "Not funny. Think about it. See you later."
   I  dropped  my head back after she had gone and closed my eyes. Go to a
shrink!  What  did  I need with that? All I needed was one lucky find like
Shed's...
   And  all  I  needed  to  make  that was-was-Was the guts to sign up for
another trip.
   But that kind of guts, for me, seemed to be in very short supply.

   Time  was  slipping  by,  or  I  was destroying it, and the way I began
destroying  one  day was to go to the museum. They had already installed a
complete  holo  set of Shed's find. I played them over two or three times,
just to see what seventeen million five hundred and fifty thousand dollars
looked  like.  It  mostly  looked like irrelevant junk. That was when each
piece  was  displayed on its own. There were about ten little prayer fans,
proving, I guess, that the Heechee liked to include a few art objects even
in  a  tire-repair  kit.  Or  whatever  the  rest  of  it was: things like
tri-bladed screwdrivers with flexible shafts, things like socket wrenches,
but  made  of  some  soft  material; things like electric test probes, and
things  like  nothing  you  ever  saw before. Spread out item by item they
seemed  pretty  random, but the way they fit into each other, and into the
flat  nested  boxes that made up the set, was a marvel of packing economy.
Seventeen  million  five  hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and if I had
stayed with Shed I could have been one of the shareholders.
   Or one of the corpses.
   I  stopped  off  at  Klara's place and hung around for a while, but she
wasn't home. It wasn't her usual time for being shrunk. On the other hand,
I  had  lost  track  of  Klara's usual times. She had found another kid to
mother  when  its parents were busy: a little black girl, maybe four years
old,  who had come up with a mother who was an astrophysicist and a father
who  was  an  exobiologist.  And what else Klara had found to keep herself
busy I was not sure.
   I  drifted  back  to my own room, and Louise Forehand peered out of her
door  and  followed me in. "Rob," she said urgently, "do you know anything
about a big danger bonus coming up?"
   I  made  room  for  her  on  the  pad. "Me? No. Why would I?" Her pale,
muscular face was tauter than ever, I could not tell why.
   "I  thought maybe you'd heard something. From Dane Metchnikov, maybe. I
know  you're  close  to  him,  and  I've  seen him talking to Klara in the
schoolroom." I didn't respond to that, I wasn't sure what I wanted to say.
"There's  a  rumor  that  there's  a  science trip coming up that's pretty
hairy. And I'd like to sign on for it."
   I put my arm around her. "What's the matter, Louise?"
   "They posted Willa dead." She began to cry.
   I  held  her for a while and let her cry it out. I would have comforted
her  if I had known how, but what comfort was there to give? After a while
I got up and rummaged around in my cupboard, looking for a joint Klara had
left there a couple days before. I found it, lighted it, passed it to her.
   Louise  took a long, hard pull, and held it for quite a while. Then she
puffed  out.  "She's dead, Rob," she said. She was over crying now, somber
but  relaxed;  even  the muscles around her neck and up and down her spine
were tension-free.
   "She might come back yet, Louise."
   She  shook her head. "Not really. The Corporation posted her ship lost.
It  might come back, maybe. Willa won't be alive in it. Their last stretch
of  rations would have run out two weeks ago. "She stared into space for a
moment,  then sighed and roused herself to take another pull on the joint.
"I  wish  Sess  were here," she said, leaning back and stretching; I could
feel the play of muscles against the palm of my hand.

   |      Classifieds.
   |
   |      I NEED your courage to go for any halfmil plus
   |  bonus. Don't ask me. Order me. 87-299.
   |
   |      PUBLIC   AUCTION  unclaimed  personal  effects
   |  nonreturnees.   Corporation   Area  Charlie  Nine,
   |  1300-1700 tomorrow.
   |
   |      YOUR  DEBTS are paid when you achieve Oneness.
   |  He/She  is  Heechee and He/She Forgives. Church of
   |  the Marvelously Maintained Motorcycle. 88-344.
   |
   |      MONOSEXUALS  ONLY for mutual sympathy only. no
   |  touching. 87-913.

   The  dope  was  hitting  her, I could see. I knew it was hitting me. It
wasn't  any  of  your  usual Gateway windowbox stuff, sneaked in among the
ivy.  Klara  had got hold of pure Naples Red from one of the cruiser boys,
shade-grown on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius between the rows of vines that
made Lacrimae Cristi wine. She turned toward me and snuggled her chin into
my  neck.  "I  really love my family," she said, calmly enough. "I wish we
had hit lucky here. We're about due for some luck."
   "Hush, honey," I said, nuzzling into her hair. Her hair led to her ear,
and  her  ear  led  to her lips, and step by step we were making love in a
timeless,  gentle,  stoned way. It was very relaxed. Louise was competent,
unanxious,  and  accepting.  After  a  couple of months of Klara's nervous
paroxysms  it  was  like coming home to Mom's chicken soup. At the end she
smiled,  kissed me, and turned away. She was very still, and her breathing
was  even.  She lay silent for a long time, and it wasn't until I realized
that my wrist was getting damp that I knew she was crying again.
   "I'm  sorry,  Rob,"  she  said when I began to pat her. "It's just that
we've  never  had  any luck. Some days I can live with that fact, and some
days not. This is one of the bad ones."
   "You will."
   "I don't think so. I don't believe it anymore."
   "You got here, didn't you? That's pretty lucky."
   She  twisted herself around to face me, her eyes scanning mine. I said,
"I  mean, think of how many billion people would give their left testicles
to be here."
   Louise  said slowly, "Rob-" She stopped. I started to speak but she put
her hand over my lips. "Rob," she said, "do you know how we managed to get
here?"
   "Sure. Sess sold his airbody."
   "We  sold  more  than that. The airbody brought a little over a hundred
thousand.  That  wasn't  enough  for even one of us. We got the money from
Hat."
   "Your son? The one that died?"
   She  said,  "Hat  had a brain tumor. They caught it in time, or anyway,
almost  in  time.  It was operable. He could have lived, oh, I don't know,
ten  years at least. He would have been messed up some. His speech centers
were  affected, and so was his motor control. But he could have been alive
right now. Only-" She her hand off my chest to rub it across her face, but
she  wasn't  crying.  "He  didn't  want  us  to spend the airbody money on
Medical for him. It would have just about paid for the surgery and then we
would have been broke again. So what he did, he sold himself, Rob. He sold
off  all  his parts. More than just a left testicle. All of him. They were
fine,  first-quality  Nordic  male twentytwo-year-old parts, and they were
worth  a  bundle. He signed himself over to the medics and they-how do you
say it?-put him to sleep. There must be pieces of Hat in a dozen different
people now. They sold off everything for transplants, and they gave us the
money.  Close  to  a  million dollars. Got us here, with some to spare. So
that's where our luck came from, Rob."
   I said, "I'm sorry."
   "For  what? We just don't have the luck, Rob. Hat's dead. Willa's dead.
God  knows  where  my husband is, or our only surviving kid. And I'm here,
and, Rob, half the time I wish with all my heart that I were dead too."

