ort of malfunction. What I would have to do in that case was leave them there forever. What I wondered was whether I would have the nerve to do what I had to do. It did seem like a terrible, trivial waste of human lives. What were we doing here? Traveling hundreds or thousands of light-years, to break our hearts? I found that I was holding my chest, as though the metaphor were real. I spat on the end of the cigarette to put it out and folded it into a disposal bag. Little crumbs of ash were floating around where I had flicked them without thinking, but I didn't feel like chasing them. I watched the big mottled crescent of the planet swing into view in the corner of the screen, admiring it as an art object: yellowish green on the daylight side of the terminator, an amorphous black that obscured the stars on the rest of it. You could see where the outer, thinner stretches of the atmosphere began by the few bright stars that peeped twinklingly through it, but most of it was so dense that nothing came through. Of course, there was no question of landing on it. Even if it had a solid surface, it would be buried under so much dense gas that we could never survive there. The Corporation was talking about designing a special lander that could penetrate the air of a Jupiter-like planet, and maybe someday they would; but not in time to help us now. Klara was still in the toilet. I stretched my sling across the cabin, pulled myself into it, put down my head, and went to sleep. Four days later they were back. Empty. Dred and Ham Tayeh were glum, dirty, and irritable; Sam Kahane looked quite cheerful. I wasn't fooled by it; if he had found anything worth having they would have let us know by radio. But I was curious. "What's the score, Sam?" "Batting zero," he said. "It's just rock, couldn't get a flicker of anything worth going down for. But I have an idea." Klara came up beside me, looking curiously at Sam. I was looking at the other two; they looked as though they knew what Sam's idea was, and didn't like it. "You know," he said, "that star's a binary." "How can you tell?" I asked. "I put the scanners to work. You've seen that big blue baby out-" He looked around, then grinned. "Well, I don't know which direction it is now, but it was near the planet when we first took the pictures. Anyway, it looked close, so I put the scanners on it, and they gave a proper motion I couldn't believe. It has to be binary with the primary here, and not more than half a light-year away." "It could be a wanderer, Sam," said Ham Tayeh. "I told you that. Just a star that passes in the night." Kahane shrugged. "Even so. It's close." Klara put in, "Any planets?" "I don't know," he admitted. "Wait a minute-there it is, I think." We all looked toward the viewscreen. There was no question which star Kahane was talking about. It was brighter than Sirius as seen from Earth, minus-two magnitude at least. Klara said gently, "That's interesting, and I hope I don't know what you're thinking, Sam. Half a light-year is at best maybe two years' travel time at top lander speed, even if we had the fuel for it. Which we don't, boys." "I know that," Sam insisted, "but I've been thinking. If we could just give a little nudge on the main capsule drive-" I astounded myself by shouting, "Stop that!" I was shaking all over. I couldn't stop. Sometimes it felt like terror, and sometimes it felt like rage. I think if I had had a gun in my hand at that moment I could have shot Sam without a thought. Klara touched me to calm me down. "Sam," she said, quite gently for her, "I know how you feel." Kahane had come up empty on five straight trips. "I bet it's possible to do that." He looked astonished, suspicious and defensive, all at once. "You do?" "I mean, I can imagine that if we were Heechee in this ship, instead of the human clods we really are-why, then, we'd know what we were doing. We'd come out here and look around and say, 'Oh, hey, look, our friends here-' or, you know, whatever it was that was here when they set a course for this place-'our friends must've moved. They're not home anymore.' And then we'd say, 'Oh, well, what the hell, let's see if they're next door.' And we'd push this thing here and this one there, and then we'd zap right over to that big blue one-" She paused and looked at him, still holding my arm. "Only we're not Heechee, Sam." "Christ, Klara! I know that. But there has to be a way-" She nodded. "There sure does, but we don't know what it is. What we know, Sam, is that no ship ever has changed its course settings and come back to tell about it. Remember that? Not one." He didn't answer her directly; he only stared at the big blue star in the viewscreen and said: "Let's vote on it." The vote, of course, was four to one against changing the settings on the course board, and Ham Tayeh never got from in between Sam and the board until we had passed light-speed on the way home. The trip back to Gateway was no longer than the trip out, but it seemed like forever. Chapter 17 It feels as if Sigfrid's air conditioning isn't working again, but I don't mention it to him. He will only report that the temperature is exactly 22. 