Gateway

Chapter 26

There were about a dozen prospectors in the briefing room, most of whom I knew: Sess Forehand, Shicky, Metchnikov, a few others I’d drunk with or gone to bed with, one time or another. Emma wasn’t there yet, and I managed to intercept her as she was coming in.

“I want to go out on this mission,” I said.

She looked startled. “You do? I thought—” But she stopped there, without saying what it was she thought.

I followed up: “I have as much right to go as Metchnikov does!”

“You sure as hell don’t have as good a record as he does, Broadhead.” She looked me over carefully, and then she said, “Well, I’ll tell you, if you want to know how it is, Broadhead. It’s a special mission, and partly you’re responsible for it. That boner of yours turns out to be interesting. I don’t mean wrecking the ship; that was stupid, and if there any justice in the universe you’d pay for it. But dumb luck is almost as good as brains.”

“You got the report from Gateway Two,” I guessed.

She shook her head. “Not yet. But it doesn’t matter. We finely programmed your mission into the computer, and it gave some interesting correlations. The course pattern that took you to Gateway Two- Oh, hell,” she said, “come on inside. You can sit through the briefing, at least. It’ll explain everything, and then we’ll see.”

She took my elbow and pushed me ahead of her into the room which was the same one we had used for a classroom — how long before? It seemed like a million years. I sat down between Sess and Shicky, and waited to hear what it was she had to say.

“Most of you,” she started off, “are here by invitation — with one or two exceptions. One of the exceptions is our distinguished friend Mr. Broadhead. He managed to wreck a ship near Gateway Two, as most of you know. By rights we ought to throw the book at him, but before he did that he accidentally turned up some interesting facts. His course colors were not the regular ones for Gateway Two, and when the computer compared them it came up with a whole new concept of course setting. Apparently only about five settings are critical for destination — the five that were the same for the usual Gateway Two setting, and for Broadhead’s new one. What the other settings mean we don’t know. But we’re going to find out.”

She leaned back and folded her hands. “This is a multiple-purpose mission,” she said. “We’re going to do something new. For openers, we’re going to send two ships to the same destination.”

Sess Forehand raised his hand. “What’s the point of that?”

“Well, partly to make sure it is the same destination. We’re going to vary the noncritical settings slightly… the ones we think are noncritical. And we’re going to start the two ships thirty seconds apart. Now, if we know what we’re doing, that means you’ll come out about as far apart as Gateway travels in thirty seconds.”

Forehand wrinkled his brow. “Relative to what?”

“Good question,” she nodded. “Relative, we think, to the Sun. The stellar motion relative to the Galaxy — we think — can be neglected. At least, assuming that your destination turns out to be inside the Galaxy, and not so far away that the galactic motion has a markedly different vector. I mean, if you came out on the opposite side, it would be seventy kilometers a second, relative to the galactic center. We don’t think that’s involved. We only expect a relatively minor difference in velocity and direction, and — well, anyway, you should come out within somewhere between two and two hundred kilometers of each other.

“Of course,” she said, smiling cheerfully, “that’s only theoretical. Maybe the relative motions won’t mean anything at all. In that case, the problem is to keep you from colliding with each other. But we’re sure — pretty sure — that there will be at least some displacement. All you really need is about fifteen meters — the long diameter of a Five.”

“How sure is pretty sure?” one of the girls asked.

“Well,” Emma admitted, “reasonably sure. How do we know until we try?”

“It sounds dangerous,” Sess commented. He did not seem deterred by it. He was only stating an opinion. In this he was unlike me; I was very busy ignoring my inner sensations, trying to concentrate on the technicalities of the briefing.

Emma looked surprised. “That part? Look, I haven’t come to the dangerous part yet. This is a nonaccepted destination for all Ones, most Threes, and some Fives.”

“Why?” someone asked.

“That’s what you’re going there to find out,” she said patiently. “It happens to be the setting the computer picked out as best for testing the correlations between course settings. You’ve got armored Fives, and both accept this particular destination. That means you have what the Heechee designers figured was a good chance to handle it, right?”

“That was a long time ago,” I objected.

“Oh, sure. I never said otherwise. It is dangerous — at least to some extent. That’s what the million is for.”

She stopped there, gravely considering us, until someone obliged by asking, “What million?”

“The million-dollar bonus each one of you gets when you come back,” she said. “They’ve appropriated ten million dollars out of Corporation funds for this. Equal shares. Of course, there’s a good chance that it will be more than a million each. If you find anything worthwhile, the regular pay scales apply. And the computer thinks this is a good prospect.”

“Why is it worth ten million?” I asked.

“I don’t make these decisions,” she said patiently. And then she looked at me as a person, not part of the group, and added, “And by the way, Broadhead. We’re writing off your damage to the ship. So whatever you get is yours to keep. A million dollars? That’s a nice little nest egg. You can go back home, buy yourself a little business, live the rest of your life on that.”

We looked at each other, and Emma just sat there, smiling gently and waiting. I don’t know what the others were thinking about. What I was remembering was Gateway Two and the first trip, wearing our eyes out at the instruments, looking for something that wasn’t there. I suppose each of the others had washouts of their own to remember.

“Launch,” she said at last, “is day after tomorrow. The ones who want to sign, come see me in my office.”

They accepted me. They turned Shicky down.

But it wasn’t as easy as that, nothing ever is; the one who made sure Shicky was not going to go along was me. They filled up the first ship quickly: Sess Forehand, two girls from Sierra Leone, a French couple — all English-speaking, all briefed, all with previous missions. For the second ship Metchnikov signed as crew right away; a gay couple, Danny A. and Danny R., were his picks. Then, grudgingly, he agreed to me. And that left one opening.