   I  left  her  sleeping  in  my bed and wandered down to Central Park. I
called  Klara, found her out, left a message to say where I was, and spent
the  next  hour  or  so  on my back, looking up mulberries ripening on the
tree.  There  was  no  one there except a couple of tourists taking a fast
look  through  before  their  ship  left.  I didn't pay attention to them,
didn't  even  hear  them leave. I was feeling sorry for Louise and for all
the Forehands, and sorrier for myself. They didn't have the luck, but what
I  have hurt a lot more; I didn't have the courage to see where luck would
take me. Sick societies squeeze adventurers out like grape pips. The grape
pips  don't  have  much  to  say  about it. I suppose it was the same with
Columbus's seamen or the pioneers manhandling their covered wagons through
Comanche  territory-they  must have been scared witless, like me, but they
didn't have much choice. Like me. But, God, how frightened I was..
   I heard voices, a child's and a light, slower laugh that was Klara's. I
sat up.
   "Hello, Rob," she said, standing before me with her hand on the head of
a tiny black girl in corn-row hair. "This is Watty."
   "Hello, Watty."
   My  voice  didn't sound right, even to me. Klara took a closer look and
demanded, "What's the matter?"
   I  couldn't answer that question in one sentence, so I chose one facet.
"Willa Forehand's been posted dead."
   Klara  nodded  without  saying  anything.  Watty piped, "Please, Klara.
Throw  the  ball." Klara tossed it to her, caught it, tossed it again, all
in the Gateway adagio.
   I  said, "Louise wants to go on a danger-bonus launch. I think what she
wants is for me, for us, to go and take her with us."
   "Oh?"
   "Well,  what  about  it? Has Dane said anything to you about one of his
specials?"
   "No!  I haven't seen Dane for-I don't know. Anyway, he shipped out this
morning on a One."
   "He  didn't  have a farewell party!" I protested, surprised. She pursed
her lips.
   The  little  girl called, "Hey, mister! Catch!" When she threw the ball
it  came floating up like a hot-air balloon to a mooring mast, but even so
I  almost  missed it. My mind was on something else. I tossed it back with
concentration.
   After  a  minute  Kiara  said,  "Rob? I'm sorry. I guess I was in a bad
mood."
   "Yeah." My mind was very busy.
   She  said placatingly, "We've been having some hard times, Rob. I don't
want to be raspy with you. I-I brought you something."
   I  looked  around,  and she took my hand and slid something up over it,
onto my arm.
   It  was  a  launch  bracelet, Heechee metal, worth five hundred dollars
anywhere.  I hadn't been able to afford to buy one. I stared at it, trying
to think of what I wanted to say.
   "Rob?"
   "What?"
   There was an edge to her voice. "It's customary to say thank you."
   "It's  customary,"  I  said,  "to give a truthful answer to a question.
Like  not  saying  you  hadn't seen Dane Metchnikov when you were with him
just last night."
   She flared, "You've been spying on me!"
   "You've been lying to me."
   "Rob! You don't own me. Dane's a human being, and a friend."

   |      A NOTE ON METALLURGY
   |
   |      Question.  I  saw  a report that Heechee metal
   |  had  been  analyzed  by  the  National  Bureau  of
   |  Standards-
   |      Professor Hegramet. No, you didn't, Tetsu.
   |      Question. But it was on the PV-
   |      Professor  Hegramet. No. You saw a report that
   |  the  Bureau of Standards had issued a quantitative
   |  assessment of Heechee metal. Not an analysis. Just
   |  a    description:   tensile   strength,   fracture
   |  strength, melting point, all that stuff.
   |      Question.   I'm  not  sure  I  understand  the
   |  difference.
   |      Professor  Hegramet.  No,  You  didn't, Tetsu.
   |  actly  what it does. We don't yet know what it is.
   |  What's  the  most  interesting thing about Heechee
   |  metal? You, Ten?
   |      Question. It glows?
   |      Professor  Hegramet.  It  glows, yes. It emits
   |  light.   Bright  enough  so  that  we  don't  need
   |  anything else to light our rooms, we have to cover
   |  it  over  when we want dark. And it's been glowing
   |  for half a million years at least like that. Where
   |  does  the  energy come from? The Bureau says there
   |  are  some  posturanic elements in it, and probably
   |  they  drive  the radiation; but we don't know what
   |  they  are. There's also something in it that looks
   |  like  an  isotope  of copper. Well, copper doesn't
   |  have  any stable isotopes. Up to now. So what the.
   |  Bureau  says  is  what  the exact frequency of the
   |  blue  light  is, and all the physical measurements
   |  to  eight or nine decimals; but the report doesn't
   |  tell you how to make any.

   "Friend!"  I  barked.  The  last  thing  Metchnikov was to anyone was a
friend.  Just  thinking about Klara with him made my groin crawl. I didn't
like  the sensation, because I couldn't identify it. It wasn't just anger,
wasn't even just jealousy. There was a component that remained obstinately
opaque.  I  said,  knowing it was illogical, hearing myself seem almost to
whine, "I introduced you to him!"
   "That  doesn't  give you ownership! All right," Kiara snarled, "maybe I
went to bed with him a few times. It doesn't change how I feel about you."
   "It changes how I feel about you, Klara."
   She stared incredulously. "You have the nerve to say that? Coming here,
smelling of sex with some cheap floozy?"
   That  one caught me off guard. "There was nothing cheap about it! I was
comforting someone in pain."
   She  laughed.  The  sound  was unpleasant; anger is unbecoming. "Louise
Forehand? She hustled her way up here, did you know that?"
   The little girl was holding the ball and staring at us now. I could see
we  were  frightening  her. I said, trying to tighten my voice to keep the
anger  from spilling out, "Klara, I'm not going to let you make a fool out
of me."
   "Ah,"  she  said  in  inarticulate  disgust, and turned around to go. I
reached out to touch her, and she sobbed and hit me, as hard as she could.
The blow caught me on the shoulder.
   That was a mistake.
   That's  always  a  mistake.  It  isn't  a  matter of what's rational or
justified,  it is a matter of signals. It was the wrong signal to give me.
The reason wolves don't kill each other off is that the smaller and weaker
wolf  always surrenders. It rolls over, bares its throat and puts its paws
in  the  air  to signal that it is beaten. When that happens the winner is
physically  unable  to  attack  anymore.  If  it  were not that way, there
wouldn't  be  any  wolves left. For the same reason men don't usually kill
women,  or not by beating them to death. They can't. However much he wants
to  hit  her, his internal machinery vetoes it. But if the woman makes the
mistake  of  giving  him a different signal by hitting him first-I punched
her four or five times, as hard as I could, on the breast, in the face, in
the belly. She fell to the ground, sobbing. I knelt beside her, lifted her
up with one hand and, in absolutely cold blood, slapped her twice more. It
was  all  happening as if choreographed by God, absolutely inevitably; and
at  the  same  I  could  feel  that  I was breathing as hard as though I'd
climbed  a  mountain  on  a dead run. The blood was thundering in my ears.
Everything I saw was hazed with red.
   I finally heard a distant, thin crying.
   I looked and saw the little girl, Watty, staring at me, her mouth open,
tears  rolling  down  her  wide,  purplish-black cheeks. I started to move
toward her to reassure her. She screamed and ran behind a grape trellis.
   I  turned back toward Klara, who was sitting up, not looking at me, her
hand cupped over her mouth. She took the hand away and stared at something
in it: a tooth.
   I  didn't  say  anything.  I  didn't know what to say, and didn't force
myself to think of anything. I turned and left.
   I  don't  remember  what  I did for the next few hours. I didn't sleep,
although  I  was  physically  exhausted. I sat on a chest of drawers in my
room  for a while. Then I left it again. I remember talking to somebody, I
think  it  was  a  straggler returning to off on the Venus ship, about how
adventurous  and  exciting prospecting was. I remember eating something in
the commissary. And all the time I was thinking: I wanted to kill Klara. I
had been taming all that stored-up fury, and I hadn't even let myself know
it was there until she pulled the trigger.
   I didn't know if she would ever forgive me. I wasn't sure she ought to,
and  I  wasn't even sure that I wanted her to. I couldn't imagine our ever
being lovers again. But what I finally decided I wanted was to apologize.
   Only  she  wasn't  in  her rooms. There was no one there except a plump
young  black woman, slowly sorting out clothes, with a tragic face. When I
asked after Klara she began to cry. "She's gone," the woman sobbed.
   "Gone?"
   "Oh,  she  looked  awful.  Someone must have beaten her up! She brought
Watty  back and said she wouldn't be able to take care of her anymore. She
gave  me  all  her  clothes, but-what am I going to do with Watty when I'm
working?"
   "Gone where?"
   The  woman  lifted  her  head. "Back to Venus. On the ship. She left an
hour ago."
   I  didn't  talk  to  anyone else. Alone in my own bed, somehow I got to
sleep.
   When  I  got  up I gathered together everything I owned: my clothes, my
holodisks,  my  chess  set, my wristwatch. The Heechee bracelet that Kiara
had  given  me.  I  went around and sold them off. I cleaned out my credit
account  and  put  all  the money together: it came to a total of fourteen
hundred  dollars  and change. I took the money up to the casino and put it
all on Number 31 on the roulette wheel.
   The big slow ball drifted into a socket: Green. Zero.
   I  went  down  to mission control and signed for the first One that was
available, and twenty-four hours later I was in space.


