nd legs, and the female had breasts. Both had skungy beards and long hair
pulled into braids, and they were wearing wrap-around garments like saris,
with dots of color brightening the drab cloth.
   I caught my breath. The pictures had taken me by surprise.
   Albert  appeared  in  the  lower  corner  of  the plate. "These are not
'real,'  Robin,"  he  said. "They are simply compositions generated by the
shipboard  computer  from Wan's, description. The boy says they are pretty
accurate, though."
   I  swallowed and glanced at Essie. I had to control my breathing before
I could ask, "Are these-are these what the Heechee look like?"
   He  frowned  and  chewed  on  his  pipe stem. The figures on the screen
rotated  solemnly,  as though they were doing a slow folkdance, so that we
could  see all sides. "There are some anomalies, Robin. For example, there
is the famous question of the Heechee ass. We have some Heechee furniture,
e.  g.,  the seats before the control panels in their ships. From these it
was  deduced  that the Heechee bottom was not as the human bottom, because
there  seems to be room for a large pendulant structure, perhaps a divided
body  like  a wasp's, hanging below the pelvis and between the legs. There
is  nothing  of  this  sort  in  the computer-generated image. But-Occam's
Razor, Robin."
   "If I just give you time, you'll explain that," I commented.
   "Sure  thing,  Robin, but it's a law of logic that I think you know. In
the  absence  of evidence, it is best to take the simplest theory. We know
of only two intelligent races in the history of the universe. These people
do not seem to belong to ours-the shape of the skull, and particularly the
jaw, is different; there is a triangular arcade, more like an ape's than a
human being's, and the teeth are quite anomalous. Therefore it is probable
that they belong to the other."
   "Is  somewhat  scary,"  Essie offered softly. And it was. Especially to
me,  since  you might say that it was my responsibility. I was the one who
had  ordered  the Herter-Hall bunch to go out and look around, and if they
found the Heechee in the process..
   I was not ready to think of what that might mean.
   "What about the Dead Men? Do you have anything on them?"
   "Sure thing, Robin," he said, nodding his dustmop head. "Look at this."
   The pictures winked away, and text rolled up the screen:

   |      MISSION REPORT
   |
   |      Vessel 5-2, Voyage 081D31. Crew A. Meacham, D.
   |  Filgren, H. Meacham.
   |      Mission  was  science experiment, crew limited
   |  to   allow   instrumentation   and   computational
   |  equipment.  Maximum lifesupport time estimated 800
   |  days.  Vessel  still unreported day 1200, presumed
   |  lost.

   "It  was only a fifty thousand dollar bonus-not much, but it was one of
the earliest from Gateway," Albert said over the text. "The one called 'H.
Meacham'  appears to be the 'Dead Man' Wan calls Henrietta. She was a sort
of  A.  B.  D. astrophysicist-you know, Robin, 'All But Dissertation'. She
blew  that.  When  she tried to defend it they said it was more psychology
than  physics,  so  she went to Gateway. The pilot's first name was Doris,
which checks, and the other person was Henrietta's husband, Arnold."
   "So you've identified one of them? They were really real?"
   "Sure  thing,  Robin-point  nine  nine sure, anyway. These Dead Men are
sometimes  nonrational,"  he complained, reappearing on the plate. "And of
course  we have had no opportunity for direct interrogation. The shipboard
computer  is  not  really  up  to  this  kind of task. But, apart from the
confirmation   of   names,  the  mission  seems  appropriate.  It  was  an
astrophysical   investigation,   and   Henrietta's  conversation  includes
repeated  references  to  astrophysical  subjects.  Once  you subtract the
sexual ones, I mean," he twinkled, scratching his cheek with his pipestem.
"For  example.  'Sagittarius  A  West'-a radio source at the center of the
Galaxy.  'NGC  nag'.  A  giant elliptical galaxy, part of a large cluster.
'Average  radial  velocity  of  globular clusters'-in our own galaxy, that
comes to about 50 kilometers per second. 'High-redshift OSOs'..."
   "You  don't  have  to list them all," I said hastily. "Do you know what
they  all  mean?  I mean, if you were talking about all those things, what
would you be talking about?"
   Pause-but  a  short one; he was not accessing all the literature on the
subject,  he  had already done that "Cosmology," he said. "Specifically, I
think  I  would  be talking about the classic HoyleOpik-Gamow controversy;
that  is,  whether  the  universe  is  closed, or open ended, or cyclical.
Whether it is in a steady state, or began with a big bang."
   He  paused  again, but this time it was to let me think. I did, but not
to  much  effect  "There  doesn't  seem to be much nourishment in that," I
said.
   "Perhaps  not,  Rabin. It does sort of tie in with your questions about
black holes, though."
   Well,  damn  your  calculating  heart,  I  thought, but did not say. He
looked innocent as a lamb, puffing away on his old pipe, calm and serious.
"That'll  be all for now," I ordered, and kept my eyes on the blank screen
long after he had disappeared, in case Essie was going to ask me about why
I had been inquiring about black holes.

   Well,  she  didn't.  She  just  lay back, looking at the mirrors on the
ceiling. After a while she said, "Dear Robin, know what I wish?"
   I was ready for it. "What, Essie?"
   "Wish I could scratch."
   All  I could manage to say was, "Oh." I felt deflated-no; plugged up. I
was all ready to defend myself-with all gentle care, of course, because of
Essie's  condition.  And  I  didn't  have to. I picked up her hand. "I was
worried about you," I offered.
   "Yes,  so  was  I," she said practically. "Tell me, Robin. Is true that
the fevers are from some sort of Heechee mind-ray?"
   "Something  like that, I suppose. Albert says it's electromagnetic, but
that's  all  I know." I stroked the veins on the back of her hand, and she
moved restlessly. But only from the neck up.
   "I am apprehensive about Heechee, Robin," she said.
   "That's  very  sensible. Even temperate. Me, I'm scared shitless." And,
as  a  matter  of  fact I was; in fact, I was trembling. The little yellow
light winked on at the corner of the screen.
   "Somebody wants to talk to you, Robin."
   "They can wait. I'm talking to the woman I love right now."
   "Thank you. Robin? If you are scared of Heechee as I am, how is it that
you go right ahead?"
   "Well,  honey,  what choice do I have? There's fifty days of dead time.
What  we  just  heard  is ancient history, twenty-five days old. If I told
them  to  break  off  and  go home right now, it would be twenty-five days
before they heard it."
   "Surely, yes. But if you could stop, would you?" I didn't answer. I was
feeling  very  strange-a  little frightened, a lot unlike myself. "What if
Heechee don't like us, Robin?" she asked.
   And  what a good question that was! I had been asking it of myself ever
since  the  first day I considered getting into a Gateway prospecting ship
and  setting  out  to  explore for myself. What if we meet the Heechee and
they don't like us? What if they squash us like flies, torture us, enslave
us,  experiment  on  us-what if they simply ignore us? With my eyes on the
yellow  dot,  which  was beginning to pulse slowly, I said, mothering her,
"Well, there's not much chance that they will actually do us any harm..."
   "I do not need soothing, Robin!" She was distinctly edgy, and so was I.
Something must have been showing up on her monitors, because the day nurse
looked in again, hovered indecisively in the doorway, and went away.
   I  said,  "Essie,  the  stakes  are  too  big.  Remember  last  year in
Calcutta?"  We  had  gone  to  one  of  her seminars, and had cut it short
because  we  couldn't  bear  the  sight  of the abject city of two hundred
million paupers.
   Her  eyes  were  on me, and she was frowning. "Yes, I know, starvation.
There has always been starvation, Robin."
   "Not like this! Not like what it will be before very long, if something
doesn't  happen  to prevent it! The world is bursting at the seams. Albert
says..." I hesitated. I didn't actually want to tell her what Albert said.
Siberia  was already out of food production, its fragile land looking like
the  Gobi because of overpressure. The topsoil in the American Midwest was
down  to  scant  inches, and even the food mines were straining to keep up
with demand. What Albert said was that we had maybe ten years.
   The  signal light had gone to red and was winking rapidly, but I didn't
want  to  interrupt  myself.  "Essie,"  I  said,  "if we can make the Food
Factory  work, we can bring CHON-food to all the starving people, and that
means no more starvation ever. That's only the beginning. If we can figure
out  how  to  build Heechee ships for ourselves, and make them go where we
like-then  we can colonize new planets. Lots of them. More than that. With
Heechee  technology  we can take all the asteroids in the solar system and
turn  them  into Gateways. Build space habitats. Terraform planets. We can
make  a  paradise for a million times the population of the Earth, for the
next million years!"
   I stopped, because I realized I was babbling. I felt sad and delirious,
worried  and-lustful;  and  from  the  expression  on Essie's face she was
feeling  something  strange too. "Those are very good reasons, Robin," she
began, and that was as far as she got The signal light was bright ruby red
and vibrating like a pulsar; and then it winked away and Albert Einstein's
worried  face  appeared  on  the  screen.  I had never known him to appear
without being invited before.
   "Robin," he cried, "there is another emanation of the fever!"
   I stood up shaking. "But it isn't time," I objected stupidly.
   "It  has  happened,  Robin, and it is rather strange. It peaked, let me
see,  just  under  one  hundred  seconds  ago.  I believe-Yes," he nodded,
seeming to listen to an inaudible voice, "it is dying away."
   And, as a matter of fact, I was already feeling less strange. no attack
had  ever  been so short, and no other had quite felt like that Apparently
somebody else was experimenting with the couch.
   "Albert,"  I said, "send a priority message to the Food Factory. Desist
immediately, repeat immediately, from any further use of the couch for any
purpose.  Dismantle  it  if possible without irreversible damage. You will
forfeit  all  pay  and  bonuses  if  there  is  any further breach of this
directive. Got it?"
   "It's already on its way, Robin," he said, and disappeared.
   Essie  and  I  looked at each other for a moment. "But you did not tell
them to abandon the expedition and come back," she said at last.
   I shrugged. "It doesn't change anything," I said.
   "No," she agreed. "And you have given me some really very good reasons,
Robin. But are they your reasons?"
   I didn't answer.
   I  knew  what  Essie  thought  were  my reasons for pushing on into the
exploration  of Heechee space, regardless of fevers or costs or risks. She
thought my reasons had a name, and the name was Gelle-Kiara Moynlin. And I
sometimes was not sure she was wrong.


