ntral figure.
From  here  on,"  he said kindly, "it gets a little tedious to watch. I'll
run  it  through  quickly." And he did, patterns of dots flying around and
isolating  themselves,  colors changing through yellow to avocado, avocado
to green, green to aqua, aqua to blue, and on through the spectrum, nearly
twice.  "Now,  do  you  see what we have? Three numbers, Robin. 137 in the
center.  1840  down  at  the bottom. 137 to the eighteenth power, which is
roughly  the  same  as  10 to the thirty-eighth, at the top. Or, in order,
three dimensionless numbers: the fine structure constant, the ratio of the
proton to the electron and the number of particles in the universe. Robin,
you  have  just  had  a  short  course  in  particle theory from a Heechee
teacher!"
   I said, "My God."
   Albert reappeared on the screen, beaming. "Exactly, Robin," he said.
   "But Albert! Does that mean you can read all the prayer fans?"
   His  face  fell. "Only the simple ones," he said regretfully. "This was
actually  the easiest. But from now on it's quite straightforward. We play
every  fan  and  tape  it.  We  look for correspondences. We make semantic
assumptions  and test them in as many contexts as we can find-we'll do it,
Robin. But it may take some time."
   "I don't want to take time," I snarled.
   "Sure  thing, Robin, but first every fan must be located, and read, and
taped, and coded for machine comparison, and then..."
   "I don't want to hear," I said. "Just do it-what's the matter?"
   His  expression  had  changed.  "It's a question of funding, Robin," he
said apologetically. "There's a great deal of machine time involved here."
   "Do  it!  As  far as you can go. I'll have Morton sell some more stock.
What else have you got?"
   "Something  nice,  Robin,"  he  grinned, shrinking in size until he was
just  a little face in the corner of the tank. Colors flowed in the center
of  the  display  and  fused  into a set of Heechee controls, displaying a
pattern  of  color on five of the ten panels. The others were blank. "Know
what  that  is, Robin? That's a composite of all the known Gateway flights
that wound up at Heechee Heaven. All the patterns you see are identical in
all  seven  known  missions.  The  others  vary,  but  it's  a pretty good
conjecture that they are not directly involved in course-setting."
   "What  are  you  saying,  Albert?"  I  demanded.  He  had  caught me by
surprise.  I  found  that I was beginning to shake. "Do you mean if we set
ship controls for that pattern we could get to Heechee Heaven?"
   "Point  nine  five yes, Robin," he nodded. "And I have identified three
ships, two on Gateway and one on the Moon, that will accept that setting."

   I  put on a sweater and walked down to the water. I didn't want to hear
any more.
   The  trickle  pipes  had  been  busy. I kicked my shoes off to feel the
damp,  pilowy  grass  and watched some boys, wind-trolling for perch, near
the  Nyack  shore, and I thought: This is what I bought by risking my life
on Gateway. What I paid for with Kiara's.
   And: Do I want to risk all this, and my life, again?
   But  it  wasn't  really  a question of "want to". If one of those ships
would  go  to  Heechee  Heaven and I could buy or steal a passage on it, I
would go.
   Then  sanity  saved me, and I realized I couldn't, after all. Not at my
age.  And not the way Gateway Corp was feeling about me. And, most of all,
not  in time. The Gateway asteroid orbits at right-angles to the ecliptic,
just  about.  Getting  there  from Earth is a tedious long job; by Hohmann
curves twenty months or more, under forced acceleration more than six. Six
months from now those ships would have been there and back.
   If they were coming back, of course.
   The realization was almost as much of a relief as it was a sick, hungry
sense of loss.
   Sigfrid  von  Shrink  never  told  me how to get rid of ambivalence (or
guilt).  He did tell me how to deal with them. The recipe is, mostly, just
to  let  them happen. Sooner or later they burn themselves out. (He says.)
At  least,  they  don't have to be paralyzing. So while I was letting this
ambivalence  smolder itself into ash I was also strolling along the water,
enjoying the pleasant under-the-bubble air and gazing proudly at the house
I  lived  in  and  the  wing  where my very dear, and for some time wholly
platonic, wife was, I hoped, getting herself good and rested. Whatever she
was doing, she wasn't doing it alone. Twice a taxicart had brought someone
over  from  the  tube  stop.  Both of them had been women; and now another
taxicart  pulled  up  and  let  out a man, who gazed around quite unsurely
while the taxi rolled itself around the circle and hurried off to its next
call.  I  somehow  doubted  that he was for Essie; but I could think of no
reason  why he would be for me, or at least why he could not be dealt with
by  Harriet.  So  it was a surprise when the rifle-speaker under the eaves
swiveled  around to point at me and Harriet's voice said, "Robin?' There's
a Mr. Haagenbusch here. I think you ought to see him."