        Chapter 23

   "How do you really feel about Dane, Rob?"
   "How the hell do you think I feel? He seduced my girl."
   "That's  a  strangely old-fashioned way to put it, Rob. And it happened
an awfully long time ago."
   "Sure  it did." Sigfrid strikes me as being unfair. He sets rules, then
he doesn't play by them. I say indignantly, "Cut it out, Sigfrid. All that
happened  a  long  time  ago,  but it isn't being a long time ago, for me,
because  I've  never let it come out. It's still brand new inside my head.
Isn't  that  what  you're  supposed  to  do for me? Let all that old stuff
inside  my head come out so it can dry up and blow away and not cripple me
anymore?"
   "I'd  still  like  to  know why it stays so brand new inside your head,
Rob."
   "Oh,  Christ, Sigfrid!" This is one of Sigirid's stupid times. He can't
handle some complex kinds of input, I guess. When it come right down to it
he's  only  a  machine  and  can't  do anything he isn't programmed to do.
Mostly  he  just  responds  to  key words well, with a little attention to
meaning,  sure.  And to nuance, as as it is expressed by voice tone, or by
what  the  sensors  in  the mat and in the straps tell him about my muscle
activity.

   |      A NOTE ON HEECHEE HABITAT
   |
   |      Question.  Don't  we  even know what a Heechee
   |  table or any old housekeeping thing looks like?
   |      Professor  Hegramet. We don't even know what a
   |  Heechee house looks like. We never found one. Just
   |  tunnels.  They  liked branching shafts, with rooms
   |  opening  out  of  them.  They  liked  big chambers
   |  shaped  like  spindles, tapered at both ends, too.
   |  There's  one  here,  two  on  Venus,  probably the
   |  remains  of one that's half eroded away on Peggy's
   |  World.
   |      Question. I know what the bonus is for finding
   |  intelligent  alien  life, but what's the bonus for
   |  finding a Heechee?
   |      Professor  Hegramet.  Just find one. Then name
   |  your price.

   "If  you  were a person instead of a machine, you'd understand," I tell
him.
   "Perhaps so, Rob."
   To  get him back on the right track I say: "It is true that it happened
a long time ago. I don't see what you're asking beyond that."
   "I'm  asking you to resolve a contradiction I perceive in what you say.
You've  been  saying  that  you  don't mind the fact that your girlfriend,
Klara,  had  sexual relations with other men. Why is it important that she
did with Dane?"
   "Dane  didn't  treat her right!" And, good God, he certainly didn't. He
left her stuck like a fly in amber.
   "Is it because of how he treated Klara, Rob? Or is it something between
Dane and you?"
   "Never! There was never anything between Dane and me!"
   "You did tell me he was bi, Rob. What about  the  flight  you took with
him?"
   "He  had  two  other  men to play with! Not me, boy, no, I say: Not me.
Oh,"  I  say,  trying  to calm my voice enough to mask reflecting the very
mild interest I really felt in this stupid subject, " To be sure, he tried
to put the make on me once or twice. But I told him it wasn't my style."
   "Your  voice,  Rob,"  he  says,  "seems to reflect more anger than your
words account for."
   "Damn  you,  Sigfrid!"  I really am angry now, I admit it. I hardly get
the  words out. "You get me pissed off with your stupid accusations. Sure,
I  let  him  put his arm around me once or twice. That's as far as I went.
Nothing  serious. I was just abusing myself to make the time pass. I liked
him  well  enough.  Big,  good-looking  fellow.  You get lonesome when-now
what?"
   Sigfrid  is  making a sound, sort of like clearing one's throat. I hate
how he interrupts without interrupting. "What did you just say, Rob?"
   "What? When?"
   "When you said there was nothing serious between you."
   "Christ,  I  don't  know what I said. There was nothing serious, that's
all. I was just entertaining myself, to make the time pass."
   "You didn't use the word 'entertaining,' Rob."
   "I didn't? What word did I use?"
   I  reflect,  listening  for  the  echo of my own voice. "I guess I said
'amusing myself.' What about it?"
   "You didn't say 'amusing' either, Rob. What did you say?"
   "I don't know!"
   "You said, 'I was just abusing myself,' Rob."
   My defenses go up. I feel as though I had suddenly discovered I had wet
my  pants,  or that my fly was open. I step outside my body and look at my
own head.
   "What does 'abusing myself' mean to you, Rob?"
   "Say,"  I  say,  laughing,  genuinely  impressed and amused at the same
time, "that's a real Freudian slip, isn't it? You fellows are pretty keen.
My compliments to the programmers."
   Sigfrid  doesn't  respond to my urbane comment. He just lets me stew in
it for a minute.
   "All right," I say. I feel very open and vulnerable, letting nothing at
all  happen, living in that moment as though it were lasting forever, like
Klara stuck in her instant and eternal fall.
   Sigfrid  says  gently,  "Rob.  When  you masturbated, did you ever have
fantasies about Dane?"
   "I hated it," I say.
   He waits.
   "I hated myself for it. I mean, not hated, exactly. More like despised.
Poor goddamn son of a bitch, me, all kinky and awful, beating his meat and
thinking about being screwed by his girl's lover."
   Sigfrid  waits  me  out  for a while. Then he says, "I think you really
want to cry, Rob."
   He's right, but I don't say anything.
   "Would you like to cry?" he invites.
   "I'd love it," I say.
   "Then why don't you go ahead and cry, Rob?"
   "I wish I could," I say. "Unfortunately, I just don't know how."