        7 Heechee Heaven

   Wherever  Lurvy  moved  in  the  ship,  she was always conscious of the
mottled  gray  pattern  in  the  viewplate.  It  showed  nothing she could
recognize, but it was a nothing she had seen before, for months on end.
   While  they  were  traveling  faster  than  light on the way to Heechee
Heaven  they  were  alone.  The universe was empty around them, except for
that pebbly, shifting gray. They were the universe. Even on the long climb
to  the  Food  Factory  it had not been this solitary. At least there were
stars. Even planets. In tau space, or whatever crazy kind of space Heechee
ships  drove  through  or  tunneled under or sidestepped around, there was
nothing.  Last times Lurvy had been in that much emptiness had been in her
Gateway missions, and they were not sweet memories at all.
   This ship was far the biggest she had ever seen. Gateway's largest held
five  people.  This  could  have housed twenty or more. It contained eight
separate   compartments.  Three  were  cargo,  filled  automatically  (Wan
explained)  with  the output of the Food Factory while the ship was docked
there.  Two  seemed  to  be  staterooms,  but not for human beings. If the
"bunks"  that  rolled  out from the walls were bunks indeed, they were too
tiny  for  human adults. One of the rooms Wan identified as his own, which
he  invited  Janine  to  share.  When  Lurvy  vetoed the notion he gave in
sulkily,  and  so  they  roomed  in segregated style, boys in one chamber,
girls  in  the other. The largest room, located in the mathematical center
of  the ship, was shaped like a cylinder with tapered ends. It had neither
floor  nor  ceiling,  except  that  three  seats were fixed to the surface
facing  the  controls.  As the surface was curved, the seats leaned toward
each  other.  They  were simple enough, of the design Lurvy had lived with
for  months at a time: Two flat metal slabs, joined together in a Vee. "On
Gateway ships we stretched webbing across them," Lurvy offered.
   "What is 'webbing'?" asked Wan; and, when it was explained, said, "What
a  good idea. I will do that next trip. I can steal some material from the
Old Ones."
   As in all Heechee ships, the controls themselves were nearly automatic.
There  were  a dozen knurled wheels in a row, with colored lights for each
wheel.  As  the  wheels  were turned (not that anyone would ever turn them
while  in  flight;  that was well established suicide), the lights changed
color  and  intensity, and developed bands of light and dark like spectrum
lines.  They  represented  course  settings. Not even Wan could read them,
much less Lurvy or the others. But since Lurvy's time on Gateway, at great
expense   in   prospectors'  lives,  the  big  brains  had  accumulated  a
considerable  store  of data. Some colors meant a good chance of something
worthwhile.  Some  referred  to the length of the trip the course director
was  set for. Some-many were filed away as no-nos, because every ship that
had  entered faster-than-light space with those settings had stayed there.
Or  somewhere.  Had, at least, never returned to Gateway. Out of habit and
orders,  Lurvy  photographed  every  fluctuation  of  control  lights  and
viewscreen,  even  when  the  screen showed nothing she could recognize as
worth  photographing.  An  hour after the group left the Food Factory, the
star  patterns  began to shrink together to a winking point of brightness.
They had reached the speed of light. And then even the point was gone. The
screen  took  on  the appearance of gray mud that raindrops had spattered,
and stayed that way.
   To  Wan,  of course, the ship was only his familiar schoolbus, used for
commuting  back  and  forth  since he was old enough to squeeze the launch
teat.  Paul  had never been in a real Heechee ship before, and was subdued
for  days.  Neither had Janine, but one more marvel was nothing unusual in
her  fourteen-year-old  life.  For  Lurvy, something else. It was a bigger
version  of the ships in which she had earned her Out bangles-and precious
little else-and therefore frightening.
   She  could  not help it. She could not convince herself that this trip,
at  least,  was  a  regular  shuttle  run.  She  had learned too much fear
blundering  into the unknown as a Gateway pilot. She pushed herself around
its  vast-comparatively  vast-space  (nearly  a  hundred  and  fifty cubic
meters!),  and worried. It was not only the muddy viewscreen that kept her
attention. There was the shiny golden lozenge, bigger than a man, that was
thought  to  contain  the  FTL  drive  machinery  and was known to explode
totally  if  opened. There was the crystal, glassy spiral that got hot (no
one had ever known why) from time to time, and lit up with tiny hot flecks
of  radiance  at the beginning and end of each trip, and at one other very
important time.
   It  was  that  time  that  Lurvy  was  watching  for. And when, exactly
twenty-four  days,  five  hours  and fifty-six minutes after they left the
Food  Factory, the golden coil flickered and began to light, she could not
help a great sigh of relief.
   "What's the matter?" Wan shrilled suspiciously.
   "Just  that  we're  halfway now," she said, noting the time in her log.
"That's  the turnaround point. That's what you look for in a Gateway ship.
If  you  reach  the halfway point with only a quarter of your life-support
gone you know you won't run out and starve on the way home."
   Wan pouted. "Don't you trust me, Lurvy? We will not starve."
   "It  feels good to know for sure," she grinned, and then lost the grin,
because she was thinking about what was at the end of the trip.

   So they rubbed along together, the best way they could, getting on each
other's  nerves  a  thousand  times  apiece a day. Paul taught Wan to play
chess,   to   keep   his   mind   off  Janine.  Wan  patiently-more  often
impatiently-rehearsed  again and again everything he could tell them about
Heechee Heaven and its occupants.
   They  slept as much as they could. In the restraining net next to Paul,
Wan's  teen-aged  juices  bubbled  and flowed. He tossed and turned in the
random,  tiny  accelerations of the ship, wishing he were alone so that he
could  do  those  things  that  appeared to be prohibited when one was not
alone-or  wishing  he were not alone, but with Janine, so that he could do
those  even  better things Tiny Jim and Henrietta had described to him. He
had  asked  Henrietta any number of times what the female role was in this
conjugation.  To  this  she always responded, even when she would not talk
about  anything  else;  but almost never in a way that was helpful to Wan.
However  her  sentences  began,  they  almost  always  ended  by returning
tearfully to the subject of her terrible betrayals by her husband and that
floozy, Doris.
   He  did  not know, even, in just what physical ways the female departed
from  the  male.  Pictures  and words did not do it. Toward the end of the
trip  curiosity  overpowered acculturation, and he begged Janine or Lurvy,
either  one,  to let him see for himself. Even without touching. "Why, you
filthy  beast,"  said  Janine  diagnostically.  She was not angry. She was
smiling. "Bide your time, boy, you'll get your chances."
   But Lurvy was not amused, and when Wan had gone disconsolately away she
and  her  sister  had,  for  them,  a  long  talk. As long as Janine would
tolerate.  "Lurvy,  dear,"  she  said  at  last,  "I know. I know I'm only
fifteen-well, almost-and Wan's not much older. I know that I don't want to
get  pregnant  four years away from a doctor, and with all kinds of things
coming  up  that  we  don't  know how we'll deal with-I know all that. You
think  I'm  just  your  snotty  kid sister. Well, I am. But I'm your smart
snotty  kid sister. When you say something worth listening to I listen. So
piss  off, dear Lurvy." Smiling comfortably, she pushed herself away after
Wan, and then stopped and returned to kiss Lurvy. "You and Pop," she said.
"You  both  drive  me  straight up the wall. But I love you both a lot-and
Paul, too."
   It  was  not altogether Wan's fault, Lurvy knew. They were all smelling
extremely  high.  Among  all  their  sweats and secretions were pheromones
enough  to  make a monk horny, much less an impressionable virgin kid. And
that  was  not  at all Wan's fault, in fact exactly the reverse. If he had
not insisted, they would not have lugged so much water aboard; if they had
not,  they  would be even filthier and sweatier than their rationed sponge
baths  left  them. They had, when you came right down to it, left the Food
Factory far too impulsively. Payter had been right.
   Astonishingly,  Lurvy realized that she actually missed the old man. In
the ship they were wholly cut off from communication of any kind. What was
he  doing?  Was  he  still well? They had had to take the mobile bio-assay
unit-they  had only one, and four people needed it more than one. But that
was  not  really true, either, because away from the shipboard computer it
was  balled  into  a shiny, motionless mass, and would stay that way until
they   established   radio  contact  with  Vera  from  Heechee  Heaven-and
meanwhile, what was happening to her father?
   The curious thing was that Lurvy loved the old man, and thought that he
loved  her back. He had given every sign of it but verbal ones. It was his
money and ambition that had put them all on the flight to the Food Factory
in  the  first  place,  buying  them  participants' shares by scraping the
bottom  of  the  money, if not of the ambition. It had been his money that
had  paid for her going to Gateway in the first place, and when the gamble
went sour he had not reproached her. Or not directly, and not much.
   After  six weeks in Wan's ship, Lurvy began to feel adjusted to it. She
even  felt fairly comfortable, not counting the smells and irritations and
worries;  at  least,  as long as she didn't think too much about the trips
that  had  earned  her  her  five Out bangles from Gateway. There was very
little good to remember in any of them.
   Lurvy's  first  trip  had been a washout. Fourteen months of round-trip
travel  to come out circling a planet that had been flamed clean in a nova
eruption.  Maybe  something  had  been  there once. Nothing was there when
Lurvy  arrived,  stark  solitary  and  already  talking  to herself in her
one-person ship. That had cured her of single flights, and the next was in
a Three. no better. None of them any better. She became famous in Gateway,
an  object  of  curiosity-strong  contender for the record of most flights
taken  and  fewest profits returned. It was not an honor she liked, but it
was never as bad until the last flight of all.
   That was disaster.
   Before  they  even reached their destination she had awakened out of an
edgy,  restless sleep to horror. The woman she had made her special friend
was floating bloodily next to her, the other woman also dead not far away,
and  the  two  men  who  made  up  the  rest of the Five's crew engaged in
screaming, mutilating hand-to-hand battle.
   The  rules  of  the  Gateway  Corporation  provided  that  any payments
resulting  from  a  voyage were to be divided equally among the survivors.
Her  shipmate  Stratos  Kristianides  had  made up his mind to be the only
survivor.
   In  actuality,  he  didn't  survive.  He  lost  the battle to her other
shipmate,  and lover, Hector Possanbee. The winner, with Lurvy, went on to
find-again-nothing.  Smoldering  red  gas  giant.  Pitiful  little  binary
Class-M companion star. And no way of reaching the only detectable planet,
a huge methane-covered Jupiter of a thing, without dying in the attempt.
   Lurvy had come back to Earth after that with her tail between her legs,
and  no second chance in sight. Payter had given her that opportunity, and
she  did  not  think there would be another. The hundred and some thousand
dollars  it had cost him to pay her way to Gateway had put a very big dent
in the money he had accumulated over his sixty or seventy years-she didn't
really  know how many years-of life. She had failed him. Not just him. And
she  accepted,  out  of his kindness and forbearance to hate her, the fact
that  he  really  did love his daughter-and kind, pointless Paul and silly
young Janine, too. In some way, Payter loved them all.
   And was getting very little out of it, Lurvy judged.
   She  rubbed  her  Out  bangles moodily. They had been very expensive to
obtain.
   She was not easy in her mind about her father, or about what lay ahead.
   Making  love  to  Paul  helped  pass  the time-when they could convince
themselves  that  they  didn't  have  to  supervise the younger ones for a
quarter  of an hour or so. It was not the same for Lurvy as making love to
Hector, the man who had survived the last Gateway flight with her, the man
who had asked her to marry him. The man who asked her to ship out with him
again  and  to  build a life together. Short, broad, always active, always
alert, a dynamo in bed, kind and patient when she was sick or irritable or
scared-there  were  a  hundred reasons why she should have married Hector.
And  only  one, really, why she did not. When she was wrenched out of that
terrible  sleep  she  had  found  Hector  and  Stratos battling. While she
watched, Stratos died.
   Hector had explained to her that Stratos had gone out of control to try
to  slay them all; but she had been asleep when the slaughter started. One
of the men had obviously tried to murder his shipmates.
   But she had never known for sure which one.
   He proposed to her when things were bleakest and grimiest, a day before
they  reached  Gateway  on  the  sorry  return  trip.  "We are really most
delightfully good together, Dorema," he said, arms about her, consolingly.
"Just  us  and  no  one else. I think I could not have borne this with the
others  around. Next time we will be more fortunate! So let's get married,
please?"
   She  burrowed  her  chin  into  his hard, warm, cocoa-colored shoulder.
"I'll  have  to  think,  dear," she said, feeling the hand that had killed
Stratos kneading the back of her neck.
   So  Lurvy  was not unhappy when the trip was over and Janine called her
out of her private room, all thrilled and excited; the great glassy spiral
was filling with hot specks of darting golden light, the ship was lurching
tentatively  in  one  direction and another; the mottled gray mud was gone
from  the  viewscreen  and there were stars. More than stars. There was an
object  that  glowed  blue  in  patches  amid  featureless  gray.  It  was
lemonshaped  and  spun  slowly,  and  Lurvy could form no idea of its size
until  she  perceived  that the surface of the object was not featureless.
There were tiny projections jutting out here and there, and she recognized
the  tiniest  of  them as Gateway-type ships, Ones and Threes, and there a
Five;  the  lemon had to be more than a kilometer long! Wan, grinning with
pride, settled himself in the central pilot seat (they had stuffed it with
extra  clothing, a device that had never occurred to Wan), and grasped the
lander  control  levers.  It was all Lurvy could do to keep her hands off.
But  Wan  had  been performing this particular maneuver all his life. With
coarse  competence  he  banged and slammed the ship into a downward spiral
that  matched the slow spin of the blueeyed gray lemon, intersected one of
the waiting pits, docked, locked, and looked up for applause. They were on
Heechee Heaven.
   The  Food  Factory  had  been  the size of a skyscraper, but this was a
world. Perhaps, like Gateway, it had once been an asteroid; but, if so, it
had  been  so  tooled  and  sculpted  that  there was no trace of original
structure. It was cubic kilometers of mass. It was a rotating mountain. So
much to explore! So much to learn!
   And  so much to fear. They skulked, or strutted, through the old halls,
and  Lurvy  realized  she was clinging to her husband's hand. And Paul was
clinging back. She forced herself to observe and comment. The sides of the
walls  were  veined with luminous tracing of scarlet; the overhead was the
familiar  blue  Heecheemetal glow. On the floor-and it was really a floor;
they  had  weight  here,  though  not  more  than  a tenth of Earth-normal
diamond-shaped  mounds  contained  what  looked like soil and grew plants.
"Berryfruit,"  said  Wan  proudly  over  his  shoulder, shrugging toward a
waist-high  bush with fuzzed objects hanging among its emerald leaves. "We
can stop and eat some if you like."
   "Not  right  now," said Lurvy. A dozen paces farther along the corridor
was  another planted lozenge, this one with slate-green tendrils and soft,
squashed cauliflower-shaped buds. "What's that?"
   He  paused  and  looked  at her. It was clear he thought it was a silly
question.  "They  are  not  good to eat," he shrilled scornfully. "Try the
berryfruit. They are quite tasty."
   So the party paused, where two of the red-lined corridors came together
and  one of them changed to blue. They peeled brown-green furry skins from
the  berryfruit  and  nibbled at the juicy insides-first tentatively, then
with  pleasure-while  Wan explained the geography of Heechee Heaven. These
were  the  red  sections,  and they were the best to be in. There was food
here,  and  good  places to sleep; and the ship was here, and here the Old
Ones  never  came.  But  didn't  they  sometimes wander out of their usual
places  to  pick  the  berryfruit? Yes, of course they did! But never (his
voice  rising  half an octave) here. It had never happened. Over there the
blue.  His voice sank, in volume as well as pitch. The Old Ones came there
quite often, or to some parts of the blue. But it was all dead. If it were
not  that the Dead Men's room was in the blue he would never go there. And
Lurvy, peering down the corridor he pointed to, felt a chill of incredible
age.  It  had  the  look  of a Stonehenge or Gizeh or Angkor Wat. Even the
ceilings  were  dimmer,  and the plantings there were sparse and puny. The
green, he went on, was all very well, but it was not working properly. The
water jets did not function. The plantings died. And the gold-
   His  pleasure  faded  when he talked about the gold. That was where the
Old  Ones  lived. If it were not for needing books, and sometimes clothes,
he  would never go to the gold, though the Dead Men were always urging him
to. He did not want to see the Old Ones.
   Paul cleared his throat to say: "But I think we have to do that, Wan."
   "Why?" the boy shrilled. "They are not interesting!"
   Lurvy  put  her  hand  on  his arm. "What's the matter, Wan?" she asked
kindly, observing his expression. What Wan felt always showed on his face.
He had never had the need to develop the skills of dissembling.
   "He looks scared," Paul commented.
   "He is not scared!" Wan retorted. "You do not understand this place! it
is not interesting to go to the gold!"
   "Wan,  dear,"  Lurvy  said, "the thing is, it's worth taking chances to
find  out  more  about  the Heechee. I don't know if I can explain what it
means to us, but the least part of it is that we would get money for it. A
lot of money."
   "He  doesn't  know  what money is," Paul interrupted impatiently. "Wan.
Pay  attention.  We  are  going to do this. Tell us how the four of us can
safely explore the gold corridors."
   "The  four  of  us  can not! One person can. I can," he boasted. He was
angry  now,  and showed it. Paul! Wan's feelings about him were mixed, but
most  of  the  mixture  were unfavorable. Speaking to Wan, Paul shaped his
words  so carefully-so contemptuously. As though he did not think Wan were
smart  enough  to  understand. When Wan and Janine were together, Paul was
always  near. If Paul was a sample of human males, Wan was not proud to be
one.  "I have gone to the gold many times," he boasted, "for books, or for
berryfruit,  or just to watch the silly things they do. They are so funny!
But  they  are  not  entirely stupid, you know. I can go there safely. One
person  can. Perhaps two people can, but if we all go they will surely see
us."
   "And then?" Lurvy asked.
   Wan  shrugged  defensively.  He  didn't really know the answer to that,
only  that  it  had  frightened his father. "They are not interesting," he
repeated, contradicting himself.
   Janine  licked her fingers and tossed the empty berryfruit skins to the
base  of  the  bush.  "You people," she sighed, "are unreal. Wan? Where do
these Old Ones come?"
   "To the edge of the gold, always. Sometimes into the blue or the green."
   "Well,  if  they  like these berryfruits, and if you know a place where
they come to pick them, why don't we just leave a camera there? We can see
them. They can't see us."
   Wan  shrilled  triumphantly,  "Of  course!  You  see,  Lurvy, it is not
necessary  to  go  there!  Janine is right, only..." he hesitated "Janine?
What is a camera?"