   That  was very unlike Harriet. But she was usually right, so I strolled
up the lawn, rinsed my bare feet at the French windows and invited the man
into my study. He was a pretty old specimen, pink-skin bald, with a dapper
white  pair  of  sideburns  and  a  carefully American accent-not the kind
people  born  in  the United States usually have. "Thank you very much for
seeing me, Mr. Broadhead," he said, and handed me a card that read:
   Herr Doktor Advokat Wm. I. Haagenbusch

   "I'm  Pete  Herter's  lawyer,"  he  said.  "I  flew  this  morning from
Frankfort because I want to make a deal."
   How  very quaint of you, I thought; imagine coming in person to conduct
business!  But if Harriet wanted me to see this old flake she had probably
talked  it over with my legal program, so what I said was, "What kind of a
deal?"
   He  was  waiting  for me to tell him to sit down. I did. I suspected he
was  also waiting for me to order coffee or cognac for two, as well, but I
didn't  particularly want to do that. He took off black kid gloves, looked
at  his  pearly nails and said: "My client has asked for $250,000,000 paid
into  a  special  account  plus  immunity  from prosecution of any kind. I
received this message by code yesterday."
   I  laughed  out  loud.  "Christ, Haagenbusch, why are you telling me? I
haven't got that kind of money!"
   "No,  you  don't,"  he  agreed.  "Outside  of  your  investment  in the
Herter-Hall  syndicate  and  some fish-farm stock, you don't have anything
but  a  couple  of  places  to live and some personal effects. I think you
could raise six or seven million, not counting the Herter-Hall investment.
God knows what that might be worth right now, everything considered."
   I  sat back and looked at him. "You know I got rid of my tourist stuff.
So you checked me out. Only you forgot the food mines."
   "No,  I  don't  think  so, Mr. Broadhead. My understanding is that that
stock was sold this afternoon."
   It  was  not altogether pleasant to find out that he knew more about my
financial  position than I did. So Morton had had to sell that out, too! I
didn't  have  time  to  think  about  what that implied just then, because
Haagenbusch stroked his sideburns and went on: "The situation is this, Mr.
Broadhead.  I have advised my client that a contract obtained under duress
is  not  enforceable. He therefore no longer has any hope of attaining his
purposes  through  an agreement with the Gateway Corporation, or even with
your  syndicate.  So I have received new instructions: to secure immediate
payment  of  the  sum  I have mentioned; to deposit it in untraceable bank
accounts  in  his  name;  and  to  turn  it  over  to him when, and if, he
returns."
   "Gateway  won't  like  being blackmailed," I said. "Still, they may not
have any choice."
   "Indeed  they do not," he agreed. "What is wrong with Mr. Herter's plan
is  that  it won't work. I am sure they will pay over the money. I am also
sure that my communications will be tapped and my offices bugged, and that
the  justice  departments  of  every nation involved in the Gateway treaty
will  be  preparing  indictments  for Mr. Herter when he returns. I do not
want  to  be named in those indictments as an accomplice, Mr. Broadhead. I
know  what  will  happen. They'll find the money and take it back. They'll
void  Mr.  Herter's previous contract on grounds of his own noncompliance.
And they'll put him-him at least-in jail."
   "You're in a tough situation, Mr. Haagenbusch," I said.
   He  chuckled  dryly. His eyes were not amused. He stroked his sideburns
for  a  moment  and  burst out: "You don't know! Every day, long orders in
code!  Demand  this, guarantee that, I hold you personally responsible for
this other! And then I send off a reply that takes twenty-five days to get
there,  by  which  time  he  has  sent me fifty days of new orders and his
thoughts  are somewhere far beyond and he upbraids me and threatens me! He
is  not  a  well  man, and he certainly is not a young one. I do not truly
think that he will live to collect any of this blackmail. But he might."
   "Why don't you quit?"
   "I  would  if  I could! But if I quit, then what? Then he has no one on
his  side  at  all.  Then  what  would  he  do, Mr. Broadhead? Also..." he
shrugged,  "he  is a very old friend, Mr. Broadhead. He was at school with
my father. No. I can't quit. Also I can't do what he asks. But perhaps you
can.  Not  by handing over a quarter of a billion dollars, no, because you
have  never  had that kind of money. But you can make him an equal partner
with that. I think he would-no. I think he might accept that."
   "But  I've  already..."  I  stopped.  If Haagenbusch did not know I had
already  given half my holdings to Bover, I wasn't going to tell him. "Why
wouldn't I void the contract too?" I asked.
   He shrugged. "You might. But I think you would not. You are a symbol to
him,  Mr.  Broadhead, and I believe he would trust you. You see, I think I
know  what it is he wants from all this. It is to live the way you do, for
all that remains of his life."
   He  stood  up. "I do not expect you to agree to this at once," he said.
"I  have  perhaps  twenty-four  hours  before  I must reply to Mr. Herter.