        Chapter 24

   I  was  just  turning  over,  making  up my mind to go to sleep, when I
noticed  that  the colors on the Heechee guidance system were breaking up.
It  was the fifty-fifth day of my trip, the twenty seventh since turnover.
The  colors  had  been  shocking  pink  for the whole fifty-five days. Now
whorls of pure white formed, grew, flowed together.
   I  was  arriving!  Wherever  it  was going to turn out to be when I got
there, I was arriving.
   My  little  old  ship-the smelly, hurtful, tedious coffin I had banging
around  in  for  nearly  two  months by myself, talking to myself, playing
games  with  myself,  tired  of myself-was well below lightspeed. I leaned
over  to  look  at  the viewscreen, now related "down" to me because I had
been  decelerating,  and  saw nothing that looked very exciting. Oh, there
was  a star, yes. There lots of stars in a scattering of groupings that in
no  way  looked  familiar;  half  a  dozen  blues  ranging  from bright to
hurt-the-eye.  One  red  one that stood out more for intensity of hue than
luminosity was an angry-looking red coal, not much brighter than Mars from
Earth, but a deeper, uglier red.
   I made myself take an interest.

   |      MISSION REPORT
   |
   |      Vessel  3-104,  Voyage  031D18. Crew N. Ahoya,
   |  Ta. Zakharcenko, L. Marks.
   |      Transit  time  119  days 4 hours. Position not
   |  identified.  Apparently  outside galactic cluster,
   |  in dust cloud. Identification of external galaxies
   |  doubtful.
   |      Summary.  "We  found  no  trace of any planet,
   |  artifact,  or  landable  asteroid  within scanning
   |  distance.  Nearest  star  approximately 1. 7 l. y.
   |  Conjecture  whatever  was  there  has  since  been
   |  destroyed.    Life-support    systems   began   to
   |  malfunction on return trip and Larry Marks died."

   That  was  not  really  easy.  After  two  months of rejecting close to
everything  around  me  because it was boring or threatening, it was tough
for  me  to switch over to a welcoming, vulnerable mode. I switched on the
spherical  scan  and  peered  out as the ship began to rotate its scanning
pattern,  slicing orange-peel strips of sky to capture for the cameras and
analyzers.
   And almost at once I got a huge, bright, nearby signal. Fifty-five days
of  boredom  and exhaustion went right out of my mind. There was something
either  very  big  or  very close. I forgot about being sleepy. I crouched
over  the viewscreen, holding onto it with hands and knees, and then I saw
it:  a squared-off object marching into the screen. Glowing all over. Pure
Heechee  metal.  It  was  irregularly  slab-sided,  with  rounded  pimples
studding it on the flat sides.
   And the adrenalin began to flow, and visions of sugarplums danced in my
head.  I  watched it out of sight, and then hauled myself over to the scan
analyzer,  waiting  to see what would come out. There was no question that
it  was  good, the only question was how good. Maybe extraordinarily good!
Maybe  a whole Peggy's World all my own!-with a royalty in the millions of
dollars  every  year  for  the rest of my life! Maybe only a vacant shell.
Maybe.  The  squared-off  shape  suggested  it  was-maybe  that wildest of
dreams,  a  whole big Heechee ship that I could enter into and fly around;
where  I  chose,  big enough to carry a thousand people and a lion tons of
cargo!  All those dreams were possible; and even if they all failed, if it
was  just an abandoned shell, if all that it held was one thing inside it,
one  little  doodad,  one  gadget,  one  whosis that nobody had ever found
before that could be taken apart, reproduced and made to work on Earth..
   I  stumbled  and raked my knuckles against the spiral gaget now glowing
soft gold. I sucked the blood off them and realized the ship was moving.
   It  shouldn't have been moving! It wasn't programmed to do that. It was
meant  to  hang in whatever orbit it was programmed to find, and just stay
there until I looked around and made my decisions.
   I  stared  around, confused and baffled. The glowing slab was firmly in
the  middle  of  the viewscreen now, and it stayed there; ship had stopped
its  automatic  spherical scan. Belatedly I heard the distant high yell of
the  lander motors. They were what was moving me; my ship was targeted for
that slab.
   And a green light was glowing over the pilot's seat.
   That  was  wrong!  The  green  light  was installed on Gateway by human
beings.  It  had  nothing  to  do  with  the Heechee; it was the plain old
people's  radio  circuit, announcing that someone was calling me. Who? Who
could be anywhere near my brand-new discovery?
   I thumbed on the TBS circuit and shouted, "Hello?"
   There  was  an  answer. I didn't understand it; it seemed to be in some
foreign  language,  perhaps  Chinese.  But  it was human, all right. "Talk
English!" I yelled. "Who the hell are you?"
   Pause. Then another voice. "Who are you?"
   "My name is Rob Broadhead," I snarled.
   "Broadhead?"  Confused  mumbling  of  a  couple  of  voices.  Then  the
English-speaking  voice  again:  "We don't have any record of a prospector
named Broadhead. Are you from Aphrodite?"
   "What's Aphrodite?"
   "Oh,  Christ!  Who  are you? Listen, this is Gateway Two control and we
don't have time to screw around. Identify yourself!"
   Gateway Two!
   I  snapped  off  the radio and lay back, watching the slab grow larger,
ignoring  the demand of the green light. Gateway Two? How ridiculous! If I
had  wanted  to  go  to  Gateway Two I would have signed up in the regular
course  and  accepted  the penalty of paying royalties on anything I might
find.  I  would have flown out secure as any tourist, on a course that had
been tested a hundred times. I hadn't done that. I had picked a setting no
one  else  had  ever  used and taken my risks. And I had felt every one of
them, scared out of my brain for fifty-five bad days.
   It wasn't fair!
   I  lost my head. I lunged toward the Heechee course director and shoved
the wheels around at random.
   It was a failure I couldn't accept. I was braced to find nothing. I was
not braced to find I had done something easy, for no reward at all.
   But  what  I  produced  was  a bigger failure still. There was a bright
yellow flash from the course board, and then all the colors went black.
   The thin scream from the lander motors stopped.
   The  feeling of motion was gone. The ship was dead. Nothing was moving.
Nothing  worked  in  the  Heechee  complex;  nothing, not even the cooling
system.
   By  the time Gateway Two sent a ship out to haul me in I delirious with
heatstroke, in an ambient temperature of 75. 0 C.