   As  they  went,  Lurvy had to nerve herself to pass every intersection,
could not help staring down each corridor. But they heard nothing, and saw
nothing  that  moved.  It was as quiet as the Food Factory when they first
set  foot  in  it,  and  just as queer. Queerer. The traceries of light on
every  wall,  the  patches  of  growing  things-above  all, the terrifying
thought  that  there  were  Heechee  alive  somewhere  near. When they had
dropped  off  a  camera by a berryfruit bush in a space where green, blue,
and  gold came together, Wan bustled them away, directly to the room where
the  Dead  Men  lived.  That  was first priority: to get to the radio that
would once again put them in touch with the rest of the world. Even if the
rest  of  the  world was only old Payter, fidgeting resentfully around the
Food  Factory. If they could not do that much, Lurvy reasoned, they had no
business  being  here  at all, and they should return to the ship and head
for  home;  it  was  no  good exploring if they could not report what they
found!
   So  Wan,  courage  returning  in  direct  proportion  to his increasing
distance  from  the  Old Ones, marched them through a stretch of green, up
several  levels in blue, to a wide blue door. "Let us see if it is working
right,"  he  said  importantly, and stepped on a ridge of metal before the
door.  The  door hesitated, sighed and then creakily opened for them, and,
satisfied, Wan led them inside.
   This place at least seemed human. If strange. It even smelled human, no
doubt  because Wan had spent so much time there over his short life. Lurvy
took  one of the minicameras from Paul and settled it on her shoulder. The
little  machine  hissed tape past its lens, recording an octagonal chamber
with  three of the forked Heechee seats, two of them broken, and a stained
wall  bearing  the  Heechee  version  of instrumentation-ridges of colored
lights.  There  was  a  tiny sound of clicks and hums, barely perceptible,
behind  the  wall. Wan waved at it "In there," he said, "is where the Dead
Men live. If 'live' is the right word for what they do." He tittered.
   Lurvy  pointed  the  camera  at  the seats and the knurled knobs before
them,  then  at  a  domed,  clawed object under the smeared wall. It stood
chest  high,  and  it  was mounted on soft, squashed cylinders to roll on.
"What's that, Wan?"
   "It  is  what the Dead Men catch me with sometimes," he muttered. "They
don't  use it very often. it is very old. When it breaks, it takes forever
to mend itself."
   Paul  eyed  the  machine  warily, and moved away from it. "Turn on your
friends, Wan," he ordered.
   "Of  course.  It  is  not  very  difficult,"  Wan  boasted.  "Watch  me
carefully,  and  you  will see how to do it." He sat himself with careless
ease  on the one unbroken seat, and frowned at the controls. "I will bring
you Tiny Jim," he decided, and thumbed the controls before him. The lights
on  the  stained  wall  flickered and flowed, and Wan said, "Wake up, Tiny
Jim. There is someone here for you to meet."
   Silence.
   Wan  scowled, glanced over his shoulder at the others and then ordered:
"Tiny  Jim!  Speak to me at once!" He pursed his lips and spat a gobbet at
the wall. Lurvy recognized the source of the stains, but said nothing.
   A weary voice over their heads said, "Hello, Wan."
   "That is better," Wan shrilled, grinning at the others. "Now, Tiny Jim!
Tell my friends something interesting, or I will spit on you again."
   "I  wish  you  would  be  more respectful," sighed the voice, "but very
well.  Let  me  see. On the ninth planet of the star Saiph there is an old
civilization.  Their  rulers  are  a  class of shit-handlers, who exercise
power  by removing the excrement only from the homes of those citizens who
are  honest,  industrious,  clever,  and unfailing in the payment of their
taxes.  On  their  principal  holiday,  which  they  call the Feast of St.
Gautama,  the  youngest  maiden in each family bathes herself in sunflower
oil, takes a hazelnut between her teeth, and ritually..."
   "Tiny Jim," Wan interrupted, "is this a true story?"
   Pause. "Metaphorically it is," Tiny Jim said sullenly.
   "You  are  very  foolish,"  Wan reproved the Dead Man, "and I am shamed
before  my  friends.  Pay  attention. Here are Dorema Herter-Hall, who you
will  call  Lurvy,  and  her  sister Janine Herter. And Paul. Say hello to
them."
   Long pause. "Are there other living human beings here?" the voice asked
doubtfully.
   "I have just told you there are!"
   Another  long  pause.  Then, "Good-bye, Wan," the voice said sadly, and
would not speak again, no matter how loudly Wan commanded or how furiously
he spat at the wall.
   "Christ," grumbled Paul. "Is he always like that?"
   "No, not always," Wan shrilled. "But sometimes he is worse. Shall I try
one of the others for you?"
   "Are they any better?"
   "Well, no," Wan admitted. "Tiny Jim is the best."
   Paul  closed  his  eyes  in  despair, and opened them again to glare at
Lurvy.  "How  simply  bloody  wonderful,"  he  said. "Do you know what I'm
beginning  to  think?  I'm  beginning  to  think your father was right. We
should have stayed on the Food Factory."
   Lurvy  took  a  deep breath. "Well, we didn't," she pointed out. "We're
here.  Let's give it forty-eight hours, and then... And then we'll make up
our minds."