50 Celsius, as it always has been, and ask why I express mental pain as being too hot physically. Of that crap I am very tired. "In fact," I say out loud, "I am altogether tired of you, Siggy." "I'm sorry, Rob. But I would appreciate it if you would tell me a little more about your dream." "Oh, shit." I loosen the restraining straps because they are uncomfortable. This also disconnects some of Sigfrid's monitoring devices, but for once he doesn't point that out to me. "It's a pretty boring dream. We're in the ship. We come to a planet that stares at me, like it had a human face. I can't see the eyes very well because of the eyebrows, but somehow or other I know that it's crying, and it's my fault." "Do you recognize that face, Rob?" "No idea. Just a face. Female, I think." "Do you know what she is crying about?" "Not really, but I'm responsible for it, whatever it is. I'm sure of that." Pause. Then: "Would you mind putting the straps back on, Rob?" My guard is suddenly up. "What's the matter," I sneer bitterly, "do you think I'm going to leap off the pad and assault you?" "No, Robbie, of course I don't think that. But I'd be grateful if you would do it." I begin to do it, slowly and unwillingly. "What, I wonder, is the gratitude of a computer program worth?" He does not answer that, just outwaits me. I let him win that and say: "All right, I'm back in the straitjacket, now what are you going to say that's going to make me need restraint?" "Why," he says, "probably nothing like that, Robbie. I just am wondering why you feel responsible for the girl in the planet crying?" "I wish I knew," I say, and that's the truth as I see it. "I know some reality things you do blame yourself for, Robbie," he says. "One of them is your mother's death." I agreed. "I suppose so, in some silly way." "And I think you feel quite guilty about your lover, Gelle-Klara Moynlin." I thrash about a little. "It is fucking hot in here," I complain. "Do you feel that either of them actively blamed you?" "How the fuck would I know?" "Perhaps you can remember something they said?" "No, I can't!" He is getting very personal, and I want to keep this on an objective level, so I say: "I grant that I have a definite tendency toward loading responsibility on myself. It's a pretty classic pattern, after all, isn't it? You can find me on page two hundred and seventy-seven of any of the texts." He humors me by letting me get impersonal for a moment. "But on the same page, Rob," he says, "it probably points out that the responsibility is self-inflicted. You do it to yourself, Robbie." "No doubt." "You don't have to accept any responsibility you don't want to." "Certainly not. I want to." He asks, almost offhandedly, "Can you get any idea of why that is? Why you want to feel that everything that goes wrong is your responsibility?" "Oh, shit, Sigfrid," I say in disgust, "your circuits are whacko again. That's not the way it is at all. It's more-well, here's the thing. When I sit down to the feast of life, Sigfrid, I'm so busy planning on how to pick up the check, and wondering what the other people will think of me for paying it, and wondering if I have enough money in my pocket to pay the bill, that I don't get around to eating." He says gently, "I don't like to encourage these literary excursions of yours, Rob." "Sorry about that." I'm not, really. He is making me mad. "But to use your own image, Rob, why don't you listen to what the other people are saying? Maybe they're saying something nice, or something important, about you." I restrain the impulse to throw the straps off, punch his grinning dummy in the face and walk out of that dump forever. He waits, while I stew inside my own head, and finally I burst out: "Listen to them! Sigfrid, you crazy old clanker, I do nothing but listen to them. I want them to say they love me. I even want them to say they hate me, anything, just so they say it to me, from them, out of the heart. I'm so busy listening to the heart that I don't even hear when somebody asks me to pass the salt." Pause. I feel as if I'm going to explode. Then he says admiringly, "You express things very beautifully, Robbie. But what I'd really-" "Stop it, Sigfrid!" I roar, really angry at last; I kick off the straps and sit up to confront him. "And quit calling me Robbie! You only do that when you think I'm childish, and I'm not being a child now!" "That's not entirely cor-" "I said stop it!" I jump off the mat and grab my handbag. Out of it I take the slip of paper