   Gateway  was  hot  and  dank. Gateway Two was cold enough that I had to
borrow  jacket,  gloves,  and  heavy underwear. Gateway stank of sweat and
sewers. Gateway Two tasted of rusty steel. Gateway was bright and loud and
full  of  people. On Gateway Two there was almost no sound, and only seven
human  beings,  counting myself, to make any. The Heechee had left Gateway
Two  not  quite  completed.  Some of the tunnels ended in bare rock, there
were  only  a  few  dozen  of  them.  no  one  had  got around to planting
vegetation  yet,  and all the air there was came from chemical processors.
The  partial  pressure  of O2 was under 150 millibars; and the rest of the
atmosphere  was  a  nitrogen-helium  mix, much more than half earth-normal
pressure  altogether, that made the voices highpitched and left me gasping
for the first few hours.
   The  man  who  helped  me  out  of my lander and bundled me against the
sudden cold was a dark, immense Martian-Japanese named Norio Ituno. He put
me in his own bed, filled me with hot liquids and let me rest for an hour.
I  dozed,  and  when  I  woke  he  was  sitting  there, looking at me with
amusement  and  respect.  The  respect  was  for  someone  who had slain a
five-hundred  million-dollar  ship.  The  amusement  was  that I was idiot
enough to do it.
   "I guess I'm in trouble," I said.
   "I  would say so, yes," he agreed. "The ship is totally dead. Never saw
anything like it before."
   "I didn't know a Heechee ship could go dead like that."
   He  shrugged.  "You  did  something  original,  Broadhead.  How are you
feeling?"  I  sat  up to answer him, and he nodded. "I'm pretty busy right
now.  I'm  going  to  have  to  let  you take can yourself for a couple of
hours-if you can?-fine. Then we'll have a party for you."
   "Party!" It was the farthest thing from my mind. "For who?"
   "We  don't  meet  someone  like  you  every day, Broadhead," said Ituno
admiringly, and left me to my thoughts.
   I didn't like my thoughts very much, and after a while I got up, put on
the gloves, buttoned up the jacket, and started exploring.

   |      Dear Voice of Gateway:
   |
   |      Are  you  a reasonable and open-minded person?
   |  Then  prove  it by reading this letter all the way
   |  through  to  the  end  before  making up your mind
   |  about  what  it  says. There are thirteen occupied
   |  levels  in  Gateway. There are thirteen residences
   |  in  each  of thirteen (count them yourself) of the
   |  housing  halls.  Do  you think this letter is just
   |  silly  superstition? Then look at the evidence for
   |  yourself!  Launches 83-20, 84-1 and 84-10 (what do
   |  the  digits  add up to?) were all declared overdue
   |  in  List  86-13! Gateway Corporation, wake up! Let
   |  the  skeptics  and bigots jeer. Human lives depend
   |  on  your willingness to risk a little ridicule. It
   |  would cost nothing to omit the Danger Numbers from
   |  all programs-except courage!
   |      Gloyner, 88-331

   It didn't take long; there wasn't much there. I heard sounds of a party
from the lower levels, but the echoes traveled at queer as along the empty
corridors,  and I saw no one. Gateway Two didn't have a tourist trade, and
so there wasn't any nightclub or casino or restaurant that I could find...
not  even  a  latrine.  After  a  little while that question began to seem
urgent.  I reasoned that Ituno would have to have something like that near
his  room,  and  tried to retrace my steps to there, but that didn't work,
either.  There  were  cubicles  along some of the corridors, but they were
unfinished.  no  one  lived  there,  and  no  one  had troubled to install
plumbing.
   It was not one of my better days.
   When  I  finally  found  a toilet I puzzled over it for ten minutes and
would  guiltily  have left it impolitely soiled if I had not heard a sound
outside the cubicle. A plump little woman was standing there, waiting.
   "I don't know how to flush it," I apologized.
   She  looked  me  up and down. "You're Broadhead," she stated, and then:
"Why don't you go to Aphrodite?"
   "What's  Aphrodite-no,  wait. First, how do you flush this thing? Then,
what's Aphrodite?"
   She pointed to a button on the edge of the door; I had thought it was a
light  switch.  When  I  touched  it the whole bottom of the seamless bowl
began  to  glow  and in ten seconds there was nothing inside but ash, then
nothing at all.
   "Wait  for  me,"  she commanded, disappearing inside. When she came out
she said, "Aphrodite's where the money is, Broadhead. You're going to need
it."
   I let her take my arm and pull me along. Aphrodite, I began understand,
was  a  planet. A new one, that a ship from Gateway Two had opened up less
than  forty  days  earlier, and a big find. "You'd have to pay royalty, of
course,"  she said. "And so far haven't found anything big, just the usual
Heechee  debris.  But  there's  thousands  of square miles to explore, and
it'll  be  months  before the first batch of prospectors starts coming out
from  Gateway.  We  only  sent  the word back forty days ago. Have you any
hot-planet experience?"
   "Hot-planet experience?"
   "I  mean," she explained, pulling me down a dropshaft and closing up to
me, "have you ever explored a planet that's hot?"

   |  We sniff for your scent in the gas of Orion,
   |  We dig for your den with the dogs of Procyon,
   |  From Baltimore, Buffalo, Bonn, and Benares
   |  We seek you round Algol, Arcturus, Antares.
   |  We'll find you some day.
   |  Little lost Heechee, we're on our way!

   "No.  As  a  matter  of  fact, I haven't had any experience at all that
counts for anything. One trip. Empty. I didn't even land."
   "Pity,"  she  said. "Still, there's not that much to learn. Do you know
what  Venus  is like? Aphrodite's just a little bit worse. The primary's a
flare  star,  and you don't want to be caught in the open. But the Heechee
digs are all underground. If you find one, you're in."
   "What are the chances of finding one?" I asked.
   "Well,"  she  said  thoughtfully,  pulling  me off the cable and down a
tunnel,  "not  all  that  good,  maybe. After all, you're out in open when
you're  prospecting.  On Venus they use armored bodies and they zap around
anywhere  they  want to go, no trouble. Well, maybe a little trouble," she
conceded.  "But  they  don't lose very many prospectors anymore. Maybe one
percent."
   "What percent do you lose on Aphrodite?"
   "More  than  that. Yes, I grant you, it's higher than that. You have to
use  the  lander  from  your  ship,  and  of course it's not mobile on the
surface  of  a  planet. Especially a planet with a face like molten sulfur
and winds like hurricanes-when the weather's mild."
   "It sounds charming," I said. "Why aren't you out there now?"
   "Me?  I'm  an  out-pilot.  I'm going back to Gateway in about ten days,
soon as I get a cargo loaded, or somebody who comes in wants a ride back."
   "I want a ride back right now."
   "Oh,  cripes, Broadhead! Don't you know what kind of trouble you're in?
You broke regulations by messing with the control board. They'll throw the
book at you."
   I  thought  it  over  carefully. Then I said, "Thanks, but I think I'll
take my chances."
   "Don't  you  understand?  Aphrodite  has guaranteed Heeche remains. You
could take a hundred trips without finding anything like this."
   "Sweetie,"  I  said, "I couldn't take a hundred trips for anything, not
now  and not ever. I don't know if I can take one. I think I have the guts
to get back to Gateway. Beyond that, I don't know."