   Long  before the forty-eight hours were up they had made up their minds
to stay. At least for a while. There was simply too much in Heechee Heaven
to abandon it.
   The big factor in the decision was reaching Payter on the FTL radio. no
one  had thought to ask Wan if his ability to call Heechee Heaven from the
Food  Factory implied that he could call in the other direction. It turned
out  he  could  not.  He  had never had a reason to try, because there had
never  been anyone there to answer the phone. Lurvy drafted Janine to help
her  carry  food and a few essentials out of the ship, fighting depression
and  worry  all the way, and returned to find Paul proud and Wan jubilant.
They had made contact. "How is he?" Lurvy demanded at once.
   "Oh,  you  mean  your  father?  He's all right," Paul said. "He sounded
grouchy,  come  to  think of it-cabin fever, I suppose. There were about a
million messages. He patched them through as a burst transmission and I've
got  them  on tape-but it'll take us a week to play them all." He rummaged
through the stuff Janine and Lurvy had brought until he found the tools he
had  demanded. He was patching together a digitalized picture transmitter,
to  make  use of the voice-only FTL circuits. "We can only transmit single
frames," he said, eyes on the picture-tape machine. "But if we're going to
be  here  for  very long, maybe I can work out a burst-transmission system
from  here.  Meanwhile,  we've got voice and-oh, yeah. The old man said to
kiss you for him."
   "Then I guess we're going to stay for a while," said Janine.
   "Then I guess we'd better bring more stuff out of the ship," her sister
agreed. "Wan? Where should we sleep?"
   So  while  Paul  worked  on  the  communications, Wan and the two women
hustled the necessities of life to a cluster of chambers in the red-walled
corridors.  Wan  was  proud to show them off. There were wall bunks larger
than  the  ones the ship had offered-large enough, actually, for even Paul
to  sleep  in,  if he didn't mind bending his knees. There was a place for
toilet  facilities, not quite of human design. Or not of very recent human
design. The facilities were simply lustrous metal slits in the floor, like
the  squat-toilets  of Eastern Europe. There was even a place to bathe. It
was  something  between  a wading pool and a tub, with something between a
shower  head  and a small waterfall coming out of the wall behind it. When
you  got inside tepid water poured out. After that they all began to smell
much  better.  Wan,  in particular, bathed ostentatiously often, sometimes
beginning  to  undress  to  bathe  again before the last drops of unsopped
water had dried on the back of his neck from the bath before. Tiny Jim had
told  him  that  bathing was a custom among polite people. Besides, he had
perceived   that  Janine  did  it  regularly.  Lurvy  watched  them  both,
remembered how much trouble it had been to get Janine to bathe on the long
flight up from Earth, and did not comment.
   As  pilot,  therefore  captain,  Lurvy  constituted herself head of the
expedition. She assigned Paul to establish and maintain communication with
her  father  on the Food Factory, with Wan's help in dealing with the Dead
Men.  She  assigned  Janine,  with her own help and Wan's, to housekeeping
tasks  like washing their clothes in the tepid tub. She assigned Wan, with
anyone  who  could  be  spared,  to roam the safe parts of Heechee Heaven,
photographing  and recording for transmission to Payter and Earth. Usually
Wan's  compaanion  was  Janine. When someone else could be spared, the two
young people were chaperoned, but that was seldom.
   Janine  did  not seem to mind either way. She had not finished with the
preliminary thrill of Wan's companionship and was in no hurry to move to a
further  stage-except when they touched. Or when she caught him staring at
her.  Or when she saw the knotted bulge in his ragged kilt. Even then, her
fantasies  and  reveries  were almost as good as that next stage, at least
for  now.  She  played  with  the  Dead  Men,  and  munched on berryfruit,
brown-skinned and green-fleshed, and did her chores, and waited to grow up
a little more.
   There  were  not  many  objections to Lurvy's rule, since she had taken
care  to  assign  tasks that the draftees were willing to do anyhow, which
left  for  herself  such drudgery as going through the backed-up cormuands
and persuasions from Payter, and faroff Earth.
   The  communication  was  a  long  way  from satisfactory. Lurvy had not
appreciated  Shipboard-Vera  until  she  had to get along without her. She
could  not command priority messages first, or have the computer sort them
out  by  theme.  There was no computer she could use, except the overtaxed
one  in her own head. The messages came in higgledy-piggledy, and when she
replied,  or  transmitted  reports for downlink relay to Earth, she had no
confidence at all that they were getting where they were supposed to go.
   The Dead Men seemed to be basically read-only memories, interactive but
limited.  And  their  circuits had been further scrambled in the makeshift
attempt  to  use  them  for  communication to the Food Factory, a task for
which  they  had  never  been  designed.  (But  what  had they really been
designed  for?  And  by  whom?)  Wan blustered and bluffed, in his pose as
expert,  and  then  miserably confessed that they were not doing what they
were  supposed  to  do  any more. Sometimes he would dial Tiny Jim and get
Henrietta, and sometimes a former-English Lit professor named Willard; and
once  he  got a voice he had never heard before, shaking and whispering on
the  near  side of inaudibility, muttering on the far side of madness. "Go
to the gold," whimpered Henrietta, fretful as ever, and without pause Tiny
Jim's  thick  tenor  would  override:  "They'll  kill you! They don't like
castaways!"
   That  was frightening. Especially as Wan assured them that Tiny Jim had
always  been  the most sensible of the Dead Men. It puzzled Lurvy that she
was not more terrified than she was, but there had been so many alarms and
terrors  that  she  had  become used to them. Her circuits were scrambled,
too.
   And  the  messages! In one five-minute burst of clear transmission Paul
had  recorded  fourteen hours of them. Commands from downlink: "Report all
control  settings  shuttle ship. Attempt secure tissue samples Heechee/Old
Ones.  Freeze and store berryfruit leaves, fruits, stems. Exercise extreme
caution."  Half  a  dozen  separate communications from her father; he was
lonesome;  he  didn't  feel  well;  he  was  not  receiving proper medical
attention  because  they  had taken the mobile bio-assay unit away; he was
being  barraged by peremptory orders from Earth. Information messages from
Earth: their first reports had been received, analyzed and interpreted for
them,  and  now  there  were  suggestions  for  follow-up  programs beyond
counting.  They  should  interrogate  Henrietta  about  her  references to
cosmological  phenomena-Shipboard-Vera  was  making  a  hash  of  it,  and
Downlink-Vera  could  not communicate in real time, and old Payter did not
know enough astrophysics to ask the right questions, so it was up to them.
They  should interrogate all the Dead Men on their memories of Gateway and
their  missions-assuming  they remembered anything. They should attempt to
find  out  how  living  prospectors  became stored computer programs. They
should...  They  should  do everything. All at once. And almost none of it
was  possible; tissue samples of the Heechee, forsooth! When an occasional
message was clear and personal and undemanding, Lurvy treasured it.
   And some of those were surprises. Besides the fan letters from Janine's
pen-pals  and  the  continuing  plea  for  any information they might come
across from Trish Bover's relict, there was one for Lurvy personally, from
Robinette Broadhead:
   "Dorema,  I know you're being swamped. Your whole mission was important
and  hazardous  to  begin with, and now it turns out about a million times
more  so.  All  I expect from you is that you do the best you can. I don't
have  the  authority  to override Gateway Corp orders. I can't change your
assigned objectives. But I want you to know I'm on your side. Find out all
you  can.  Try  not to get into a spot you can't retreat from. And I'll do
everything I can to see that you get rewarded as fully and lavishly as you
can hope for. I mean it, Lurvy. I give you my word."
   It was a strange message, and oddly touching. It was also a surprise to
Lurvy  that  Broadhead  even  knew her nickname. They had not exactly been
intimates.  When she and her family were interviewing for the Food Factory
assignment  they had met Broadhead several times. But the relationship had
been  of suppliant and monarch, and there was not much close interpersonal
friendship involved. Nor had she particularly liked him. He was candid and
amiable  enough-high-rolling  multimillionaire  with an easy-going manner,
but sharply on top of every dollar he spent and every development in every
project  he  was  involved  in.  She  did  not  like  being  a client to a
capricious Titan of finance.
   And, to be fair, she had come to their meetings with a faint prejudice.
She  had heard about Robinette Broadhead long before he played any part in
her  own  life.  In  Lurvy's  own  time on the Gateway asteroid and in its
ships,  she had once gone out in a three-person ship with an elderly woman
who  had once been shipmate with Gelle-Kiara Moynlim. From the woman Lurvy
had  heard  the story of Broadhead's last mission, the one that made him a
multimillionaire.  There  was something questionable about it. Nine people
had  died on that mission. Broadhead was the only survivor. And one of the
casualties  had  been  Kiara  Moynlin,  with  whom  (the  old  woman said)
Broadhead  had  been  in  love. Maybe it was Lurvy's own experience with a
mission  in which most of the crew had died that colored her feelings. But
they were there.
   The curious thing about the Broadhead mission was that maybe "died" was
not  the  right  word for the casualties. This Kiara and the rest had been
trapped  in  a  black hole, and perhaps they were still there, and perhaps
still  alive-prisoners of slowed-down time, maybe no more than a few hours
older after all the years.
   So  what  was the hidden agenda in Broadhead's message to Lurvy? Was he
urging  them  on  to  try to find a way to penetrate Gelle-Kiara Moynlin's
prison?  Did he know himself? Lurvy could not tell, but for the first time
she  thought of their employer as a human being. The thought was touching.
It  did  not make Lurvy feel less afraid, but perhaps a little less alone.
When  she  brought  her  latest  batch of tapes to Paul, in the Dead Men's
room,  to  record at high speed and transmit when he could, she tarried to
put her arms around him and cling, which surprised him very much.

   When  Janine  returned  to the Dead Men's room from an exploration with
Wan,  something  told  her  to  move  quietly. She looked in without being
heard, and saw her sister and brother-in-law sitting comfortably against a
wall,  half listening to the maniac chatter of the Dead Men, half chatting
desultorily  with  each  other. She turned, put her finger to her lips and
led Wan away. "I think they want to be alone," she explained. "Anyway, I'm
tired. Let's take a break."
   Wan  shrugged.  They  found  a  convenient  spot  at an intersection of
corridors  a few dozen meters away and he settled himself pensively beside
the girl. "Are they conjugating?" he asked.
   "Cripes, Wan. You've only got the one thing on your mind all the time."
But  she  was  not  annoyed, and let him move close to her, until one hand
approached her breast. "Knock it off," she said mildly.
   He  withdrew his hand. "You are being very disturbed, Janine," he said,
pouting.
   "Oh,  get  off  my  back."  But when he moved millimeters away, she let
herself move a little closer again. She was quite content to have him want
her  and  quite  serene  in  believing  that  when  anything  happened, as
"anything" sooner or later surely would, it would be when she wanted it to
happen.  Nearly  two months with Wan had made her like him, and even trust
him, and the rest could wait. She enjoyed his presence.
   Even  when  he  was  grouchy.  "You  are  not  competing  properly," he
complained.
   "Competing at what, for the Lord's sake?"
   "You  should  talk  to  Tiny Jim," he said severely. "He will teach you
better  strategies  in  the  reproduction race. He has fully explained the
male  role to me, so that I am sure I can compete successfully. Of course,
yours  is  different.  Basically, your best choice would be to allow me to
copulate with you."
   "Yes, you've said that. You know what, Wan? You talk too much."
   He  was  silent  for  a  moment, perplexed. He could not defend himself
against  that charge. He did not even know why it was a charge. In most of
his  life  the  only mode of interaction he had had was talk. He rehearsed
all  of Tiny Jim's teachings in his mind, and then his expression cleared.
"I see. You want to kiss first," he said.
   "No! I don't want to kiss 'first', and get your knee off my bladder."
   He  released her unwillingly. "Janine," he explained, "close contact is
essential  to  'love'.  This is true of the lower orders as well as of us.
Dogs  sniff.  Primates  groom.  Reptiles coil around each other. Even rose
shoots  nestle  close to the mature plant, Tiny Jim says, although he does
not  believe  that  is  a  sexual  manifestation.  But  you  will lose the
reproductive race if you are not careful, Janine."
   She giggled. "To what? Old dead Henrietta?" But he was scowling and she
took  pity  on  him.  She sat up and announced, kindly enough, "You've got
some  really wrong ideas, do you know that? The last thing I want, even if
we  ever  do  get around to your goddam conjugation, is to get caught in a
place like this."
   "Caught'?"
   "Pregnant,"  she  explained.  "Winning  the  goddam  reproductive race.
Knocked  up.  Oh,  Wan," she said, nuzzling the top of his head, "you just
don't  know  where it's all at. I bet you and I are going to conjugate the
hell  out  of  each  other,  some  time or other, and maybe we'll even get
married,  or  something,  and  we'll just win that old reproductive race a
whole  bunch.  But  right now you're just a snotty-nosed kid, and so am I.
You don't want to reproduce. You just want to make love."
   "Well, that is true, yes, but Tiny Jim..."
   "Will  you shut up about Tiny Jim?" She stood up and regarded him for a
moment,  and  said  affectionately,  "Tell you what. I'm going back to the
Dead Men's room. Why don't you go read a book for a while to cool off?"
   "You are silly!" he scolded. "I have no book here, or reader."
   "Oh,  for  the  Lord's  sake! Then go somewhere and whack off until you
feel better."
   Wan looked up at her, then down at his freshly laundered kilt. No bulge
was  visible, but there was a pale, spreading spot of damp. He grinned. "I
guess I don't need to any more," he said.