Please think about this, and I will speak to you in one day."
   I  shook his hand, and had Harriet order him a taxicart, and stood with
him  in the driveway until it rolled up and bore him briskly away into the
early night.
   When  I  came  back  into my own room Essie was standing by the window,
looking  out  at the lights on the Tappan Sea. It was suddenly clear to me
who her visitors had been this day. At least one had been her hairdresser;
that  tawny Niagara of hair hung true and even to her waist once more, and
when  she  turned  to  smile  at me it was the same Essie who had left for
Arizona, all those long weeks before.
   "You  were  so very long with that little man," she remarked. "You must
be  hungry."  She  watched  me standing there for a moment, and laughed. I
suppose that the questions in my mind were written on my face, because she
answered  them.  "One,  dinner is ready now. Something light, which we can
eat at any time. Two, it is laid out in our room whenever you care to join
me  there.  And,  three,  yes, Robin, I have Wilma's assurance that all of
this is quite all right. Am much more well than you think, Robin dear."
   "You  surely  look about as well as a person can get," I said, and must
have been smiling because her pale, perfect eyebrows came down in a frown.
   "Are you amused at spectacle of horny wife?" she demanded. "Oh, no! No,
it  is  not  that at all," I said, putting my arms around her. "I was just
wondering  a moment ago why it was that anybody would want to live the way
I do. Now I know."

   Well.  We  made  love tentatively and slowly, and then when I found out
she  wasn't  going  to break we did it again, rougher and rowdier. Then we
ate most of the food that was waiting for us on the sideboard, and lounged
around  and hugged each other until we made love again. After that we just
sort  of  drowsed  for a while, spooned together, until Essie commented to
the  back  of my neck, "Pretty impressive performance for old goat, Robin.
Not too bad for seventeen-year-old, even."
   I  stretched  and yawned where I lay, rubbing my back against her belly
and breasts. "You sure got well in a hurry," I commented.
   She  didn't answer, just nuzzled my neck with her nose. There is a sort
of  radar that cannot be seen or heard that tells me true. I lay there for
a  moment,  then  disengaged  myself  and sat up. "Dearest Essie," I said,
"what aren't you telling me?"
   She  lay  within  my arm, face against my ribs. "About what?" she asked
innocently.
   "Come  on,  Essie."  When  she didn't answer, I said, "Do I have to get
Wilma out of bed to tell me?"
   She  yawned  and sat up. It was a false yawn; when she looked at me her
eyes  were  wide awake. "Wilma is most conservative," she said, shrugging.
"There  are  some  medicines to promote healing, corticosteroids and such,
which  she did not wish to give me. With them there is some slight risk of
consequences  many years from now-but by then, no doubt, Full Medical will
be able to cope, I am sure. So I insisted. It made her angry."
   "Consequence! You mean leukemia!"
   "Yes, perhaps. But most likely not. Certainly not soon."
   I  got out of the bed and sat naked on the edge so that I could see her
better. "Essie, why?"
   She slipped her thumbs under her long hair and pushed it back away horn
her  face  to  return  my  stare.  "Because  I  was in a hurry," she said.
"Because  you  are,  after  all,  entitled  to  a well wife. Because it is
uncomfortable  to  pee  through a catheter, not to say unesthetic. Because
was  my  decision to make and I made it." She threw the covers off her and
lay  back.  "Study  me,  Robin," she invited. "Not even scars! And inside,
under  skin,  am  fully  functional.  Can eat, digest, excrete, make love,
conceive your child if we should wish. Not next spring or maybe next year.
Now."
   And  it was all true. I could see it for myself. Her long pale body was
unmarked-no, not entirely; down her left side was an irregular paler patch
of  new skin. But you had to look to see it, and there was nothing else at
all  to  show that a few weeks earlier she had been gouged, and mutilated,
and in fact dead.
   I  was getting cold. I stood up to find Essie's robe for her and put my
own  on.  There was still some coffee on the sideboard, and still hot "For
me too," Essie said as I poured.
   "Shouldn't you be resting?"
   "When I am tired," she said practically, "you will know, because I will
roll  over  and  go to sleep. Has been very long time since you and I were
like this, Robin. Am enjoying it."
   She  accepted a cup from me and looked at me over the rim as she sipped
it. "But you are not," she observed.
   "Yes  I  am!"  And  I  was;  but  honesty made me add, "I puzzle myself
sometimes,  Essie. Why is it that when you show me love it comes out in my
head feeling like guilt?"
   She  put  down  her cup and lay back. "Do you wish to tell me about it,
dear Robin?"
   "I  just  have." Then I added, "I suppose, if anybody, I should call up
old Sigfrid von Shrink and tell him."
   "He is always available," she said.