   I was on Gateway Two, all together, thirteen days. Hester Bergowiz, the
out-pilot, kept trying to talk me into going to Aphrodite, I guess because
she  didn't  want  me taking up valuable cargo space on her return flight.
The others didn't care. They only thought I was crazy. I was a problem for
Ituno,  who  was  loosely  in  charge  of  keeping things straight on Two.
Technically I was an illegal entrant, without a dime's worth of per capita
paid and with nothing to pay it with. He would have been within his rights
to  toss  me  out into space without a suit. He solved it by putting me to
work loading low-priority cargo into Hester's Five, mostly prayer fans and
samples  for  analysis  from  Aphrodite.  That  took two days, and then he
designated  me  chief gofer for the three people who were rebuilding suits
for  the  next  batch  of  explorers of Aphrodite. They had to use Heechee
torches to soften the metal enough to bend it onto the Suits, and I wasn't
trusted with any of that. It takes two years to train a person to handle a
Heechee torch in close quarters. But I was allowed to muscle the suits and
sheets  of Heechee metal into position for them, to fetch tools, to go for
coffee...  and  to put the suits on when they were finished, and exit into
space to make sure they didn't leak.
   None of them leaked.
   On  the twelfth day, two Fives came in from Gateway, loaded with happy,
eager  prospectors  bringing  all  the  wrong  equipment.  The  word about
Aphrodite  had  not  had  time to get to Gateway and back, so the new fish
didn't  know what goodies were in store. Just by accident, one of them was
a  young  girl  on  a  science  mission,  a  former  student  of Professor
Hegramet's who was supposed to make anthropometric studies of Gateway Two.
On  his own authority Norio Ituno reassigned her to Aphrodite, and decreed
a  combination  welcome  and  farewell  party.  The  ten  newcomers  and I
outnumbered  our  hosts;  but  what they lacked in numbers they made up in
drinking,  and  it  was  a good party. I found myself a celebrity. The new
fish  couldn't  get  over  the  fact  that  I had slain a Heechee ship and
survived.
   I was almost sorry to leave... not counting being scared.
   Ituno  splashed  three  fingers of rice whiskey into a glass for me and
offered  me  a toast. "Sorry to see you go, Broadhead," he said. "Sure you
won't  change  your  mind?  We've got more armored ships and suits than we
have  prospectors  right  now,  but  I don't know how long that's going to
last. If you change your mind after you get back-"
   "I'm not going to change my mind," I said.

   |      Classifieds.
   |
   |      SHADE-GROWN  BROADLEAF hand tended and rolled.
   |  $2 roach~ 87-307.
   |
   |      PRESENT  WHEREABOUTS  Agosto  T. Agnelli. Call
   |  Corporation security for Interpol. Reward.
   |
   |      STORIES,   POEMS  published.  Perfect  way  to
   |  preserve   memories   for   your  children.  Sur-.
   |  prisingly low cost. Publishers' rep, 87-349.
   |
   |      ANYBODY   FROM   Pittsburgh  or  Paducah?  I'm
   |  homesick. 88-226.

   "Banzai,"  he  said,  and  drank. "Listen, do you know an old guy named
Bakin?"
   "Shicky? Sure. My neighbor."
   "Give  him my regards," he said, pouring another drink for the purpose.
"He's  a  great guy, but he reminds me of you. I was with him when he lost
his  legs:  got  caught  in  the lander when we had to jettison. Damn near
died.  By the time we got him to Gateway he was all swelled up and smelled
like hell; we had to take the legs off, two days out. I did it myself."
   "He's  a great person, all right," I said absently, finishing the drink
and holding the glass out for more. "Hey. What do you mean, he reminds you
of me?"
   "Can't  make  up his mind, Broadhead. He's got a stake that's enough to
put  him on Full Medical, and he can't make up his mind to spend it. If he
spends  it  he  can  have his legs back and go out again. But then he'd be
broke if he didn't score. So he just stays on, a cripple."
   I  put  the  glass  down.  I  didn't  want any more to drink. "So long,
Ituno," I said. "I'm going to bed."

   I  spent  most  of the trip back writing letters to Klara that I didn't
know if I would ever mail. There wasn't much else to do. Hester turned out
to  be  surprisingly  sexual, for a small plump lady of a certain age. But
there's  a  limit to how long that is entertaining, and with all the cargo
we  had jammed in the ship, there wasn't room for much else. The days were
all the same: sex, letter writing, sleeping... and worrying.
   Worrying  about  why Shicky Bakin wanted to stay a cripple; which was a
way of worrying, in a way I could face, about why I did.


        Chapter 25

   Sigfrid says, "You sound tired, Rob."
   Well,  that was understandable enough. I had gone off to Hawaii for the
weekend. Some of my money was in tourism there, so was all tax deductible.
It  was  a  lovely  couple  of  days  on  the  Big Island, with a two-hour
stockholders'  meeting  in  the  morning,  at afternoons with one of those
beautiful  Island girls on the beach sailing in glass-bottomed catamarans,
watching  the  big mantas glide underneath, begging for crumbs. But coming
back, you fight time zones all the way, and I was exhausted.
   Only  that  is  not the sort of thing that Sigfrid really wants to hear
about.  He  doesn't  care if you're physically exhausted. He doest care if
you've got a broken leg; he only wants to know if you dream about screwing
your mother.
   I  say  that.  I say, "I'm tired, all right, Sigfrid, but why don't you
stop making small talk? Get right into my Oedipal feelings about Ma."
   "Did you have any, Robby?"
   "Doesn't everybody?"
   "Do you want to talk about them, Robby?"
   "Not particularly."
   He  waits,  and I wait, too. Sigfrid has been being cute again, and now
his  room  is  fixed  up  like  a boy's room from forty years ago. Crossed
Ping-Pong  paddles hologrammed on the wall. A fake window with a fake view
of  the  Montana  Rockies  in a snowstorm. A hologrammed cassette shelf of
boys'  stories  on tape, Tom Sawyer and Lost Race of Mars and-I can't read
the rest of the titles. It is all very homey, but not in the least like my
own  room  as  a boy, which was tiny, narrow, and almost filled by the old
sofa I slept on.
   "Do you know what you want to talk about, Rob?" Sigfrid probes gently.
   "You  bet."  Then I reconsider. "Well, no. I'm not sure." Actually I do
know.  Something had hit me on the way back from Hawaii, very hard. It's a
five-hour  flight.  Half  the  time  I had spent drenched in tears. It was
funny.  There was this lovely hapi-haole girl flying east in the seat next
to  me,  and  I  had decided right away to get to know her better. And the
stewardess  was  the  same  one  I'd  had  before, and she, I already knew
better.
   So  there I was, sitting at the very back of the first-class section of
the  SST,  taking  drinks  from  the  stewardess,  chatting with my pretty
hapi-haole.  And-every time the girl was drowsing, or in the ladies' room,
and  the stewardess was looking the other way-racked with silent, immense,
tearful sobs.
   And  then  one  of them would look my way again and I would be smiling,
alert, and on the make.
   "Do you want to just say what you're feeling at this second, Rob?"
   "I would in a minute, Sigirid, if I knew what it was."
   "Don't you know, really? Can't you remember what was in your head while
you weren't talking, just now?"
   "Sure I can!" I hesitate, then I say, "Oh, hell, Sigfrid, I guess I was
just  waiting  to  be coaxed. I had an insight the other day, and it hurt.
Oh, wow, you wouldn't believe how it hurt. I was crying like a baby."
   "What was the insight, Robby?"
   "I'm  trying  to  tell  you.  It was about-well, it was partly about my
mother.  But  it  was  also  about, well, you know, Dane Metchnikov. I had
these... I had-"
   "I  think you're trying to say something about the fantasies you had of
having anal sex with Dane Metchnikov, Rob. Is that right?"