   By  the  time  they  got  back,  Paul  and  Lurvy were no longer cozily
nestling  each other, but Janine could detect that they were more at peace
than  usual.  What  Lurvy  could  detect  about  Wan  and  Janine was less
tangible. She looked at them thoughtfully, considered asking what they had
been up to, decided against it. Paul was, in any event, more interested in
what  they  had  just discovered. He said, "Hey, kids, listen to this." He
dialed  Henrietta's  number, waited until her weepy voice said a tentative
hello and then asked: "Who are you?"
   The voice strengthened. "I am a computer analog," it said firmly. "When
I  was  alive I was Mrs. Arnold Meacham of mission Orbit Seventy-four, Day
Nineteen.  I  have  a bachelor of science and master's from Tulane and the
Ph.  D.  from the University of Pennsylvania, and my special discipline is
astrophysics.  After  twenty-two  days  we  docked at an artifact and were
subsequently  captured  by  its  occupants.  At the time of my death I was
thirty-eight  years  old,  two years younger than..." the voice hesitated,
"than  Doris  Filgren,  our pilot, who..." it hesitated again, "who-who my
husband  seemed to-who had an affair with... who..." The voice was sobbing
now, and Paul turned it off.
   "Well,  it doesn't last," he said, "but there it is. Poor dumb old Vera
has  sorted  out  some  kind of a connection with reality for her. And not
just for her. Do you want to know your mother's name, Wan?"
   The boy was staring at him, pop-eyed. "My mother's name?" he shrilled.
   "Or  anybody else's. Tiny Jim, for instance. He was actually an airbody
pilot  from  Venus  who  got  to Gateway, and then here. His name is James
Cornwell.  Willard  was  an  English  teacher. He embezzled money from the
students'  fund  to  pay  his way to Gateway-didn't get much out of it, of
course. His first flight brought him here. The downlink computers wrote an
interrogation  program  for  Vera, and she's been working at it all along,
and-what's the matter, Wan?"
   The boy licked his lips. "My mother's name?" he repeated.
   "Oh.  Sorry," Paul apologized, reminded to be kind. It had not occurred
to  him  that  Wan's  emotions  would  be  involved.  "Her name was Elfega
Zamorra. But she doesn't seem to be one of the Dead Men, Wan. I don't know
why. And your father-well, that's a funny thing. Your real father was dead
before she came here. The man you talk about must have been somebody else,
but  I  don't  know who. Any idea why that is?" Wan shrugged. "I mean, why
your  mother  or, I guess you'd call him, your step-father doesn't seem to
be stored?" Wan spread his hands.
   Lurvy  moved  closer  to him. The poor kid! Responding to his distress,
she put her arm around him and said, "I guess this is a shock to you, Wan.
I'm  sure  we'll  find out a lot more." She gestured at the mare's nest of
recorders,  encoders  and  processors  that  littered  the once bare room.
"Everything  we  find  out  gets  transmitted back to Earth," she said. He
looked  up at her politely, but not entirely comprehendingly, as she tired
to  explain  the  vast complex of information-handling machinery on Earth,
and  how  it  systematically analyzed, compared, collated, and interpreted
every  scrap from Heechee Heaven and the Food Factory-not to mention every
other bit of data, wherever derived. Until Janine intervened.
   "Oh,  leave  him  alone. He understands enough," she said wisely. "Just
let  him  live  with  it  for  a  while." She rummaged through the case of
rations  for  one of the slate-green packages, and then said casually, "By
the way. Why is that thing beeping at us?"
   Paul  listened,  then  sprang  to  his  clutter of gadgets. The monitor
slaved to their portable cameras was emitting a faint Queep. Queep. Queep.
He spun it around so they could all see, swearing to himself.
   It  was  the camera they had left by the berryfruit bush, set patiently
to  record the unchanging scene and to sound an alarm whenever it detected
movement.
   It had. There was a face scowling out at them.
   Lurvy felt a thrill of terror. "Heechee," she breathed.
   But  if so, the face showed no evidence of concealing a mind that could
colonize a galaxy. It seemed to be down on all fours, peering worriedly at
the  camera,  and behind it were four or five others like it. The face had
no  chin. The brow slanted down from a fuzzy scalp; there was more hair on
the  face  than  on  the head. If the skull had had an occipital ridge, it
would  have  looked  like a gorilla. Taken all in all, it was not far from
the  shipboard  computer's  reconstruction  of Wan's description, but on a
cruder,  more  animal design. Yet they were not animals. As the face moved
to  one  side  Lurvy  saw that the others, clustered around the berryfruit
bush,  wore what no animal had ever spontaneously worn. They were clothed.
There  were  even evidences of fashion in what they wore, patches of color
sewn  to  their  tunics,  what looked like tattoos on exposed skin, even a
string  of  sharp-edged  beads  around  the  neck  of one of the males. "I
suppose,"  Lurvy  said shakily, "that even the Heechee might degenerate in
time. And they've had lots of time."
   The  view  in  the camera spun dizzily. "Damn him," Paul snapped. "He's
not so degenerate he doesn't notice the camera. He's picked the damn thing
up. Wan! Do you suppose they know we're here?"
   The boy shrugged disinterestedly. "Of course they do. They always have,
you know. They simply do not care."
   Lurvy's  heart  caught.  "What  do  you mean, Wan? How do you know they
won't come after us?"
   The  view  in the camera steadied; the Old One who had picked it up was
handing  it to another. Wan glanced at it and said, "I have told you, they
almost  never  come into this part of the blue. Or ever, into the red; and
there is no reason to go into the green. Nothing works there, not even the
food  chutes  or the readers. Almost always, they stay in the gold. Unless
they have eaten all the berryfruit there, and want more."
   There  was  a mewling cry from the sound system of the monitor, and the
view  whirled again. It stopped momentarily on one of the female Old Ones,
sucking  a  finger; then she reached out balefully for the camera. It spun
and then went blank. "Paul! What did they do?" Lurvy demanded.
   "Broke  it,  I suppose," he said, failing to get the picture back after
manipulating  the  controls.  "Question  is, what do we do? Haven't we got
enough here? Shouldn't we think about going back?"

   And  think about it Lurvy did. They all did. But however carefully they
questioned Wan, the boy stubbornly insisted there was nothing to fear. The
Old Ones had never troubled him in the corridors walled with red skeins of
light.  He  had never seen them in the green-though, to be sure, he seldom
went  there  himself.  Rarely  in  the blue. And, yes, of course they knew
there  were people here-the Dead Men assured him the Old Ones had machines
that  listened,  and  sometimes  watched,  everywhere  when  they were not
broken,  of  course.  They  simply did not care very much. "If we don't go
into  the  gold they will not trouble us," he said positively. "Except, of
course, if they come out."
   "Wan," Paul snarled, "I can't tell you how confident you make me feel."
   But  it  developed  that that was only the boy's way of saying that the
odds  were very good. "I go to the gold for excitement often," he boasted.
"Also for books. I have never been caught, you know."
   "And  what  if  the  Heechee  come here for excitement, or books?" Paul
demanded.
   "Books! What would they do with books? For berryfruit, maybe. Sometimes
they go with the machines-Tiny Jim says they are for repairing things that
break.  But  not  always.  And the machines do not work very well, or very
often. Besides, you can hear them far away!"
   They  all  sat  silent  for a moment, looking at each other. Then Lurvy
said,  "Here's  what  I think. Let's give ourselves one week here. I don't
think  that's  stretching  our  luck  too much. We have, what is it, Paul?
-five  cameras  left.  We'll  plant them around, slave them to the monitor
here  and  leave  them.  If we take care, maybe we can conceal them so the
Heechee  won't  find  them.  We'll  explore all the red corridors, because
they're  safe,  and  as  many  of  the  blue  and green as we can. Collect
samples.  Take pictures-I want to get a look at those repair machines. And
when  we've  done as much of that as we can, we'll-we'll see how much time
we have. And then we'll make a decision about going into the gold."
   "But  no  more  than  one  week.  From  now," Paul repeated. He was not
insisting. He was only making sure he understood.
   "No more," Lurvy agreed, and Janine and Wan nodded.