   "Hum.  If I start with him God knows when I'd ever finish. Anyway, he's
not  the  program  I want to talk to. There's so much going on, Essie! And
it's all happening without me. I feel left out."
   "Yes,"  she said, "am aware this is how you feel. Is something you wish
to do, so will not feel left out any more?"
   "Well-maybe,"  I  said.  "About  Peter  Herter, for instance. I've been
fooling  around  with  a  kind  of an idea that I'd like to talk over with
Albert Einstein."
   She  nodded.  "Very well, why not?" She sat up on the edge of the bed..
"Hand me my slippers, please. Let us do this now."
   "Now? But it's late. You shouldn't be..."
   "Robin,"  she  said kindly, "I too have talked with Sigfrid von Shrink.
Is  good program, even if not written by me. Says you are good man, Robin,
well adjusted, generous, and to all of this I also can testify, not to add
excellent  lover  and  much  fun to be with. Come into study." She took my
hand  as  we  walked into the big room looking over the Tappan Sea and sat
before  my  console  in  the comfortable loveseat. "However," she went on,
"Sigfrid  says  you  have  great  talent  for  inventing reasons not to do
things. So I will help you get off dime. Daite gorod Polymat." She was not
talking  to  me,  but  to  the  console,  which  sprang at once into light
"Display  both  Albert  and  Sigfrid  programs," she ordered. "Access both
files  in  interactive  mode. Now, Robin! Let us pursue questions you have
raised. After all, I am quite interested too."

   This  wife  of  so  many  years,  this  S. Ya. Lavorovna I married, she
surprises me most when I least expect it. She sat quite comfortably beside
me,  holding  my  hand, while I talked quite openly about doing the things
that  I  had most wanted not to want. It was not just a matter of going to
Heechee  Heaven  and  the  Food Factory and stopping old Peter Herter from
messing up the world. It was where I might go after that
   But at first It did not look as though I were going anywhere. "Albert,"
I  said, "you told me that you had worked out a course setting for Heechee
Heaven from Gateway records. Can you do that for the Food Factory too?"
   The  two  of  them  were  sitting  side  by side in the PV tank, Albert
puffing  on  his  pipe,  Sigfrid,  hands  clasped  and silent, attentively
listening.  He  would  not speak until I spoke to him, and I was not doing
that.  "'Fraid  not,"  Albert said apologetically. "We have only one known
setting  for  the Food Factory, Trish Bover's, and that's not enough to be
sure.  Maybe  point-six  probable that it would get a ship there. But then
what,  Robin? It couldn't come back. Or at least Trish Bover's didn't." He
settled  himself  comfortably, and went on, "There are, of course, certain
alternatives."  He glanced at Sigfrid von Shrink beside him. "One might so
manipulate Herter's mind by suggestion that he would change his plans."
   "Would that work?" I was still talking to Albert Einstein. He shrugged,
and Sigfrid stirred but did not speak.
   "Oh, do not be such a baby," Essie scolded. "Answer, Sigfrid."
   "Gospozha  Lavorovna," he said, glancing at me, "I think not. I believe
my  colleague has raised this possibility only so that I might dismiss it.
I  have studied the records of Peter Herter's transmissions. The symbolism
is  quite  obvious.  The  angelic  women  with  the raptor beaks-what is a
'hooked nose', gospozha? Think of Payter's childhood, and what he heard of
the 'cleansing' of the world of the evil Jews. There is also the violence,
the  punitive  emotions. He is quite ill, has in fact already suffered one
coronary  attack, and is no longer rational; he has, in fact, regressed to
quite  a  childish  state.  Neither  suggestion nor appeals to reason will
work,  gospozha. The only possibility would be perhaps long-term analysis.
He would not likely agree, the shipboard computer could not well handle it
and, in any case, there is not time. I cannot help you, gospozha, not with
any real chance of success."
   Long  and  long  ago I spent a couple of hundred mostly very unpleasant
hours  listening  to  Sigfrid's reasonable, maddening voice, and I had not
wanted ever to hear it again. But, you know, it wasn't all that bad.
   Beside  me,  Essie  stirred, "Polymath," she called, "have fresh coffee
prepared." To me she said, "I think will be here for some time."
   "I don't know for what," I objected. "I seem to be stymied."
   "And  if  you are," she said comfortably, "we need not drink the coffee
but can go back to bed. Meanwhile am quite enjoying this, Robin."
   Well,  why  not?  I was strangely no more sleepy than Essie appeared to
be.  In  fact,  I  was  both alert and relaxed, and my mind had never been
clearer.  "Albert,"  I said, "is there any progress on reading the Heechee
books?"
   "Not much, Robin," he apologized. "There are other mathematical volumes
such as the one you saw, but as yet no language. Yes, Robin?"
   I  snapped my fingers. The vagrant thought that had been in the back of
my  mind  had come to the fore. "Gosh numbers," I said. "Those numbers the
book  showed  us.  They're  the  same  as the ones the Dead Men call 'gosh
numbers.'"