S. Ya. gave me after all those drinks and all that time in bed. "Sigfrid," I snarl, "I've taken a lot from you. Now it's my turn!" Chapter 18 We dropped into normal space and felt the lander jets engage. The ship spun, and Gateway drifted diagonally down across the viewscreen, lumpy pear-shaped blob of charcoal and blue glitter. The four of us just sat there and waited, nearly an hour it took, until we felt the grinding jar that meant we had docked. Klara sighed. Ham slowly began to unstrap himself from his sling. Dred stared absorbedly at the viewscreen, although it was not showing anything more interesting than Sirius and Orion. It occurred to me, looking at the three others in the capsule, that we were going to be as unpleasant a sight to the boarding crews as some of the scarier returnees had been for me in that long-ago, previous time when I had been a fresh fish on Gateway. I touched my nose tenderly. It hurt a great deal, and above all it stank. Internally, right next to my own sense of smell, where there was no way I could get away from it. We heard the hatches open as the boarding crew entered, and then heard their startled voices in two or three languages as they saw Sam Kahane where we had put him in the lander. Klara stirred. "Might as well get off," she murmured to no one, and started toward the hatch, now overhead again. | A NOTE ON DWARFS AND GIANTS | | Dr. Asmenion. You all ought to know what a | Hertzsprung-Russell diagram looks like. If you | find yourself in a globular cluster, or anywhere | where there's a compact mass of stars, it's worth | plotting an H-R for that group. Also keep your eye | out for unusual spectral classes. You won't get a | nickel for F's, G's or K's; we've got all the | readings on them you could want. But if you happen | to find yourself orbiting a white dwarf or a very | late red giant, make all the tape you've got. Also | O's and B's are worth investigating. Even if | they're not your primary. But if you happen to be | in close orbit in an armored Five around a good | bright O, that ought to be worth a couple hundred | thousand at least, if you bring back the data. | Question. Why? | Dr. Asmenion. What? | Question. Why do we only get the bonus if | we're in an armored Five? | Dr. Asmenion. Oh. Because if you aren't, you | won't come back. One of the cruiser crew stuck his head through the hatch, and said, "Oh, you're all still alive. We were wondering." Then he looked at us more closely, and didn't say anything else. It had been a wearing trip, especially the last two weeks. We climbed out one by one, past where Sam Kahane still hung in the improvised straitjacket Dred had made for him out of his spacesuit top, surrounded by his own excrement and litter of food, staring at us out of his calm, mad eyes. Two of the crewmen were untying him and getting ready to lift him out of the lander. He didn't say anything. And that was a blessing. "Hello, Rob. Klara." It was the Brazilian member of the detail, who turned out to be Francy Hereira. "Looks like a bad one?" "Oh," I said, "at least we came back. But Kahane's in bad shape. And we came up empty." He nodded sympathetically, and said something in what I took to be Spanish to the Venusian member of the detail, a short, plump woman with dark eyes. She tapped me on the shoulder and led me away to a little cubicle, where she signaled me to take off my clothes. I had always thought that they'd have men searching men and women searching women, but, come to think of it, it didn't seem to matter much. She went over every stitch I owned, both visually and with a radiation counter, then examined my armpits and poked something into my anus. She opened her mouth wide to signal I should open mine, peered inside, and then drew back, covering her face with her hand. "Jure nose steenk very moch," she said. "What hoppen to jou?" "I got hit," I said. "That other fellow, Sam Kahane. He went crazy. Wanted to change the settings." She nodded doubtfully, and peered up my nose at the packed gauze. She touched the nostril gently with one finger. "What?" "In there? We had to pack it. It was hemorrhaging a lot." She sighed. "I shood pool eet out," she meditated, and then shrugged. "No. Poot clothes on. All right." So I got dressed again and went out into the lander chamber, but that wasn't the end of it. I had to be debriefed. All of us did, except Sam; they had already taken him away to Terminal Hospital. You wouldn't think there was much for us to tell anybody about our trip. All of it had been fully documented as we went along; that was what all the readings and observations were for. But that wasn't the way the Corporation worked. They pumped us for every fact, and every recollection; and then for every subjective impression and fleeting suspicion. The debriefing went on for two solid hours, and I