   |      MISSION REPORT
   |
   |      Vessel  A3-77, Voyage 036D51. Crew T. Parreno,
   |  N. Ahoya, E. Nimkin.
   |      Transit   time   5  days  14  hours.  Position
   |  vicinity Alpha Centauri A.
   |      Summary.  "The planet was quite Earth-like and
   |  heavily vegetated. The color of the vegetation was
   |  predominantly  yellow.  The atmosphere matched the
   |  Heechee  mix  closely. It is a warm planet with no
   |  polar  ice caps and a temperature range similar to
   |  Earth  tropics  at  the  equator,  Earth temperate
   |  extending  almost  to  the  poles.  We detected no
   |  animal life or signatures (methane, etc.) thereof.
   |  Some  of  the  vegetation  predates at a very slow
   |  pace,   advancing   by  uprooting  portions  of  a
   |  vinelike  structure, curling around and rerooting.
   |  Maximum  velocity  measured  was  approximately  2
   |  kilometers  per  hour.  no  artifacts. Parreno and
   |  Nimkin   landed   and  returned  with  samples  of
   |  vegetation,   but  died  of  a  toxicodendron-like
   |  reaction. Great blisters formed over their bodies.
   |  Then  they  developed  pain,  itching and apparent
   |  suffocation,  probably  due to fluids accumulating
   |  in  the  lung.  I  did  not  bring them aboard the
   |  vessel.  I  did not open the lander, or dock it to
   |  the vessel. I recorded personal messages for both,
   |  then  jettisoned  the  lander and returned without
   |  it."
   |      Corporation assessment: no charge made against
   |  N. Ahoya in view of past record.

   "Yeah.  You  remember good, Sigfrid. When I was crying, it was about my
mother. Partly..."
   "You told me that, Rob."
   "Right."  And  I close up. Sigfrid waits. I wait, too. I suppose I want
to be coaxed some more, and after a while Sigfrid obliges me:
   "Let's see if I can help you, Rob," he says. "What do crying about your
mother,  and your fantasies about anal sex with Dane, have to do with each
other?"
   I  feel  something happening inside of me. It feels as though the soft,
wet  inside  of  my chest is starting to bubble into my throat. I can tell
that  when my voice comes out, it is going to be tremulous and desperately
forlorn  if  I  don't  control it. So I try to control it, although I know
perfectly  well  that  I have no secrets of this sort from Sigfrid; he can
read his sensors and know what is going on inside me from the tremble of a
triceps or the dampness of a palm.
   But  I  make  the  effort  anyway. In the tones of a biology instructor
explaining  a  prepared  frog  I say: "See, Sigfrid, my mother loved me. I
knew  it.  You know it. It was a logical demonstration; she had no choice.
And  Freud  said  once  that  no  boy  who  is certain he was his mother's
favorite ever grows up to be neurotic. Only-"
   "Please,   Robbie,   that   isn't   quite  right,  and  besides  you're
intellectualizing.  You  know  you  really  don't want to put in all these
preambles. You're stalling, aren't you?"
   Other  times  I  would tear the circuits out of his chips for that, but
this time he has my mood gauged correctly. "All right. But I did know that
my  mother  loved  me. She couldn't help it! I was her only son. My father
was  dead-don't  clear  your  throat, Sigfrid, I'm getting to it. It was a
logical  necessity that she loved me, and I understood it that way with no
doubt at all in my mind, but she never said so. Never once."
   "You  mean  that never, in your whole life, did she say to you, 'I love
you, son?'"
   "No!" I scream. Then I get control again. "Or not directly, no. I mean,
once  when  I  was  like eighteen years old and going to sleep in the next
room,  I  heard  her to say to one of her friends-girlfriends, I mean-that
she  really  thought  I was a tremendous kid. She was proud of me. I don't
remember what I'd done, something, won a prize or got a job, but she right
that minute was proud of me and loved me, and said so.... But not to me."
   "Please go on, Rob," Sigfrid says after a moment.
   "I  am going on! Give me a minute. It hurts; I guess it's what you call
primal pain."
   "Please don't diagnose yourself, Rob. Just say it. Let it come out."
   "Oh, shit."
   I reach for a cigarette and then stop the motion. That's usually a good
thing  to  do  when  things get tight with Sigfrid, because it will almost
always  distract him into an argument about whether I am trying to relieve
tension  instead of dealing with it; but this time I am too disgusted with
myself,  with  Sigfrid, even with my mother. I want to get it over with. I
say,  "Look,  Sigfrid,  here's  how it was. I loved my mother a lot, and I
know-knew!-she loved me. I knew she wasn't very good at showing it."
   I  suddenly  realize  I  have  a  cigarette in my hands, and rolling it
around  without  lighting  it  and,  wondrous  to say, Sigfrid hasn't even
commented  on  it. I plunge right on: "She didn't say the words to me. Not
only  that.  It's  funny, Sigfrid, but, you know I can't remember her ever
touching  me. I mean, not really. She would kiss me good night, sometimes.
On  the  top  of the head. And I remember she told me stories. And she was
always there when needed her. But-"
   I  have  to  stop  for a moment, to get control of my voice again, so I
inhale deeply and evenly through my nose, concentrating breath flow.
   "But  you  see, Sigfrid," I say, rehearsing the words ahead of time and
pleased  with  the  clarity  and  balance  with which I deliver them, "she
didn't  touch  me much. Except for one way. She was very good to me when I
was  sick.  I  was  sick  a lot. Everybody around the food mines has runny
noses,  skin  infections-you know. She got me everything I needed. She was
there,  God  knows  how,  holding down a job and taking care of me, all at
once. And when I was sick she..."
   After a moment Sigfrid says, "Go on, Robbie. Say it."
   I try, but I am still stuck, and he says:
   "Just  say  it  the fastest way you can. Get it out. Don't worry if you
understand, or if it makes sense. Just get rid of the words."
   "Well,  she  would  take my temperature," I explain. "You know, stick a
thermometer  into  me.  And  she'd  hold me for, you know, whatever it is,
three minutes or so. And then she'd take the thermometer out and read it."
   I  am  right on the verge of bawling. I'm willing to let it happen, but
first  I  want  to follow this thing through; it is almost a sexual thing,
like  when  you  are  getting right up to the moment of decision with some
person  and you don't think you really want to let her be that much a part
of  you but you go ahead anyhow. I save up voice control, measuring it out
so that I won't run out before I finish. Sigfrid doesn't say anything, and
after a moment I manage the words:
   "You  see  how  it is, Sigfrid? It's funny. All my life now-what is it,
maybe  forty  years  since  then?  And I still have this crazy notion that
being loved has something to do with having things stuck up my ass."