   "Sure thing, Robin," he nodded. "They are basic dimensionless constants
of  the  universe,  or  at  least  of this universe. However, there is the
question of Mach's Principle, which suggests..."
   "Not now, Albert! Where do you suppose the Dead Men got them?"
   He paused, frowning. Tapping out his pipe, he glanced at Sigfrid before
he said, "I would conjecture that the Dead Men interfaced with the Heechee
machine intelligence. no doubt there was some transmission both ways."
   "My very thought! What else do you conjecture the Dead Men might know?"
   "That  is very difficult to say. They are very incompletely stored, you
know.  Communication  was  extremely  difficult  at  best and has now been
interrupted entirely."
   I  sat  up straight. "And what if we got back in communication? What if
somebody went to Heechee Heaven to talk to them?"
   He  coughed.  Trying  not  to  be patronizing, he said, "Robin, several
members  of  the  Herter-Hall party, plus the boy, Wan, have failed to get
clear  answers from them on these questions. Even our machine intelligence
has  succeeded  only  poorly  though,"  he  said politely enough, "that is
primarily  because  of  the  necessity  to  interface  with  the shipboard
computer,  Vera.  They  are  poorly  stored,  Robin.  They  are obsessive,
irrational and often incoherent."
   Behind  me  Essie  was  standing with the tray of coffee and cups-I had
hardly  heard  the  bell  from  the kitchen to say it was ready. "Ask him,
Robin," she commanded.
   I  did  not  pretend  to  misunderstand.  "Hell,"  I  said, "all right,
Sigfrid.  That's  your  line of work. How do we trick them into talking to
us?"
   Sigfrid  smiled  and  unlaced  his  hands.  "It is good to speak to you
again,  Robin,"  he  said.  "I  would  like to compliment you on your very
considerable progress since we spoke last..."
   "Get on with it!"
   "Of  course, Robin. There is one possibility. The storage of the female
prospector,   Henrietta,   seems  rather  complete,  except  for  her  one
obsession,  that  is, with the unfaithfulness of her husband. I think that
if  a  machine  program  were  written  from what we know of her husband's
personality and interfaced with her..."
   "Make a fake husband for her?"
   "Essentially,  yes,  Robin,"  he nodded. "It wouldn't have to be exact.
Because  the  Dead Men in general are so poorly stored, any responses that
were  inappropriate  might  be overlooked. Of course, the program would be
quite..."
   "Stow it, Sigfrid. Can you write a program like that?"
   "Yes. With help from your wife, yes."
   "And then how do we get it in contact with Henrietta?"
   He looked sidewise at Albert. "I believe my colleague can help there."
   "Sure  thing,  Sigfrid," Albert said cheerily, scratching one foot with
the toe of the other. "One. Write the program, with ancillaries. Two. Read
it  into  a  PMAL-2  flip processor, with a gigabit fast-access memory and
necessary  slave units. Three. Put it in a Five and fire it off to Heechee
Heaven.  Then interface it with Henrietta and start the interrogation. I'd
give that, oh, maybe a point-nine probability of working."
   I frowned. "Why ship all that machinery around?"
   Patiently  he  said, "It's c, Robin. The speed of light. Lacking an FTL
radio, we have to ship the machine to where the job is."
   "The Herter-Hall computer has an FTL radio."
   "Too  dumb, Robin. Too slow. And I haven't told you the worst part. All
that  hardware  is  pretty big, you know. It would just about fill a Five.
Which  means  it  arrives  naked  and undefended at Heechee Heaven. And we
don't know who is going to meet it at the dock."
   Essie  was  sitting  beside  me again, looking beautiful and concerned,
holding  a  cup  of  coffee. I took it automatically and swallowed a gulp.
"You  said  'just  about'," I pointed out "Does that mean a pilot could go
along?"
   "'Fraid  not,  Robin.  There's  only room for about another hundred and
fifty kilos."
   "I only weigh half that!" I felt Essie tense beside me. We were getting
right down to it, now. I felt more clear-headed and sure of myself than in
weeks.  The  paralysis of inaction was loosening every minute. I was aware
of  what  I  was  saying, and very conscious of what it meant to Essie-and
unwilling to stop.
   "That's  true,  Robin,"  Albert conceded, "but do you want to get there
dead?  There's  food, water, air. Your round-trip standard allowance, with
all  provision  for  regeneration, comes to more than three hundred kilos,
and there simply is not..."
   "Cut  it out, Albert," I said. "You know as well as I do that we're not
talking  about  a round trip. We're talking about, what was it? Twenty-two
days.  That  was  flight time for Henrietta. That's all I need. Enough for
twenty-two days. Then I'll be on Heechee Heaven and it won't matter."