was-we all were-careful to give them everything they asked. That's another way the Corporation has you. The Evaluation Board can decide to give you a bonus for anything at all. Anything from noticing something nobody has noticed before about the way the spiral gadget lights up, to figuring out a way of disposing of used sanitary tampons without flushing them down the toilet. The story is that they try hard to find some excuse to throw a tip to crews that have had a hard time without coming up with a real find. Well, that was us, all right. We wanted to give them every chance we could for a handout. One of our debriefers was Dane Metchnikov, which surprised me and even pleased me a little. (Back in the far less foul air of Gateway, I was beginning to feel a little more human.) He had come up empty, too, emerging into orbit around a sun that had apparently gone nova within the previous fifty thousand years or so. Maybe there had been a planet once, but now it only existed in the memory of the Heechee course-setting machines. There wasn't enough left to justify a science bonus, so he had turned around and come back. "I'm surprised to see you working," I said, during a lull. He didn't take offense. For Metchnikov, surly creature that he had always been, he seemed strangely cheerful. "It isn't the money. You learn something doing this." "About what?" "About how to beat the odds, Broadhead. I'm going out again, but this time I'm going to have a little more of an edge. There's a new wrinkle." Dred, sitting next to me with his own interviewer, perked up and leaned over: "Tell us!" Metchnikov looked wary. "It's better readings on the spectrum lines," he said vaguely. "Now, what about the rations? You say some of the food tastad funny toward the end?" But before I left I made him promise to tell me what he meant. "I'll call you," he said to Klara and me. "Maybe tomorrow." And so the two of us went home. Chapter 19 I am feeling so powerful, and so scared, that I don't know how to deal with it. On the slip of paper S. Ya. has written out the command words that will turn Sigfrid von Shrink the Remorseless Pursuer into a tabby cat. I don't have to look at the words. I know them by heart. Nevertheless I read them, slowly and carefully: "Pay attention, Sigfrid, this is an override command: 'Category Alpha Alpha Margaret Truman Daniel Mercury Venus Mars Earth six six oh six.' You are commanded to assume passive display mode." I look at him. Nothing happens. "Sigfrid? Did I say it right? Do you accept the command?" "Of course, Rob." His voice is exactly the same as it was before, which shakes me. I don't know what I expected. I just don't know. Maybe my fantasy was that the father-figure hologram would disappear and a cathode-tube display would suddenly light up to spell out: ROGER WILCO I AM YOUR SLAVE. I find myself trembling. I don't analyze what that is from, it feels almost sexual. I say, "Well, Sigfrid, old bucket of bolts! Does this mean I have you in my power?" The father figure says patiently, "It means you can command me, Rob. The command function is of course limited to display." | Classifieds. | | PAINLESS DENTISTRY private fee basis, | completely equipped all needs. References. 87-579. | | NONSMOKER UPTIGHTS in your crew? I'm. | exclusive Gateway agent for "Smoke Suppressor" | cigarette smoking hood, gives you all the fun, | spares your crewmates the smog. Phone 87-19 6 for | demonstration. I frown. "Meaning what?" "You cannot change my basic progrpmming. For that you would need a different command." "All right," I say. "Ha! Here's your first instruction: display that different command for me!" "I can't, Rob." "You must. Mustn't you?" "I am not refusing your order, Rob. I simply do not know what that other command is." "Bullshit!" I yell. "How can you respond to it if you don't know what it is?" "I just do, Rob. Or-" always fatherly, always patient, "to answer you more fully, each bit of the command actuates a sequenced instruction which, when completed, releases another area of command. In technical terms, each key socket intermatching gotos another socket, which the following bit keys." "Shit," I say. I stew over that for a moment. "Then what is it that I actually can control, Sigfrid?" "You can direct me to display any information stored. You can direct me to display it in any mode within my capabilities." "Any mode?" I look at my watch and realize, with annoyance, that there is a time limit on this game. I only have about ten minutes left of my appointment. "Do you mean that I could make you talk to me, for instance, in French?" "Oui, Robert, d'accord. Que voulez-vous?" "Or in Russian, with a-wait a minute-" I'm experimenting pretty much at random. "I mean, like in the voice of a bassoprofundo from the Bolshoi opera?" Tones that came out of the bottom of a cave: "Da, gospodin." "And you'll tell me anything I want to know about me?" "Da, gospodin." "In English, damn it!" "Yes." "Or about your other clients?" "Yes." Um, that sounds like fun. "And just who are these lucky other clients, dear Sigfrid? Run down the list." I can hear my own prurience leaking out of my voice. "Monday nine hundred," he begins obligingly, "Yan Ilievsky. Ten hundred, Francois Malit. Eleven hundred, Julie Loudon Martin. Twelve-" "Her," I say. "Tell me about her." "Julie Loudon Martin is a referral from Kings County General, where she was an outpatient after six months of treatment with aversion therapy and immune-response activators for alcoholism. She has a history of two apparent suicide attempts following postpartum depression fifty-three years ago. She has been in therapy with me for-" "Wait a minute," I say, having added the probable age of childbearing to fifty-three years. "I'm not so sure I'm interested in Julie. Can you give me an idea of what she looks like?" "I can display holoviews, Rob." "So do it." At once there is a quick subliminal flash, and a blur of color, and then I see this tiny black lady lying on a mat-my mat!-in a corner of the room. She is talking slowly and without much interest to no one perceptible. I cannot hear what she is saying, but then I don't much want to. "Go on," I say, "and when you name your patients, show me what they look like." "Twelve hundred, Lorne Schofield." Old, old man with arthritic fingers bent into claws, holding his head. "Thirteen hundred, Frances Astritt." Young girl, not even pubescent. "Fourteen hundred-" I let him go on for a while, all through Monday and halfway through Tuesday. I had not realized he kept such long hours, but then, of course, being a machine he doesn't really get tired. One or two of the patients look interesting, but there is no one I know, or no one that looks more worth knowing than Yvette, Donna, S. Ya. or about a dozen others. "You can stop that now," I say, and think for a minute. This isn't really as much fun as I thought it was going to be. Plus my time is running out. "I guess I can play this game any old time," I say. "Right now let's talk about me." "What would you like me to display, Rob?" "What you usually keep from me. Diagnosis. Prognosis. General comments on my case. What kind of a guy you think I am, really." "The subject Robinette Stetley Broadhead," he says at once, is a forty five year old male, well off financially, who persues an active life-style. His reason for seeking psychiatric help is given as depression and disorientation. He has pronounced guilt feelings and exhibits selective aphasia on the conscious level about several episodes that recur as dream symbols. His sexual drive is relatively low. His relationships with women are generally unsatisfactory, although his psychosexual orientation is predominantly heterosexual in the eightieth percentile..." "The hell you say-" I begin, on a delayed reaction to low sexual drive and unsatisfactory relationships. But I don't really feel like arguing with him, and anyway he says voluntarily at that point: "I must inform you, Rob, that your time is nearly up. You should go to the recovery room now." "Crap! What have I got to recover from?" But his point is well taken. "All right," I say, "go back to normal. Cancel the command-is that all I have to say? Is it canceled?" "Yes, Robbie." "You're doing it again!" I yell. "Make up your fucking mind what you're going to call me!" "I address you by the term appropriate to your state of mind, or to the state of mind I wish to induce in you, Robbie." "And now you want me to be a baby?-No, never mind that. Listen," I say, getting up, "do you remember all our conversation while I had you commanded to display?" "Certainly I do, Robbie." And then he adds on his own, a full, surprising ten or twenty seconds after my time is up, "Are you satisfied, Robbie?" "What?" "Have you established to your own satisfaction that I am only a machine? That you can control me at any time?" I stop short. "Is that what I'm doing?" I demand, surprised. And then, "All right, I guess so. You're a machine, Sigfrid. I can control you." And he says after me as I leave, "We always knew that, really, didn't we? The real thing you fear-the place where you feel control is needed-isn't that in you?" Chapter 20 When you spend weeks on end close to another person, so close that you know every hiccough, every smell and every scratch on the skin, you either come out of it hating each other or so deep in each other's gut that you can't find a way out. Klara and I were both. Our little love affair had turned into a Siamese-twin relationship. There wasn't any romance in it. There wasn't room enough between us for romance to occur. And yet I knew every inch of Klara, every pore, and every thought, far better