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 wit