   Sigfrid  was  looking  very  interested, but silent. Albert was looking
concerned.  He admitted, "Well, that's true, Robin. But it's quite a risk.
There's no margin for error at all."
   I  shook  my  head.  I  was way ahead of him-way ahead, at any rate, of
where  he  was  willing  to go by himself. "You said there's a Five on the
Moon  that  will  accept  that destination. Is there a what-do-you-call-it
PMAL there too?"
   "No,  Robin,"  he  said,  but  added  sadly,  "However, there is one at
Kourou, ready for shipment to Venus."
   "Thank  you,  Albert," I said, half a snarl because it was like pulling
teeth  to get it out of him. And then I sat back and contemplated what had
just been said.
   I was not the only one who had been listening intently. Beside me Essie
set  down  her  coffee cup. "Polymath," she commanded, "access and display
Morton  program,  in  interactive  mode. Go ahead, Robin. Do what you must
do."
   There  was the sound of a door opening from the tank, and Morton walked
in,  shaking hands with Sigfrid and Albert as he glanced over his shoulder
at me. He was accessing information as he stepped, and I could tell by his
expression  that  he didn't like what he was finding out. I didn't care. I
said,  "Morton!  There's a PMAL-2 information processor at the launch base
in Guiana. Buy it for me."
   He  turned  and  confronted  me.  "Robin," he said stubbornly, "I don't
think  you realize how rapidly you're eating into capital! This program is
costing  you  over  a  thousand  dollars a minute alone. I'll have to sell
stock..."
   "Sell it!"
   "Not  only  that. If you're planning to ship yourself and that computer
to  Heechee  Heaven.  Don't!  Don't even think of it! First place, Bover's
injunction  still  prevents  it. Second place, if you should manage to get
around that, you'd be liable to a contempt citation and damages that..."
   "I  didn't  ask you about that, Morton. Suppose I got Bover to lift his
injunction. Could they stop me then?"
   "Yes!  But,"  he  added, softening, "although they could, there is some
chance  they  would not. At least not in time. Nevertheless, as your legal
advisor, I have to say..."
   "You  don't have to say anything. Buy the computer. Albert and Sigfrid,
program  it  the  way  we discussed. You three get out of the tank; I want
Harriet.  Harriet?  Get  me a flight, Kourou to the Moon, same ship as the
computer  Morton's  buying for me, soon as you can. And while you're doing
that  see  if  you can locate Hanson Bover for me. I want to talk to him."
When  she  nodded and winked away I turned to look at Essie. Her eyes were
damp, but she was smiling.
   "You know something?" I said. "Sigfrid never called me 'Rob' or 'Bobby'
once."
   She  put  her  arms around me and hugged me close. "Maybe he thinks you
are  not  to  be treated like an infant now," she said. "And neither am I,
Robin.  Do  you  think  I  wanted  to  get well only so we could make love
quickly?  No. It was also so you would not be held prisoner here by a wife
you  thought  it wicked to leave. And so that I would be well able to deal
with it," she added, "when you left anyway."

   We  landed at Cayenne in pitch dark and pouring rain. Bover was waiting
for me as I cleared Customs, half asleep in a foam armchair by the baggage
terminal.  I  thanked him several times for meeting me, but he shrugged it
off. "We have only two hours," he said. "Let us get on with it."
   Harriet had chartered a chopper for us. We took off over the palms just
as  the sun was coming up from the Atlantic. By the time we reached Kourou
it  was  full  daylight, and the lunar module was erect beside its support
tower.  It  was  tiny compared to the giants that climb up from Kennedy or
California,   but  the  Centre  Spatial  Guyanais  gets  one-sixth  better
performance out of its rockets, being almost on the equator, so they don't
have  to  be as big. The computer was already loaded and stowed, and Bover
and  I  got aboard at once. Slam. Shove. Retching taste of the breakfast I
shouldn't have eaten on the airplane rising in my throat, and then we were
under way.
   It  takes  three  days for the lunar flight. I spent as much of it as I
could  sleeping,  the rest talking to Bover. It was the longest time I had
spent  out of reach of my comm facilities in at least a dozen years, and I
thought it would hang heavy on my hands. It went like lightning. I woke up
when  the acceleration warnings went off, and watched the brassy Moon rise
up toward us, and then there we were.
   Considering how far I had been, it was surprising that I had never been
on  the  Moon  before.  I  didn't  know  what to expect. It all took me by
surprise:  the  dancy, prancy feeling of weighing no more than an inflated
rubber doll, the sound of the reedy tenor that came out of my mouth in the
twenty-percent  helium  atmosphere. They weren't breathing Heechee mixture
any  more,  not  on the Moon. Heechee digging machines went like a bomb in
the lunar rock, and with all the sunlight anybody could want to drive them
it cost nothing to keep them going. The only problem was filling them with
air, which was why they supplemented with helium-cheaper and easier to get
than N2.