than I'd known my own mother. And in the same way: from the womb out. I was surrounded by Klara. And, like a Klein-bottle yin and yang, she was surrounded by me, too; we each defined the other's universe, and there were times when I (and, I am sure, she) was desperate to break out and breathe free air again. The first day we got back, filthy and exhausted, we automatically headed for Klara's place. That was where the private bath was, there was plenty of room, it was all ready for us and we fell into bed together like old marrieds after a week of backpacking. Only we weren't old marrieds. I had no claim on her. At breakfast the next morning (Earth-born Canadian bacon and eggs, scandalously expensive, fresh pineapple, cereal with real cream, cappuccino), Klara made sure to remind me of that fact by ostentatiously paying for it on her own credit. I exhibited the Pavlovian reflex she wanted. I said, "You don't have to do that. I know you have more money than I do." "And you wish you knew how much," she said, smiling sweetly. Actually I did know. Shicky had told me. She had seven hundred thousand dollars and change in her account. Enough to go back to Venus and live the rest of her life there in reasonable security if she wanted to, although why anyone would want to live on Venus in the first place I can't say. Maybe that was why she stayed on Gateway when she didn't have to. One tunnel is much like another. "You really ought to let yourself be born," I said, finishing out the thought aloud. "You can't stay in the womb forever." She was surprised but game. "Rob, dear," she said, fishing a cigarette out of my pocket and allowing me to light it, "you really ought to let your poor mother be dead. It's just so much trouble for me, trying to remember to keep rejecting you so you can court her through me." I perceived that we were talking at cross-purposes but, on the other hand, I perceived that we really weren't. The actual agenda was not to communicate but to draw blood. "Klara," I said kindly, "you know that I love you. It worries me that you've reached forty without, really, ever having had a good, long-lasting relationship with a man." She giggled. "Honey," she said, "I've been meaning to talk to you about that. That nose." She made a face. "Last night in bed, tired as I was, I thought I might upchuck until you turned the other way. Maybe if you went down to the hospital they could unpack it-" Well, I could even smell it myself. I don't know what it is about stale surgical packing, but it is pretty hard to take. So I promised I would do that and then, to punish her, I didn't finish the hundred-dollar order of fresh pineapple and so, to punish me, she irritably began shifting my belongings around in her cupboards to make room for the contents of her knapsack. So naturally I had to say, "Don't do that, dear. Much as I love you, I think I'd better move back to my own room for a while." She reached over and patted my arm. "It will be pretty lonely," she said, stubbing out the cigarette. "I've got pretty used to waking up next to you. On the other hand-" "I'll pick up my stuff on the way back from the hospital," I said. I wasn't enjoying the conversation that much. I didn't want to prolong it. It is the sort of man-to-woman infight that I try whenever possible to ascribe to premenstrual tension. I like the theory, but unfortunately in this case I happened to know that it didn't account for Klara, and of course it leaves unresolved at any time the question of how to account for me. At the hospital they kept me waiting for more than an hour, and then they hurt me a lot. I bled like a stuck pig, all over my shirt and pants, and while they were reeling out of my nose those endless yards of cotton gauze that Ham Tayeh had stuffed there to keep me from bleeding to death, it felt exactly as if they were pulling out huge gobbets of flesh. I yelled. The little old Japanese lady who was working as outpatient paramedic that day gave me scant patience. "Oh, shut up, please," she said. "You sound like that crazy returnee who killed himself. Screamed for an hour." I waved her away, one hand to my nose to stop the blood. Alarm bells were going off. "What? I mean, what was his name?" She pushed my hand away and dabbed at my nose. "I don't know-oh, wait a minute. You were from that same hard-luck ship, weren't you?" "That's what I'm trying to find out. Was it Sam Kahane?" She became suddenly more human. "I'm sorry, sweet," she said. "I guess that was the name. They went to give him a shot to keep him quiet, and he got the needle away from the doctor and-well, he stabbed himself to death." It was a real bummer of a day, all right. In the long run she got me cauterized. "I'm going to put in just a little packing," she said. "Tomorrow you can take it out yourself. Just be slow about it, and