   But  forty-eight  hours later they were in the gold, all the same. They
had  decided  to  replace  the  broken  camera,  and  so, all four of them
together,  they  retraced  their steps to the three-way intersection where
the  berryfruit bush rose, bare of ripe fruit. Wan was first, hand in hand
with  Janine,  and  she detached herself to swoop down on the wreck of the
camera.  "They  really  bashed it," she marveled. "You didn't tell us they
were so strong, Wan. Look, is that blood?"
   Paul  snatched it from her hand, turning it over, frowning at the crust
of  black along one edge. "It looks like they were trying to get it open,"
he  said.  "I don't think I could do that with my bare hands. He must have
slipped and cut himself."
   "Oh,  yes,"  shrilled  Wan  absently,  "they  are  quite  strong."  His
attention  was  not  on  the  camera.  He  was  peering down the long gold
corridor,  sniffing the air, listening more for distant sounds than to the
others.
   "You're making me nervous," Lurvy said. "Do you hear anything?"
   He  shrugged irritably. "You smell them before you hear them but, no, I
do not smell anything. They are not very near. And I am not afraid! I come
here often, to get books or to watch the funny things they do."
   "I bet," said Janine, taking the old camera from Paul while he hunted a
place  to  conceal  the new one. There were not many places. Heechee decor
was stark.
   Wan  bristled.  "I have gone down that corridor as far as you can see!"
he  boasted.  "Even  the  place where the books is is far down-do you see?
Some of them are in the corridor."
   Lurvy  looked, but was not sure what Wan meant. A few dozen meters away
was  a  heap  of glittering trash, but no books. Paul, peeling tape from a
sticky bracket to mount it as high as he could on the wall, said, "The way
you  carry  on  about those books of yours. I've seen them, you know, Moby
Dick  and  The  Adventures of Don Quixote. What would the Heechee be doing
with them?"
   Wan  shrilled  with dignity, "You are stupid, Paul. Those are only what
the  Dead  Men  gave  me,  they are not the real books. Those are the real
books."
   Janine  looked  at  him  curiously,  then  moved  a  few  step down the
corridor. "They're not books," she called over her shoulder.
   "Of course they are! I have told you they are!"
   "No,  they  aren't.  Come and look." Lurvy opened her mouth to call her
back,  hesitated,  then  followed. The corridor was empty, and Wan did not
seem  more  than  usually agitated. When she was halfway to the glittering
scatter  she recognized what she was looking at, and quickly joined Janine
to pick one up.
   "Wan,"  she said, "I've seen these before. They're Heechee prayer fans.
There are hundreds of them on Earth."
   "No, no!" He was getting angry. "Why do you say that I lie?"
   "I'm  not saying you lie, Wan." She unrolled the thing in her hands. It
was  like  a tapering scroll of plastic; it opened easily in her hand, but
as  soon as she released it it closed again. It was the commonest artifact
of Heechee culture, found by the scores in the abandoned tunnels on Venus,
brought  back by Gateway prospectors from every successful mission. no one
had  ever  found what the Heechee did with them, and whether the name that
they had been given was appropriate only the Heechee knew. "They're called
'prayer fans', Wan."
   "No,  no,"  he  shrilled  crossly, taking it away from her and marching
into  the  chamber. "You do not pray with them. You read them. Like this."
He  started to put the scroll into one of the tulip-shaped fixtures on the
wall,  glanced  at  it,  threw it down. "That is not a good one," he said,
rummaging in the heaps of fans on the floor. "Wait. Yes. This is not good,
either,  but  it  is  at least something one can recognize." He slipped it
into the tulip. There was a quick tiny flutter of electronic whispers, and
then  the  tulip  and  scroll  disappeared.  A lemon-shaped cloud of color
enveloped them, and shaped itself to display a sewn book, opened at a page
of  vertical  lines  of ideographs. A tinny voice-a human voice! -began to
declaim something in a staccato, highly tonal language.
   Lurvy could not understand the words, but two years on Gateway had made
her  cosmopolitan.  She gasped, "I-I think that's Japanese! And those look
like haiku! Wan, what are the Heechee doing with books in Japanese?"
   He  said in a superior tone, "These are not really the Old Ones, Lurvy,
they are only copies of other books. The good ones are all like that. Tiny
Jim  says  that all the tapes and books of the Dead Men, all the Dead Men,
even  the  ones  that are no longer here, are stored in these. I read them
all the time."
   "My God," said Lurvy. "And how many times have I had one of those in my
hands and not known what it was for?"
   Paul  shook his head wonderingly. He reached into the glowing image and
pulled the fan out of its tulip. It came away easily; the picture vanished
and  voice  stopped  in mid-syllable, and he turned the scroll over in his
hands.  "That  beats me," he said. "Every scientist in the world has had a
go at these things. How come nobody ever figured out what they were?"
   Wan  shrugged.  He  was no longer angry; he was enjoying the triumph of
showing  these  people  how much more than they he knew. "Perhaps they are
stupid  too,"  he shrilled. Then, charitably, "Or perhaps they merely have
only  the  ones that no one can understand-except perhaps the Old Ones, If
they ever bothered to read them."
   "Have you got one of those handy, Wan?" Lurvy asked.
   He  shrugged  petulantly.  "I  never  bother with those," he explained.
"Still,  if you do not believe me..." He rummaged around in the heaps, his
expression  making it clear that they were wasting time with things he had
already  explored and found without interest. "Yes. I think this is one of
the worthless ones."
   When  he  slipped  it  into  the tulip, the hologram that sprang up was
bright-and  baffling.  It was as hard to read as the play of colors on the
controls  of a Heechee spacecraft. Harder. Strange, oscillating lines that
twined  around each other, leaped apart in a spray of color, and then drew
together  again.  If  it  was  written language, it was as remote from any
Western  alphabet  as  cuneiform.  More  so.  All  Earthly  languages  had
characteristics  in  common, if only that they were almost all represented
by  symbols on a plane surface. This seemed meant to be perceived in three
dimensions.  And  with  it  came  a  sort of interrupted mosquito-whine of
sound,  like  telemetry  which, by mistake, was being received on a pocket
radio. All in all, it was unnerving.
   "I did not think you would enjoy it," Wan observed spitefully. "Turn it
off,  Wan,"  Lurvy said; and then, energetically, "We want to take as many
of  these  things as we can. Paul, take off your shirt. Load up as many as
you  can  and  take  them  back  to the Dead Men's room. And take that old
camera,  too;  give  it  to  the  bio-assay  unit,  and see if it can make
anything out of the Heechee blood."
   "And  what are you going to do?" Paul asked. But he had already slipped
off his blouse and was filling it with the glittery "books".
   "We'll  be  right  along.  Go  ahead, Paul. Wan? Can you tell which are
which-I mean, which are the ones you don't bother with?"
   "Of  course  I can, Lurvy. They are very much older, sometimes a little
chipped-you can see."
   "All  right. You two, take off your top clothes too-as much as you need
to make a carrying-bag out of. Go ahead. We'll be modest some other time,"
she  said,  slipping  out  of  her coverall. She stood in bra and panties,
tying  knots  in  the arms and legs of the garment. She could fit at least
fifty  or  sixty  of the fans in that, she calculated-with Wan's tunic and
Janine's  dress  they  could  carry at least half of the objects away. And
that  would  be enough. She would not be greedy. There were plenty more on
the  Food  Factory,  anyway-although  probably  they were the ones Wan had
brought  there,  and  thus only the ones he had found he could understand.
"Are there readers on the Food Factory, Wan?"
   "Of  course,"  he  said.  "Why  else would I bring books there?" He was
sorting  irritably through the fans, muttering to himself as he tossed the
oldest, "useless" ones to Janine and Lurvy. "I am cold," he complained.
   "We  all  are.  I wish you'd worn a bra, Janine," she said, frowning at
her sister.
   Janine  said  indignantly,  "I  wasn't planning to take my clothes off.
Wan's right. I'm cold, too."
   "It's only for a little while. Hurry it up, Wan. You too, Janine, let's
see  how  fast  we  can  pick out the Heechee ones." They had her coverall
nearly full, and Wan, scowling and dignified in his kilt, was beginning to
stuff the fans into his. It would be possible, Lurvy calculated, to wrap a
few  dozen more in the kilt. After all, he had a breechcloth under it. But
they  were  really doing very well. Paul had already taken at least thirty
or  forty.  Her  coverall seemed able to hold nearly seventy-five. And, in
any  event, they could always come back another time for the rest, if they
chose,
   Lurvy  did  not  think  she would choose to do that. Enough was enough.
Whatever  else  they might do in Heechee Heaven, they had already acquired
one  priceless  fact. The prayer fans were books! Knowing that that was so
was  half  the  battle;  with that certainty before them, scientists would
surely  be able to unlock the secret of reading them. If they could not do
it from scratch, there were the readers on the Food Factory; if worst came
to  worst  they  could read every fan before one of Vera's remotes, encode
sound and image, and transmit the whole thing to Earth. Perhaps they could
wrench  a  reading  machine loose and bring it back with them.... And back
they  would  go,  Lurvy was suddenly sure. If they could not find a way to
move  the  Food  Factory,  they would abandon it. no one could fault them.
They  had  done  enough. If there was a need for more, other parties could
follow  them,  but  meanwhile...  Meanwhile  they  would have brought back
richer  gifts  than  any  other  human  beings  since the discovery of the
Gateway  asteroid itself! They would be rewarded accordingly, there was no
question  of  that-she  even had Robinette Broadhead's word. For the first
time  since  they had left the Moon on the searing chemical flame of their
takeoff rockets, Lurvy let herself think of herself not as someone who was
striving for a prize, but as someone who had won. And how happy her father
would be...
   "That's  enough,"  she  said,  helping Janine grip the spilling sack of
prayer fans. "Let's take them right to the ship."
   Janine  hugged  the  clumsy bundle to her small breasts and picked up a
few more with a free hand. "You sound as if we're going home," she said.
   "Maybe  so," Lurvy grinned. "Of course, we'll have to have a conference
and decide. Wan? What's the matter?"
   He  was  at  the door, his shirtful of fans under an arm. And he looked
stricken.  "We  waited too long," he whispered, peering down the corridor.
"There are Old Ones by the berryfruit."
   "Oh,  no."  But  it  was  true.  Lurvy  peered  cautiously out into the
corridor  and  there they were, staring up at the camera Paul had fixed to
the  wall.  One  reached  up  and  effortlessly  pulled it loose while she
watched. "Wan? Is there another way home?"
   "Yes,  through  the  gold, but..." His nose was working. "I think there
are some there, too. I can smell them and, yes, I can hear them!" And that
was  true, too; Lurvy could hear a faint sound of mellow, chirrupy grunts,
from where the corridor bent.
   "We  don't  have  a choice," she said. "There are only two of them back
the  way  we  came.  We'll  take  them  by  surprise and just push our way
through.  Come on!" Still carrying the tapes, she hustled the others ahead
of her. The Heechee might be strong, but Wan had said they were slow. With
any  luck at all. They had no luck at all. As they reached the opening she
saw  that there were more than two, half a dozen more, standing around and
looking  toward  them in the entrances to the other corridors. "Paul!" she
shouted at the camera. "We're caught! Get in the ship, and if we don't get
away..."  And she could say no more, because they were upon her; and, yes,
they were strong!

   They  were hustled up through half a dozen levels, their captors one to
each  arm,  stolidly  chirping at each other, ignoring their struggles and
their  words.  Wan  did not speak. He let them pull him as they would, all
the  way  up to a great open spindleshaped volume, where another dozen Old
Ones  waited  and  a huge blue-lit machine sat silent behind them. Did the
Heechee  believe  in  sacrifice? Or perform experiments on captives? Would
they  wind up as Dead Men themselves, rambling and obsessed, ready for the
next  batch  of  visitors?  Lurvy  looked upon all of these as interesting
questions, and had no answers for any of them. She was not yet afraid. Her
feelings  had  not  caught up with the facts; it was too recently that she
had  allowed herself to feel triumph. The realization of defeat would have
to wait.
   The  Old  Ones  chirruped  to  each  other,  gesticulating  toward  the
prisoners,  the  corridors,  the  great silent machine, like a battle tank
without guns. Like a nightmare. Lurvy could not understand any of it, even
though  the  situation was clear enough. After minutes of jabber they were
pushed  into  a  cubicle,  and  found in it-astonishingly! -quite familiar
objects.  Behind  the  closed door Lurvy shuffled through them-clothing; a
chess  set;  long  desiccated  rations. In the toe of one shoe was a thick
roll  of  Brazilian  currency, more than a quarter of a million dollars of
it, she guessed. They had not been the first captives here! But in none of
the rubble was anything like a weapon. She turned to Wan, who was pale and
shaking. "What will happen?" she demanded.
   He  waggled  his  head like an Old One. It was the only answer he could
give.  "My  father..." he began, and had to swallow before he could go on.
"They  captured my father once and, yes, truly, they let him go again. But
I  do  not  think that is a rule, since my father told me I must never let
myself be caught."
   Janine  said,  "At  least  Paul  got  away.  Maybe-maybe  he  can bring
help...." But she stopped there, and did not expect an answer. Any hopeful
answer  would  have  been fantasy, defined by the four years it would take
another  vessel  like  theirs  to reach the Food Factory. If help came, it
would  not  be soon. She began to sort through the old clothing. "At least
we can get something on," she said. "Come on, Wan. Get yourself dressed."
   Lurvy  followed  her  example, and then stopped at a strange sound from
her sister. It was almost a laugh! "What's so funny?" she snapped.
   Janine  pulled  a sweater over her head before she answered. It was too
big,  but  it was warm. "I was just thinking about the orders we got," she
said.  "To  get  Heechee tissue samples, you know? Well, the way it worked
out-they got ours instead. All of them."