   The  Heechee  lunar  spindle is near the shuttle base-or, to put it the
right  way  around,  the  shuttle  base  was located where it is, near Fra
Mauro,  because  that  was  where the Heechee had dug most a million years
before. It was all underground, even the docking ports concealed under the
lee of a ridge. A couple of American astronauts named Shepard and Mitchell
had  spent  a  weekend  roaming around within two hundred kilometers of it
once,  and  never  noticed  it  was  there. Now a community of more than a
thousand  people  lived  in  the spindle, and the digs and the new tunnels
were  branching off in all directions, and the lunar surface was a rash of
microwave  dishes  and solar collectors and plumbing. "Hi, you," I said to
the  first  able-bodied man who seemed to have nothing to do. "What's your
name?"
   He loped leisurely toward me, chewing on an unlighted cigar. "What's it
to you?" he asked.
   "There's  cargo  coming off the shuttle. I want it loaded onto the Five
that's  in  the  dock  now.  You'll need half a dozen helpers and probably
cargo-handling equipment, and it's a rush job."
   "Urn," he said. "You got authority for this?"
   "I'll  show  it  to  you  when I pay you off," I said. "And the pay's a
thousand dollars a man, with a ten thousand dollar bonus to you personally
if you do it within three hours."
   "Urn.  Let's  see  the  cargo."  It  was just coming off the rocket. He
looked  it  over carefully, scratched for a while, thought for a while. He
wasn't  entirely  without  conversation.  A  couple  of words at a time it
developed that his name was A. T. Walthers, Jr., and that he had been born
in  the tunnels on Venus. By his bangle I could tell that he had tried his
luck  on Gateway, and by the fact that he was doing odd jobs on the Moon I
could  tell that his luck hadn't been good. Well, mine hadn't been either,
the first couple of times; and then it changed. In which direction is hard
to  say. "Can do it, Broadhead," he said at last, "but we don't have three
hours.  That joker Herter is due to perform again in about ninety minutes.
We'll have to wrap this up before that."
   "All the better," I said. "Now, which way is the Gateway Corp office?"
   "North end of the spindle," he said. "They close in about half an hour."
   All  the  better,  I  thought  again, but didn't say it. Dragging Bover
after  me  I prancy-danced back along the tunnel to the big spindle-shaped
cavern  that  was  headquarters  for  the area and argued our way into the
Launch  Director's  room. "You'll want an open circuit to Earth for ID," I
told  her.  "I'm Robin Broadhead, and here's my thumbprint. This is Hanson
Bover-if  you'll  oblige, Bover..." He pressed his thumb on the plate next
to mine. "Now say your bit," I invited him.
   "I,  Allen  Bover,"  he  said  by  rote, "hereby withdraw my injunction
against Robin Broadhead, the Gateway Corp et al."
   "Thank  you,"  I  said.  "Now,  Director,  while you're verifying that,
here's  a signed copy of what Bover has just said for your records, plus a
mission plan. Under my contract with Gateway Corp. which your machines can
retrieve  for  you,  I have the right to make use of Gateway facilities in
connection with the Herter-Hall expedition. I am going to do so, for which
purpose  I need the Five at present parked in your landing docks. You will
see  by  the  mission plan that I intend to go to Heechee Heaven, and from
there  to  the  Food  Factory,  where  I  will  prevent  Peter Herter from
inflicting  any  more  damage  to the Earth, also rescuing the Herter-Hall
party  and  returning valuable Gateway information for processing and use.
And I'd like to leave within the next hour," I finished strongly.
   Well,  for  a  minute  there  it  looked like it was going to work. The
Launch Director looked at the thumbprints on the register plate, picked up
the  spool  of mission plan and weighed it in her hand, and then stared at
me  in  silence  for  a  moment, her mouth open. I could hear the whine of
whatever  volatile gas they were using in the heat engines, Carnot-cycling
from  under  the  Fresnel lenses to the shaded artichoke-shaped reflectors
just  above  us.  I  didn't hear anything else at all. Then she sighed and
said, "Senator Praggler, have you been getting all that?"
   And  from  the air behind her desk came Praggler's growl. "You bet your
ass I have, Sally. Tell Broadhead it won't work. He can't have the ship."

   It was the three days in transit that had done me in. Automatically the
passport  identities  of  all  passengers  were  radioed  ahead,  and  the
officials had known I was coming before the shuttle left French Guiana. It
was  just chance that it was Praggler who was there to meet me; even if he
hadn't  been,  they had plenty of time to get orders from the headquarters
in  Brasilia.  I  thought for a while that because it was Praggler I could
talk  him  out  of  it. I couldn't. I yelled at him for thirty minutes and
begged  for thirty more. no good. "There's nothing wrong with your mission
plan,"  he  admitted.  "What's  wrong  is  you. You're not entitled to use
Gateway  facilities,  because  Gateway Corp preempted you yesterday, while
you were in orbit. Even if it hadn't, Robin, I wouldn't let you go. You're
too personally involved. Not to mention too old for this kind of thing."