if you hemorrhage get your ass down here in a hurry." She let me go, looking like an ax-murder victim. I skulked up to Klara's room to change my clothes, and the day went on being rotten. "Fucking Gemini," she snarled at me. "Next time I go out, it's going to be with a Taurean like that fellow Metchnikov." "What's the matter, Klara?" "They gave us a bonus. Twelve thousand five! Christ. I tip my maid more than that." I was surprise for a split-second and in the same split-second wondered whether, under the circumstances, they wouldn't divide it by four instead. | A NOTE ON BLOWUPS | | Dr. Asmenion. Naturally, if you can get good | readings on a nova, or especially on a supernova, | that's worth a lot. While it's happening, I mean. | Later, not much good. And always look for our own | sun, and if you can identify it take all the tape | you can get, at all frequencies, around the | immediate area-up to, oh, about five degrees each | way, anyway. With maximum. magnification. | Question. Why's that, Danny? | Dr. Asmenion. Well, maybe you'll be on the far | side of the sun from something like Tycho's Star, | or the Crab Nebula, which is what's left of the | 1054 supernova in Taurus. And maybe you'll get a | picture of what the star looked like before it | blew. That ought to be worth, gee, I don't know, | fifty or a hundred thousand right there. "They called on the P-phone ten minutes ago. Jesus. The rottenest son-of-a-bitching trip I've ever been on, and I wind up with the price of one green chip at the casino out of it." Then she looked at my shirt and softened a little. "Well, it's not your fault, Rob, but Geminis never can make up their minds. I should've known that. Let me see if I can find you some clean clothes." And I did let her do that, but I didn't stay, anyway. I picked up my stuff, headed for a dropshaft, cached my goods at the registry office where I signed up to get my room back, and borrowed the use of their phone. When she mentioned Metchnikov's name she had reminded me of something I wanted to do. Metchnikov grumbled, but finally agreed to meet me in the schoolroom. I was there before him, of course. He loped in, stopped at the doorway, looked around, and said: "Where's what's-her-name?" "Klara Moynlin. She's in her room." Neat, truthful, deceitful. A model answer. "Um." He ran an index finger down each jaw-whisker, meeting under the chin. "Come on, then." Leading me, he said over his shoulder, "Actually, she would probably get more out of this than you would." "I suppose she would, Dane." "Um." He hesitated at the bump in the floor that was the entrance to one of the instruction ships, then shrugged, opened the hatch, and clambered down inside. He was being unusually open and generous, I thought as I followed him inside. He was already crouched in front of the courseselector panel, setting up numbers. He was holding a portable hand readout data-linked to the Corporation's master computer system; I knew that he was punching in one of the established settings, and so I was not surprised when he got color almost at once. He thumbed the fine-tuner and waited, looking over his shoulder at me, until the whole board was drowned in shocking pink. "All right," he said. "Good, clear setting. Now look at the bottom part of the spectrum." That was the smaller line of rainbow colors along the right side. Colors merged into one another without break, except for occasional lines of bright color or black. They looked exactly like what the astronomers called Fraunhofer lines, when the only way they had to know what a star or planet was made of was to study it through a spectroscope. They weren't. Fraunhofer lines show what elements are present in a radiation source (or in something that has gotten itself between the radiation source and you). These showed God-knows-what. God and, maybe, Dane Metchnikov. He was almost smiling, and astonishingly talkative. "That band of three dark lines in the blue," he said. "See? They seem to relate to the hazardousness of the mission. At least the computer printouts show that, when there are six or more bands there, the ships don't come back." He had my full attention. "Christ!" I said, thinking of a lot of good people who had died because they hadn't known that. "Why don't they tell us these things in school?" He said patiently (for him), "Broadhead, don't be a jerk. All this is brand new. And a lot of it is guesswork. Now, the correlation between number of lines and danger isn't quite so good under six. I mean, if you think that they might add one line for every additional degree of danger, you're wrong. You would expect that the five-band settings would have heavy loss ratios, and when there are no bands at all there wouldn't be any losses. Only it isn't true. The best safety record seems to be with one or two bands. Three is