“We can take your friend Bakin,” Emma said. “Or would you prefer your other friend?”

“What other friend?” I demanded.

“We have an application,” she said, “from Gunner Third Susanna Hereira, off the Brazilian cruiser. She has their permission to take leave for this purpose.”

“Susie! I didn’t know she’d volunteered!”

Emma studied her punch card reflectively. “She’s very qualified,” she commented. “Also, she has all her parts. I am referring,” she said sweetly, “to her legs, of course, although as I understand it you have some interest in her other parts as well. Or would you care to go gay for this mission?”

I felt an unreasoning rush of anger. I am not one of your sexually uptight people; the thought of physical contact with a male was not frightening in itself. But — with Dane Metchnikov? Or one of his lovers?

“Gunner Hereira can be here tomorrow,” Emma comme “The Brazilian cruiser is going to dock right after the orbiter.”

“Why the hell are you asking me?” I snarled. “Metchnikov is crew chief.”

“He prefers to leave it to you, Broadhead. Which one?”

“I don’t give a damn!” I yelled, and left. But there is no such thing as avoiding a decision. Not making a decision was in effect decision enough to keep Shicky off the crew. If I had fought for him, they would have taken him; without that, Susie was the obvious choice.

I spent the next day staying out of Shicky’s way. I picked new a fish at the Blue Hell, fresh out of the classroom, and spent the night in her room. I didn’t even go back to my own room for clothes; I dumped everything and bought a new outfit. I pretty well knew the places where Shicky might look for me — the Hell, Central Park, the museum — and so I stayed away from those places; I went for a long, rambling wander through the deserted tunnels, seeing no one at all, until late that night.

Then I took a chance and went to our farewell party. Shicky would probably be there, but there would be other people around.

He was. And so was Louise Forehand. In fact, she seemed to be the center of attention; I hadn’t even known she was back.

She saw me and waved to me. “I struck it rich, Rob! Drink up, I’m buying!”

I let someone put a glass in one hand and a joint in the other and before I took my hit I managed to ask her what she’d found.

“Weapons, Rob! Marvelous Heechee weapons, hundred them. Sess says it’s going to be at least a five-million-dollar assessment. Plus royalties… if anyone finds a way to duplicate the weapons anyway.”

I let the smoke blow out and washed out the taste with a swallow of white lightning. “What kind of weapons?”

“They’re like the tunnel diggers, only portable. They’ll cut a hole through anything. We lost Sara BellaFanta in the landing; one of them put a hole in her suit. But Tim and I are whacking up her share, so it’s two and a half mil apiece.”

“Congratulations,” I said. “I would have thought the last thing the human race needed was some new ways to kill each other -congratulations.” I was reaching for an air of moral superiority and I needed it; because as I turned away, there was Shicky, hanging in air, watching me.

“Want a hit?” I asked, offering him the joint.

He shook his head.

I said, “Shicky, it wasn’t up to me. I told them-I didn’t tell them not to take you.”

“Did you tell them they should?”

“It wasn’t up to me,” I said. “Hey, listen!” I went on, suddenly seeing an out. “Now that Louise has hit, Sess probably won’t want to go. Why don’t you take his place?”

He backed away, watching me; only his expression changed. “You don’t know?” he asked. “It is true that Sess canceled out, but he has already been replaced.”

“By whom?”

“By the person right behind you,” said Shicky, and I turned around, and there she was, looking at me, a glass in her hand and an expression I could not read on her face.

“Hello. Rob.” said Klara.

I had prepared myself for the party by a number of quick ones in the commissary; I was ninety-percent drunk and ten-percent stoned, but it all whooshed out of me as I looked at her. I put down the drink, handed the joint to someone at random, took her arm, and pulled her out into the tunnel.

“Klara,” I said. “Did you get my letters?”

She looked puzzled. “Letters?” She shook her head. “I guess you sent them to Venus? I never got there. I got as far as the rendezvous with the plane-of-the-ecliptic flight, and then I changed my mind. I came right back on the orbiter.”

“Oh, Klara.”

“Oh, Rob,” she mimicked, grinning; that wasn’t much fun, because when she smiled I could see where the tooth was missing that I had knocked out. “So what else have we got to say to each other?”

I put my arms around her. “I can say that I love you, and I’m sorry, and I want to make it up to you, and I want to get married and live together and have kids and—”

“Jesus, Rob,” she said, pushing me away, gently enough, “when you say something you say a lot, don’t you? So hold it for a while. It’ll keep.”

“But it’s been months!”

She laughed. “No fooling, Rob. This is a bad day for Sagittarians to make decisions, especially about love. We’ll talk about it another time.”

“That crap! Listen, I don’t believe in any of that!”

“I do, Rob.”

I had an inspiration. “Hey! I bet I can trade with somebody in the first ship! Or, wait a minute, maybe Susie would trade with you—”

She shook her head, still smiling. “I really don’t think Susie would like that,” she said. “Anyway, they bitched enough about letting me switch with Sess. They’ll never stand still for another last minute change.”

“I don’t care, Klara!”

“Rob,” she said, “don’t rush me. I did a lot of thinking about you and me. I think we’ve got something that’s worth working for. But I can’t say it’s all straight in my head yet, and I don’t want to push it.”

“But, Klara—”

“Leave it at that Rob. I’ll be in the first Five, you’ll be in the second.

When we get where we’re going we’ll be able to talk. Maybe even switch around to come back together. But meanwhile we’ll both have a chance to think about what we really want.”

The only words I seemed to know I seemed to be saying over and over again: “But, Klara—”

She kissed me, and pushed me away. “Rob,” she said, “don’t be in such a hurry. We’ve got all the time there is.”