        8 Schwarze Peter

   When  the  shipboard computer's mail bell rang, Payter woke quickly and
completely.  It  was an advantage of age that one slept shallowly and woke
at  once.  There  were  not  many advantages. He got up, rinsed his mouth,
urinated  into  the  sanitary, washed his hands, and took two food packets
with  him to the terminal. "Display the mail now," he ordered, munching on
something  that  tasted  like  sour  rye bread but was meant to be a sweet
roll.
   When  he  saw  what  the mail was, his good mood passed. Most of it was
interminable mission orders. Six letters for Janine, one each for Paul and
Dorema,  and  for  himself only a petition addressed to Schwarze Peter and
signed  by  eight  hundred and thirty school-children of Dortmund, begging
him  to return and become their Burgermeister. "Dumb head!" he scolded the
computer.  "Why  do  you  wake  me  for  this trash?" Vera did not answer,
because  he  did not give her time to identify him and rummage through her
slow magnetic bubbles to locate his name.
   Long  before  then,  he was complaining, "Also this food is not fit for
pigs! Attend to it at once!"
   Poor  Vera  erased  the  attempt  to  interpret  his first question and
patiently  attended  to the second. "The recycling system is below optimal
mass  levels,"  she  said,"...  Mr.  Herter.  In  addition,  my processing
routines  have  been subject to overload for some time. Many programs have
been deferred."
   "Do  not  defer  the  food question any more," he snarled, "or you will
kill  me,  and there's an end to it." He gloomily commanded display of the
mission  orders  while  he  forced  himself  to  chew the remainder of his
breakfast.  The  orders rolled for ten solid minutes. What marvelous ideas
they  had for him, back on Earth! And if only there were a hundred of him,
perhaps  they could do one one-hundredth of the tasks proposed. He allowed
the  end  of  it  to run unwatched, while he carefully shaved his pink old
face  and  brushed  his  sparse  hair.  And  why  was the recycling system
depleted,  so  that  it could not function properly? Because his daughters
and   their   consorts  had  removed  themselves  and  thus  their  useful
by-products,  as  well  as  all  the water Wan had stolen from the system.
Stolen!  Yes,  there  was  no  other  word for it. Also they had taken the
mobile  bio-assay unit, so that there was only the sampler in the sanitary
to  monitor  his  health,  and what could that tell of fever or arrhythmic
heart,  if  he  should have either? Also they had taken all but one of the
cameras,  so  that  he must carry that one with him wherever he went. Also
they  had  taken.  They  had taken themselves, and Schwarze Peter, for the
first time in his life, was wholly alone.
   He was not only alone, he was powerless to change it. Family came back,
they  would do so in their own good time and not before. Until then he was
a  reserve  unit,  a  pillbox  soldier,  a  standby  program. He was given
excessive tasks to do, but the real center of action was somewhere else.
   In  his  long  life Payter had taught himself to be patient, but he had
never  taught  himself to enjoy it. It was maddening to be forced to wait!
To  wait  fifty  days for an answer from Earth to his perfectly reasonable
proposals  and  questions.  To wait almost as long for his family and that
hooligan boy to get to where they were going (if they ever did) and report
to him (if they should happen to choose to). Waiting was not so bad if one
had enough of a life left to wait in. But how much, realistically, had he?
Suppose  he  had a stroke. Suppose he developed a cancer. Suppose any part
of the complicated interactions that kept, his heart beating and his blood
flowing  and  his  bowels  moving and his brain thinking broke down in any
place. What then?
   And  some  day  they  surely would, because Payter was old. He had lied
about his age so many times that he was no longer sure of what it was. Not
even  his children knew; the stories he told about his grandfather's youth
were  really  about  his  own.  Age in itself did not matter. Full Medical
could  deal  with  anything,  repair or replace, as long as it was not the
brain itself that was damaged-and Payter's brain was in the best of shape,
because had it not schemed and contrived to get him here?
   But  "here"  there was no Full Medical, and age began to matter a great
deal.
   He  was  no  longer  a  boy! But once he had been, and even then he had
known  that somehow, some day, he would possess exactly what he owned now:
the  key  to  heart's desire. Burgermeister of Dortmund? That was nothing!
Skinny  young Peter, shortest and youngest in his unit of the Hitler Youth
but  their  leader  all  the same, had promised himself he would have much
more.  He had even known that it would turn out to be something like this,
some  grand futuristic pattern would emerge, and he alone would be able to
find the handle to wield it, like a weapon, like an axe, like a scythe, to
punish  or  reap  or  remake the world. Well, here it was! And what was he
doing  with  it? He was waiting. It had not been like that, in the boyhood
stories  by Juve and Gail and Dominik and the Frenchman, Verne. The people
in them did not waste themselves so spinelessly.
   But what, after all, was one to do?
   So  while  he waited for that question to answer itself, he kept up his
daily rounds. He ate four light meals a day, every other one of CHON-food,
methodically  dictating  to Vera his impressions of taste and consistency.
He ordered Vera to design a new mobile bio-assay out of what odds and ends
of  sensor  instrumentation  could be spared, and worked at building it as
she  found time to complete parts of the design. He worked out ten minutes
each  morning  with the weights, half an hour every afternoon with bending
and  stretching. He methodically walked every pathway in the Food Factory,
with  his  hand-held  camera  pointed  into every cranny. He composed long
letters of complaint to his masters on Earth, cagily arguing the merits of
aborting the mission and returning to Earth as soon as he could summon the
family  back, and actually transmitted one or two of them. He wrote fierce
and peremptory directives to his lawyer in Stuttgart, in code, arguing his
position,  demanding  a  revision  to  the  contract.  And most of all, he
schemed. And about the Traumeplatz most of all.
   It  was  seldom  out  of  his  thoughts,  this  dreaming place with its
startling  potential.  When  he  was depressed and fretful, he thought how
rightly  it would serve Earth if he were to repair it and call Wan back to
give  them  their  fevers  once  again. When he was charged with force and
determination  he  went  to  look  at  it,  lid hanging from an ornamental
projection  on  one  wall, the joints and fasteners always with him in his
coverall  pouch.  How easy it would be to bring in a cutting torch and lop
it free, cram the ship full of that, and the communications system for the
Dead  Men,  and whatever other goods and treasures he could find; and then
cast  loose  in the rocket for Earth, start the long, slow downward spiral
that would bring him-what would it bring him? God in heaven, what would it
not!  Fame!  Power!  Prosperity! All the things that were his due-yes, and
his rightful property, too, if he only got back in time to enjoy them.
   It  made him ill to think about it. All the time the clock was ticking,
ticking.  Every  minute  he  was one minute closer to the end of his life.
Every  second  spent  waiting  was  a second stolen from the happy time of
greatness and luxury that he had earned. He forced himself to eat, sitting
on  the  edge of his private and looking longingly at the ship's controls.
"The food has not improved, Vera!" he called accusingly.
   The confounded thing did not answer. "Vera! You must do something about
the food!" It still did not answer, not for several seconds.
   And  then  only,  "One  moment, please... Mr. Herter." It was enough to
make  one  sick. In fact, he did feel somewhat sick, he realized. He gazed
with  hostility at the dish he had been doggedly forcing down, supposed to
be  a  sort  of schnitzel, or as close to it as Vera's limited recombinant
capacities  would  allow,  but tasting of whisky or sauerkraut, or both at
once. He set it on the floor.
   "I do not feel well," he announced.
   Pause.  Then,  "One moment, please... Mr. Hester." Poor stupid Vera had
just  so much capacity. She was processing a burst of messages from Earth,
endeavoring  to  carry on a conversation with the Dead Men by means of the
faster-than-light   radio,  encoding  and  transmitting  all  of  her  own
telemetry-all  at  once.  She simply did not have time for his queasiness.
But  his  accelerating unease would not be denied: a sudden rush of saliva
under  the  tongue, a quick shuddering of the diaphragm. He barely made it
to  the sanitary, giving back, there, all he had taken. For the last time,
he  swore.  He  did  not want to live so long as to see those God-bedamned
organic  compounds  reworked for one more passage through his gut. When he
was sure he had stopped vomiting he marched over to the console and pushed
the  override buttons. "All functions in standby except this," he ordered.
"Monitor my bio-assay at once."
   "Very  well,"  she said at once,"... Mr. Hester." Silence for a moment,
while  the  unit in the sanitary made what it could of what Peter had just
deposited.  "You are suffering from food poisoning," she reported,"... Mr.
Hester."
   "So! This I already know. What is to be done about it?"
   Pause,  while  her  tiny  brain revolved the problem. "If you could add
water  to the system, the fermentation and recycling would be under better
control,"  she  said,  "... Mr. Hester. At least one hundred liters. There
has been considerable loss due to evaporation in the much larger volume of
space  now available, as well as the stocks withdrawn for the remainder of
your  party.  My  recommendation  is  that  you  replenish the system with
available water as soon as possible."
   "But that is not fit to drink for pigs even!"
   "The   solutes   present  problems,"  she  acknowledged.  "Therefore  I
recommend  that  at  least half of any added water be distilled first. The
system  should  be  able  to cope with the remainder of the solutes... Mr.
Hester."
   "God  in  Heaven!  Am  I  to build a still out of nothing, and become a
water-carrier  too?  And  what  of the bio-assay mobile unit, so that this
will not happen again?"
   Vera  sorted  through  the  questions  for a moment. "Yes, I think that
would   be  appropriate,"  she  agreed.  "If  you  wish,  I  will  provide
construction  plans.  Also... Mr. Hester, you may wish to consider relying
more  heavily  on CHON-food for your diet, since you do not appear to have
severe adverse reactions to it."
   "Apart  of  course  from  the fact that it tastes like dog-biscuit," he
sneered.  "Very  well. Complete the construction plans at once. Hard copy,
making use of available materials, do you understand?"
   "Yes...  Mr.  Hester." The computer was silent for a time, inventorying
redundant parts and materials, devising linkages that would do the job. It
was a formidable task for Vera's limited intelligence. Peter drew a cup of
water  and  rinsed  out  his mouth, then grimly unwrapped one of the least
unattractive  CHON  tablets  and  nibbled off a tentative corner. While he
waited  to see if he would throw up again he faced the possibility that he
might  in fact die here, and alone. He did not even have the option he had
thought  was  his,  of casting everything adrift and returning to Earth by
himself-not, at least, unless he first added water as ordered, and did his
best to insure that nothing else would go wrong.
   And yet it was every day so increasingly tempting..
   To  be  sure,  that would mean casting his daughters and his son-in-law
adrift.
   But would they ever return? Suppose they did not. Suppose that rude boy
turned  the  wrong  switch,  or  ran out of fuel. Or anything. Suppose, in
short,  they died. Must he then wither on the vine until he also was dead?
And  what  benefit would that be to humanity, if he perished here, and the
whole  thing  to  do  over  again with a new crew... and himself, Schwarze
Peter,  done  out  of reward, done out of fame and power, done out of life
itself?
   Or-an  idea  struck  him-was  there  another option? This bedamned Food
Factory itself, so set on continuing its course. What if he could find the
controls  that  directed  it  so?  What  if he could learn to change those
directions,  so  that  it could bring him back to Earth not in three years
and  more,  but  at once, in days? To be sure, that would doom his family,
would it not? But perhaps not! Perhaps they would return, if they returned
at  all,  to  the Food Factory itself, wherever it might be. Even in close
orbit  around  Earth!  And  how  marvelously  that  would solve everyone's
problems  at once. He threw the remainder of the packet into the sanitary,
to  add to the store of organics. "Du bist verruckt, Peter!" he snarled to
himself.  The  flaw in that dream could not be ignored: he had sought with
all his might, and the controls to the Food Factory were not to be found.
   The  frying-bacon  sound  of the hard-copy printer rescued him from his
thoughts.  He  pulled  the sheets out of the machine and frowned over them
for  a  moment. So much work! Twenty hours, at least! And not merely time,
but  so  much  of it was hard physical labor! He would have to go out into
space  to  reclaim  piping  from  the  struts  that were meant to hold the
auxiliary  transmitters  in  place, cut them loose, bring them inside; and
only  then begin to weld them together and form them into a spiral. Simply
for the condensation section of the still! He saw that he was beginning to
shake. He barely made it to the sanitary in time. "Vera!" he croaked.
   "I must have medication for this!"
   "At  once...  Mr. Hester. Yes. In the medical kit you will find tablets
marked..."
   "Dumbhead! The medical kit is gone to Cuckooland!"
   "Oh,  yes... Mr. Hester. One moment. Yes. I have programmed appropriate
pharmaceuticals  for you. It will take about twenty minutes for them to be
prepared."
   "In  twenty minutes I could be dead," be snarled. But there was no help
for  it,  and  so  he  sat  and  stewed  for twenty minutes, the pressures
mounting.  Illness, hunger, loneliness, overwork, resentment, fear. Anger!
That  was  what, in the end, they all fused into. Anger. Many vectors. One
vector  sum.  By  the  time Vera's dispensary popped out his pills, it had
submerged  all  the  others. He swallowed them greedily and retired to his
private to see what would happen.
   Actually  they  did  appear to work. He lay back while the fires in his
belly damped themselves, and fell imperceptibly asleep.
   When  he  woke  he  felt at least physically better. He washed himself,
brushed his teeth, brushed his thinning yellow hair, and only then noticed
the Christmas tree of attention-demanding lights around Vera's console. On
the screen in bright red letters were the words:

        GENTLY REQUEST PERMISSION TO RESUME NORMAL MODES.

   He  chuckled  to himself. He had forgotten to cancel the override. When
he  ordered  the  computer  to  get  back to business there was an instant
explosion  of  bells  and signal lights, a cascade of hard copy out of the
printer  and  a  voice.  His  elder  daughter's voice, out of Vera's taped
storage:  "Hello,  Pop. Sorry we couldn't reach you to tell you we arrived
safely. We're going to explore now. Talk to you later."

   Because  Peter  Hester  loved his family, the joy of their safe arrival
flooded  his  heart  and sustained him-for hours. For almost two days. But
joy does not flourish in an existence of irritations and worries. He spoke
to  Lurvy-twice;  for  no  more than thirty seconds each time. Vera simply
could  not  handle  more.  Vera  was  harder  pressed  than Peter himself,
stripped  and  rearranged  as  she  was,  handling two-way traffic between
Heechee  Heaven and the Earth, deferring top priority action commands when
even  higher  priorities  demanded  attention. The one voice link with the
Heechee  place could not handle the volume it was given to carry, and mere
chitchat between father and daughter could not be allowed.
   That  was  not  unjust, Peter conceded. Such marvels they were finding!
What  was  unjust  was  that he himself was out of it. What was unjust was
that  among  the urgent and meaningful traffic, Vera found time to pass on
to  him  a hodgepodge of commands meant for himself. None reasonable. Some
impossible  to  carry  out.  Redeploy  the thrusters. Inventory CHON-food.
Submit  by  return  message  complete  analysis  a  cm by 3 cm by 12. 5 cm
packets  in red and lavender wrappers. Do not submit unnecessary analyses!
Submit  metallurgical  analysis  "dreaming couch". Do not attempt physical
study "dreaming couch". Query Dead Men re Heechee Drive. Query Dead Men re
control  panels. Query Dead Men. How easy that was to command! How hard to
carry out, when they maundered and scolded and rambled and complained when
he  could  hear  them at all, and when most often he was forbidden to take
time  on  the  FTL  voice  circuit  anyway.  Some of the orders from Earth
contradicted  others,  and  most  of them came out of order, with obsolete
priority  designations.  And some did not come at all. Poor Vera's storage
circuits  were  soon approaching overload, and she tried to rid herself of
unnecessary  data  by hard-printing it for him to, somehow, attend to; but
that  made problems of its own,, because the recycling system that fed the
printer rolls was the same one that fed him, and the organics were already
depleted.  So  Peter  had to open and dump CHON-food into the sanitary and
then get busy on the still.
   Even  if  Vera  had  had  time  for him, he had not much time for Vera.
Struggle  into  EVA  equipment.  Cycle himself out on the hull of the Food
Factory.  Cut away tubing and bind it together. Sweat it back to the ship,
always  fighting the infuriating, dogged thrust of the Food Factory itself
as  it  plunged toward somewhere or other. He could spare time only for an
occasional  glance  at  the pictures coming back from Heechee Heaven. Vera
displayed them as they came in, one frame at a time; but then each one was
whisked  away to make storage space for the next one, and if Peter was not
there to see they would go unseen. Even so, good heavens! The Dead Men, so
featureless  to  look  at.  The  corridors  of  Heechee  Heaven.  The  Old
Ones-Peter's  heart almost stopped as he looked at the great broad face of
an  Old  One  on the screen. But he had time only for a look, and then the
still  was done and he must go on with the next task. Build himself a yoke
for  his  shoulders.  Seam together plastic sheeting (another drain on the
recycler!)    to    make   buckets.   Squat   impatiently   by   the   one
functioning-barely  functioning-water  source,  holding  the flexible disk
around  the  spout and catching the foulsmelling dribble in the bags. Tote
the  water  back,  half  into the still, the other half into the recycling
tanks. Sleep when he could. Eat when he could force himself. Attend to his
own personal priority messages when they trickled through, and when he was
too  exhausted for anything physical. Another message from Dortmund, three
hundred  municipal  workers  this time-stupid Vera, for letting such trash
through!  A  coded  communication from his lawyer, meaning half an hour to
translate  it.  And  then  all  it  said  was,  "Am attempting secure more
favorable terms. Can promise nothing. Meanwhile advise full compliance all
directives."  What a pig! Peter, swearing, sat before the console, slammed
down the override key and dictated his reply:
   "Full  compliance  with  all  stupid  directives will kill me, and then
what?"  And  he  sent  it in the clear; let Broadhead and the Gateway Corp
make what they would of it!
   And perhaps the message was no lie. In all his stress and bustle, Peter
had  no  time  for  aches  and  pains.  He ate the CHON-food and, when new
regular  rations  began  to come out of the recycler, them, too. Even when
they  tasted  foul-sometimes  turpentine,  sometimes mold-he was not sick.
This  was  not  ideal.  Peter  knew  that  he  was operating on stress and
adrenaline,  and  sometime there would be a price to pay. But he could see
no way to avoid paying it when due.
   And when at last he had the food processor working reasonably well once
more,  and  had managed to catch up with what appeared the most peremptory
of  his own orders, he sat before Vera's console half-dozing, and then saw
the  greatest  marvel  of all. He scowled uncomprehendingly. What was that
idiot  boy doing with a prayer fan? Why in the next frame was he poking it
into  those  foolish  things  that looked like flowerholders? And then the
next  frame  began  to  build on the screen, and Peter gave a great shout.
Suddenly a picture had appeared, some sort of book-Japanese or Chinese, by
the look of it.
   He  was  out  of  the  ship  and  halfway to the Traumeplatz before his
conscious  mind  quite articulated what some part of him had understood at
once.  The  prayer  fans!  They  contained information! He did not stop to
wonder why the information had been in a Terrestrial language, or at least
what looked like one. He had grasped the essential fact. He was determined
to see for himself. Panting, he thrust himself into the room and scrabbled
feverishly  among  the "fans". How was it done? Why in the name of God had
he not waited to see more, to be sure of what he was doing? But there were
the candleholders, or flowerpots, or whatever he had thought they were; he
jammed  the  first  prayer  fan  to  hand  into  the  nearest one. Nothing
happened.
   He  tried  six  of them, narrow end first, wide end first, every way he
could  think  of,  before  it  occurred to him that perhaps not all of the
reading  machines  were  still working. And the second one he tried pulled
the  fan out of his hand and immediately sprang into light. He was looking
at six dancers in black masks and bodystockings, and he was hearing a song
he had not heard for many years.
   It  was  a  taped  PV  show! No. Not even that. It was older than that.
Years older, not much more recent than the first years of the discovery of
the Gateway asteroid; his second wife was still alive, and Janine not born
yet, when that song was new. It had been simple old television, before the
Heechee  piezoelectric  circuits had been incorporated into communications
systems  for human beings. It had perhaps been part of the library of some
Gateway  prospector, no doubt One of the Dead Men, and somehow it had been
transcribed to a prayer fan.
   What a cheat!
   But  then  he  realized  that  there  were thousands of prayer fans, on
Earth,  in  the  tunnels  of  Venus, still on Gateway itself; wherever the
Heechee had been they had left them. Whatever the source of this one, most
of  the  others  must  have  been left by the Heechee themselves! And that
alone-dear  God, that alone was worth more even than the Food Factory, for
it was the key to all of the Heechee's knowledge! What a bonus there would
be!
   Exulting, Peter tried another fan (old movie), and another (slim volume
of poetry, this time in English, by someone named Eliot), and another. How
disgusting!  If  this  was what Wan had got his notions of love from, some
lascivious  Gateway  prospector  carrying pornography with him to pass the
time,  no  wonder  his behavior was so foul! But he could not remain angry
long,  for  he  had  too  much to be glad about. He snatched it out of the
reader,  and  then,  in  the quiet, heard the distant tiny sound of Vera's
urgent-attention bell.
   It  had  a frightening sound, even before he got back to the ship, even
before  he  demanded  the message and heard his son-in-law's voice, rasped
with fear:
   "Urgent  override  priority!  For  Peter  Hester and immediate relay to
Earth!  Lurvy,  Janine  and  Wan  have been captured by the Heechee, and I
think they are coming after me!"

   The advantage of his new situation, and the only one, was that now that
there  were  no  more  messages coming from Heechee Heaven Vera was better
able  to cope with her overload. Patiently Peter teased out of her all the
pictures  that  had been transmitted before Paul's message had been taped,
and  saw  the  knot  of  Heechee  at  the end of the corridor, the blurred
struggle,  half  a  dozen  quick  glimpses of the ceiling of the corridor,
something  that  might  have  been the back of Wan's head-then nothing. Or
nothing that meant anything. Peter could not know that the camera had been
jammed into the blouse of one of the Old Ones, but he could see that there
was nothing to be seen: obscure shadowy shapes, perhaps a hint of texture.
   Peter's mind was clear. But it was also empty. He did not allow himself
to  feel  how  empty  his life had at once become. He carefully programmed
Vera  to  go back over the voice messages and select the significant ones,
and listened to what all of them had said. There