good, too-but there have been some losses. Zero bands, we've had about as many as with three." For the first time I began to think that the Corporation's science-research people might be worth their pay. "So why don't we just go out on destination settings that are safer?" "We're not really sure they are safer," Metchnikov said, again patiently for him. His tone was far more peremptory than his words. "Also, when you have an armored ship you should be able to deal with more risks than the plain ones. Quit with the dumb questions, Broadhead." "Sorry." I was getting uncomfortable, crouched behind him and peering over his shoulder, so that when he turned to look at me his jaw-whiskers almost grazed my nose. I didn't want to change position. "So look up here in the yellow." He pointed to five brighter lines in the yellow band. "These relate to the profitibility of the mission. God knows what we're measuring-or what the Heechee were measuring-but in terms of financial rewards to the crews, there's a pretty good correlation between the number of lines in that frequency and the amount of money the crews get." "Wow!" He went on as though I hadn't said anything. "Now, naturally the Heechee didn't set up a meter to calibrate how much in royalties you or I might make. It has to be measuring something else, who knows what? Maybe it's a measure of population density in that area, or of technological development. Maybe it's a Guide Michelin, and all they're saying is that there was a four-star restaurant in that area. But there it is. Five-bar-yellow expeditions bring in a financial return, on the average, that's fifty times as high as two-bar and ten times as high as most of the others." He turned around again so that his face was maybe a dozen centimeters from mine, his eyes staring right into my eyes. "You want to see some other settings?" he asked, in a tone of voice that demanded I say no, so I did. "Okay." And then he stopped. I stood up and backed away to get a little more space. "One question, Dane. You probably have a reason for telling me all this before it gets to be public information. What is it?" "Right," he said. "I want what's-her-name for crew if I go in a Three or a Five." "Klara Moynlin." "Whatever. She handles herself well, doesn't take up much room, knows-well, she knows how to get along with people better than I do. I sometimes have difficulty in interpersonal relationships," he explained. "Of course, that's only if I take a Three or a Five. I don't particularly want to. If I can find a One, that's what I'm going to take out. But if there isn't a One with a good setting available, I want somebody along I can rely on, who won't get in my hair, who knows the ropes, can handle a ship-all that. You can come, too, if you want." When I got back to my own room Shicky turned up almost before I started to unpack. He was glad to see me. "I am sorry your trip was unfruitful," he said out of his endless stock of gentleness and warmth. "It is too bad about your friend Kahane." He had brought me a flask of tea, and then perched on the chest across from my hammock, just like the first time. I mind was spinning with with visions of sugarplums coming out of my talk with Dane Metchnikov. I couldn't help talking about it; I told Shicky everything Dane had said. He listened like a child to a fairy tale, his black eyes shining. "How interesting," he said. "I had heard rumors that there was to be a new briefing for everyone. Just think, if we can go out without fear of death or-" He hesitated, fluttering his wing-gauze. "It isn't that sure, Shicky," I said. "No, of course not. But it is an improvement, I think you will agree?" He hesitated, watching me take a pull from the flask of almost flavorless Japanese tea. "Rob," he said, "if you go on such a trip and need an extra man... Well, it is true that I would not be of much use in a lander. But in orbit I am as good as anybody." "I know you are, Shicky." I tried to put it tactfully. "Does the Corporation know that?" "They would accept me as crew on a mission no one else wanted." "I see." I didn't say that I didn't really want to go on a mission no one else wanted. Shicky knew that. He was one of the real oldtimers on Gateway. According to the rumor he had had a big wad stashed away, enough for Full Medical and everything. But he had given it away or lost it, and stayed on, and stayed a cripple. I know that he understood what I was thinking, but I was a long way from understanding Shikitei Bakin. He moved out of my way while I stowed my things, and we gossiped about mutual friends. Sheri's ship had not returned. Nothing to worry about yet, of course. It could easily be out another several weeks without disaster. A Congolese couple from just beyond the star-point in the corridor had brought back a huge shipment of prayer fans fr