   "I'm an experienced Gateway pilot! "
   "You're  an  experienced pain in the ass, Robin. And maybe a little bit
crazy,  too.  What  do  you  think one man could do on Heechee Heaven? No.
We'll  use  your plan. We'll even pay you royalties on it-if it works. But
we'll  do it the right way, from Gateway itself, with at least three ships
going, two of them full of young, healthy, well armed daredevils."
   "Senator,"  I pleaded, "let me go! If you ship this computer to Gateway
it'll take months-years!"
   "Not  if  we  send  it right up there in the Five," he said. "Six days.
Then  it  can take right off again, in convoy. But not with you. However,"
he  said reasonably, "we'll certainly pay you for the computer and for the
program.  Leave  it  at that, Robin. Let somebody else take the risks. I'm
speaking as your friend."
   Well,  he was my friend and we both knew it, but maybe not as much of a
friend  as  he  had  been,  after  I  told  him  what he could do with his
friendship. Finally Bover pulled me away. The last I saw of the Senator he
was  sitting  on  the edge of the desk staring after me, face still purple
with rage, eyes looking as though they were getting ready to weep.
   "That's tough luck, Mr. Broadhead," said Bover sympathetically.
   I  took a breath to straighten him out, too, and stopped myself just in
time.  There was no point in it. "I'll get you a ticket back to Kourou," I
said.
   He  smiled,  showing  perfectly  chiseled Chiclets-he had been spending
some  of  that  money  on  himself.  "You  have  made  me  a rich man, Mr.
Broadhead.  I can pay for my own ticket. Also, I've never been here before
and will not likely come again, so I think I'll stay a while."
   "Suit yourself."
   "And you, Mr. Broadhead? What are your plans?"
   "I  don't  have  any."  Nor  could  I  think  of  any. I had run out of
programming.  I  cannot tell you how empty that feels. I had nerved myself
up  for  another  Heechee mystery-ship ride-well, not as much a mystery as
when  I was prospecting out of Gateway. But still a pretty scary prospect.
I  had  taken  a step with Essie that I had feared taking for a long time.
And all for nothing.
   I  stared  wistfully  down  the long, empty tunnel toward the docks. "I
might shoot my way through," I said.
   "Mr. Broadhead! That's-that's..."
   "Oh,  don't worry. I'm not going to, mostly because all the guns I know
anything  about are already loaded onto that Five. And I doubt they'll let
me in to get one."
   He  peered into my face. "Well," he said doubtfully, "perhaps you, too,
might enjoy just spending a few days..."
   And then his expression changed.
   I  hardly  saw  it;  I was feeling what he felt, and that was enough to
demand  all  my  attention.  Old  Peter was in the couch again. Worse than
ever.   It   was   not   just   his   dreams  and  fantasies  that  I  was
experiencing-that  everyone  alive  was  feeling.  It  was  pain. Despair.
Madness.  There  was  a  terrible  sense of pressure around the temples, a
flaming  ache  from  arms and chest. My throat was dry, then raw with sour
clots as I vomited.
   Nothing like that had ever come from the Food Factory before.
   But then no one had ever died in the couch before. It did not stop in a
minute,  or  in  ten.  My  lungs  heaved  in  great starving gasps. So did
Bover's.  So  did  everyone  else's,  wherever  they  were in range of his
transmission.  The  pain  kept  on,  and  every  time it seemed to reach a
plateau there was an explosion of new pain; and all the time there was the
terror,  the  rage,  the  awful misery of a man who knew he was dying, and
hated it.
   But I knew what it was.
   I  knew  what  it was, and I knew what I could do-what at least my body
could  do,  if  I  could  only  hold my mind together enough to make it. I
forced  myself  to  take a step, and then another. I made myself trot down
that wide, weary corridor, when Bover was writhing on the ground behind me
and  the  guards  were staggering, completely helpless, ahead. I blundered
past them and doubt they even saw me, into the narrow hatch of the lander,
tumbling  all  bruised and shaken, forcing myself to dog it closed over my
head.
   And   there  I  was,  in  the  disastrously  familiar  tiny  cubbyhole,
surrounded  by shapes of molded tan plastic. Walthers had done his part of
the  job,  at  least. I had no way of paying him for it, but if he had put
his hand in the port as I was closing it I would have given him a million.
   At  some point old Peter Herter died. His death did not end the misery.
It  only  began to slow it down. I could not have guessed what it would be
like  to  be  in  the mind of a man who has died, while he feels his heart
stop and his bowels loosen and the certainty of death stab into his brain.
It  goes  on much longer t