Frederik Pohl Heechee 1 Gateway

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film. We settled them onto the brackets, twisted the self-locking nuts to hold
them in place, and fitted them with watering tanks. The boxes probably would
have weighed a hundred kilos each on Earth, but on Gateway that simply wasn't
a consideration; even the foil they were made of was enough to support them
rigidly against the brackets. Then, when we were all done, Shicky himself
filled the trays with seedlings, while we went on to the next batch of
brackets. It was funny to watch him. He carried trays of the infant ivy plants
on straps around his neck, like a cigarette girl's stock. He held himself at
tray level with one hand, and poked seedlings through the film into the sludge
with the other.
It was a low-pressure job, it served a useful function (I guess) and it passed
the time.
Shicky didn't make us work any too hard. He had set a quota in his mind for a
day's work. As long as we got sixty brackets installed and filled he didn't
care if we goofed off, provided we were inconspicuous about it. Klara would
come by to pass the time of day now and then, sometimes with the little girl,
and we had plenty of other visitors. And when times were slack and there
wasn't anybody interesting to talk to, one at a time we could wander off for
an hour or so. I explored a lot of Gateway I hadn't seen before, and each day
decision was postponed.
We all talked about going out. Almost every day we could hear the thud and
vibration as some lander cut itself loose from its dock, pushing the whole
ship out to where the Heechee main drive could go into operation. Almost as
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often we felt the different kind of smaller, quicker shock when some ship
returned. In the evenings we went to someone's parties. My whole class was
gone by now, almost. Sheri had shipped out on a Five -- I didn't see her to
ask her why she changed her plans and wasn't sure I really wanted to know; the
ship she went on had an otherwise all-male crew. They were German-speaking,
but I guess Sheri figured she could get by pretty well without talking much.
The last one was Willa Forehand. Klara and I went to Willa's farewell party
and then down to the docks to watch her launch the next morning. I was
supposed to be working, but
I didn't think Shicky would mind. Unfortunately, Mr. Hsien was there, too, and
I could see that he recognized me.
"Oh, shit," I said to Klara.
She giggled and took my hand, and we ducked out of the launch area. We
strolled away until we came to an up-shaft and lifted to the next level. We
sat down on the edge of Lake Superior.
"Rob, old stud," she said, "I doubt he'll fire you for screwing off one time.
Chew you out, probably."
I shrugged and tossed a chip of filter-pebble into the upcurving lake, which
stretched a good two hundred meters up and around the shell of Gateway in
front of us. I was feeling tacky, and wondering whether I was reaching the
point when the bad vibes about
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risking nasty death in space were being overtaken by the bad vibes about
cowering on
Gateway. It's a funny thing about fear. I didn't feel it. I knew that the only
reason I was staying on was that I was afraid, but it didn't feel as though I
were afraid, only reasonably prudent.
"I think," I said, watching myself going into the sentence without being sure
how it was going to come out, "that I'm going to do it. Want to come along?"
Klara sat up and shook herself. She took a moment before she said, "Maybe.
What've you got in mind?"
I had nothing in mind. I was only a spectator, watching myself talk myself
into something that made my toes curl. But I said, as though I had planned it
out for days, "I think it might be a good idea to take a rerun."
"No deal!" She looked almost angry. "If I go, I go where the real money is."
That was also where the real danger was, of course. Although even reruns have
turned out bad often enough.
The thing about reruns is that you start out with the knowledge that somebody
has already flown that trip and made it back, and, not only that, made a find
that's worth following up on.
Some of them are pretty rich. There's Peggy's World, where the heater coils
and the fur come from.
There's Eta Carina Seven, which is probably full of good stuff if you could
only get at it. The trouble is, it has had an ice age since the Heechees were
last on it. The storms are terrible. Out of five landers, one returned with a
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full crew, undamaged. One didn't return at all.
Generally speaking, Gateway doesn't particularly want you to do a rerun. They
will make a cash offer instead of a percentage where the pickings are fairly
easy, as on Peggy. What they pay for is not so much trade goods as maps. So
you go out there and you spend your time making orbital runs, trying to find
the geological anomalies that indicate Heechee digs may be present. You may
not land at all. The pay is worth having, but not lavish. You'd have to make
at least twenty runs to build up a lifetime stake, if you take the
Corporation's one-pay deal. And if you decide to go on your own, prospecting,
you have to pay a share of your profits to the discovery crew, and a cut on [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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