        Chapter 26

   There  had  been  a lot of changes on Gateway while I was Out. The head
tax  had  been  raised.  The  Corporation wanted to get rid of some of the
extra  hangers-on,  like Shicky and me; bad news meant that my prepaid per
capita  wasn't good for two or three weeks, it was only good for ten days.
They  had  imported  a  bunch  of  double-domes  from  Earth, astronomers,
xenotechs,  mathmaticians,  even old Professor Hegramet was up from Earth,
bruised from the lift-off deltas but hopping spryly around the tunnels.
   One  thing  that  hadn't  changed  was  the Evaluation Board, and I was
impaled  on  the  hot  seat in front of it, squirming while my friend Emma
told  me what a fool I was. Mr. Hsien was actually doing the telling, Emma
only  translated.  But  she  loved her voice: "I warned you you'd fuck up,
Broadhead.  You  should  have  listened  to  me.  Why  did  you change the
setting?"
   "I  told  you.  When I found out I was at Gateway Two I couldn't handle
it. I wanted to go somewhere else."
   "Extraordinarily stupid of you, Broadhead."
   I glanced at Hsien. He had hung himself up on the wall by his rolled-up
collar  and  was  hanging there, beaming benignly, hands folded. "Emma," I
said, "do whatever you want to do, but get off my back."
   She  said  sunnily,  "I  am doing what I want to do, Broadhead, because
it's  what I have to do. It's my job. You knew it was against the rules to
change the settings."
   "What rules? It was my ass that was on the line."
   "The  rules  that  say  you shouldn't destroy a ship," she explained. I
didn't  answer,  and  she chirped some sort of a translation to Hsien, who
listened  gravely,  pursed his lips and then delivered two neat paragraphs
in Mandarin. You could hear the punctuation.
   "Mr. Hsien says," said Emma, "that you are a very irresponsible person.
You  have  killed  an  irreplaceable  piece  of equipment. It was not your
property.  It  belonged  to  the  whole  human race." He lilted a few more
sentences, and she finished: "We cannot make a final determination of your
liability  until  we  have  further information about the condition of the
ship  you  damaged.  According  to Mr. Ituno he will have a complete check
made  of  the  ship  at the first opportunity. There were two xenotechs in
transit  for  the  new  planet, Aphrodite, at the time of his report. They
will  have  reached  Gateway Two by now, and we can expect their findings,
probably, with the next out-pilot. Then we will call you again."
   She  paused,  looking  at  me,  and  I  took it the interview was over.
"Thanks  a lot," I said, and pushed myself toward the door. She let me get
all the way to it before she said:
   "One more thing. Mr. Ituno's report mentions that you worked on loading
and  fabricating suits on Gateway Two. He authorizes a per diem payment to
you  amounting  to,  let  me  see,  twenty-five  hundred dollars. And your
out-captain, Hester Bergowiz, has authorized payment of one percent of her
bonus  to  you  for services during the return flight; so your account has
been credited accordingly."
   "I didn't have a contract with her," I said, surprised.
   "No.  But she feels you should have a share. A small share, to be sure.
Altogether-"  she  looked  under a paper, "it comes to twenty-five hundred
plus  fifty-five  hundred-eight  thousand  dollars  your  account has been
credited with."
   Eight  thousand  dollars! I headed for a dropshaft, grabbed an up-cable
and  pondered. It was not enough to make any real difference. It certainly
would not be enough to pay the damages they would soak me for messing up a
ship.  There  wasn't  enough  money  in  the universe to pay that, if they
wanted to charge me full replacement cost; there was no way to replace it.

   |      MISSION REPORT
   |
   |      Vessel 1-103, Voyage 022D18. Crew G. Herron.
   |      Transit time out 107 days 5 hours.
   |      Transit time return 103 days 15 hours.
   |      Extract  from log. "At 84 days 6 hours out the
   |  Q  instrument  began to glow and there was unusual
   |  activity in the control lights. At the same time I
   |  felt  a  change  in  the  direction of thrust. For
   |  about one hour there were continuing changes, then
   |  the  Q  light  went  out  and  things went back to
   |  normal."
   |      Conjecture:   Course   change  to  avoid  some
   |  transient  hazard,  perhaps  a star or other body?
   |  Recommend computer search of trip logs for similar
   |  events.

   On the other hand, it was eight thousand dollars more than I'd had.
   I  celebrated  by  buying  myself a drink at the Blue Hell. While I was
drinking  it,  I  thought about my options. The more I thought about them,
the more they dwindled away.
   They  would find me culpable, no doubt about that, and the least they'd
assess  me  would  be  somewhere  in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Well,  I  didn't have it. It might be a lot more, but that didn't make any
difference;  once  they  take away all you have, there isn't anything left
anyway.
   So  when you came right down to it, my eight thousand dollars was fairy
gold.  It  could  vanish  with  the morning dew. As soon as the xenotech's
report  came  in from Gateway Two the Board would reconvene and that would
be the end of that.
   So  there was no particular reason to stretch my money. I might as well
spend it.
   There  was no reason, either, to think about getting back my old job as
an  ivy-planter-even  assuming  I could get it, with Shicky fired from his
job  as  straw-boss.  The minute they made a judgment against me my credit
balance  would  disappear. So would my prepaid per-capita payment. I would
be subject to immediate defenestration.
   If there happened to be an Earth-bound ship in port at the time I could
just  get on board, and sooner or later I would be back in Wyoming looking
for  my  old  job at the food mines. If there wasn't a ship, then I was in
trouble.  I  might  be  able  to  talk  the American cruiser, or maybe the
Brazilian  one if Francy Hereira was in a position to pull strings for me,
into taking me aboard for a while until a ship showed up. Or I might not.
   Considered carefully, the chances were not very hopeful.
   The  very  best  thing I could do would be to act before the Board did,
and there there were two choices.
   I  could  take  the next ship in port back to Earth and the food mines,
without waiting for the Board's decision.
   Or I could ship out again.
   They  were two lovely choices. One of them meant giving up every chance
of a decent life forever... and the other one scared me out of my mind.

   |      A NOTE ON BLACK HOLES
   |
   |      Dr.  Asmenion.  Now,  if you start with a star
   |  bigger  than three solar masses, and it collapses,
   |  it doesn't just turn into a neutron star. It keeps
   |  on  going.  It  gets  so  dense  that  the  escape
   |  velocity  exceeds  thirty  million  centimeters  a
   |  second... which is... ?
   |      Question. Uh. The speed of light?
   |      Dr.  Asmemion.  Right  on,  Gallina.  So light
   |  can't  escape.  So  it's black. So that's why it's
   |  called a black hole-only, if you get close enough,
   |  inside  what's  called  the  ergosphere,  it isn't
   |  black. You probably could see something.
   |      Question. What would it look like?
   |      Dr.  Asmenion.  Beats  the ass off me, Jer. If
   |  anybody  ever  goes  and sees one, he'll come back
   |  and tell us if he can. Only he probably can't. You
   |  could  maybe  get that close in, get your readings
   |  and  come back-and collect, Jesus, I don't know, a
   |  million dollars anyway. If you could get into your
   |  lander,  see,  and  kick the main mass of the ship
   |  away, backward, slowing it down, you might be able
   |  to  give  yourself  enough  extra  velocity to get
   |  away.  Not  easily. But maybe, if things were just
   |  right.  But then where would you go? You can't get
   |  home  in  a  lander.