Gateway - Frederik Pohl Page 0,41

seemed — well, reproachful.

The first time we went there was right after I got off work, the day Willa Forehand shipped out. Usually the museum was full of visitors, like crew members on pass from the cruisers, or ship's crews from the commercial runs, or tourists. This time, for some reason, there were only a couple of people there, and we had a chance to look at everything. Prayer fans by the hundreds, those filmy, little crystalline things that were the commonest Heechee artifact; no one knew what they were for, except that they were sort of pretty, but the Heechee had left them all over the place. There was the original anisokinetic punch, that had earned a lucky prospector something like twenty million dollars in royalties already. A thing you could put in your pocket. Furs. Plants in formalin. The original piezophone, that had earned three crews enough to make every one of them awfully rich.

The most easily swiped things, like the prayer fans and the blood diamonds and the fire pearls, were kept behind tough, breakproof glass. I think they were even wired to burglar alarms. That was surprising, on Gateway. There isn't any law there, except what the Corporation imposes. There are the Corporation's equivalent of police, and there are rules — you're not supposed to steal or commit murder — but there aren't any courts. If you break a rule all that happens is that the Corporation security force picks you up and takes you out to one of the orbiting cruisers. Your own, if there is one from wherever you came. Any one, if not. But if they won't take you, or if you don't want to go on your own nation's ship and can persuade some other ship to take you, Gateway doesn't care. On the cruisers, you'll get a trial. Since you're known to be guilty to start with, you have three choices. One is to pay your way back home. The second is to sign on as crew if they'll have you. The third is to go out the lock without a suit. So you see that, although there isn't much law on Gateway, there isn't much crime, either.

But, of course, the reason for locking up the precious stuff in the museum was that transients might be tempted to lift a souvenir or two.

So Klara and I would muse over the treasures someone had found… and somehow not discuss with each other the fact that we were supposed to go out and find some more.

It was not just the exhibits. They were fascinating; they were things that Heechee hands (tentacles? claws?) had made and touched, and they came from unimaginable places incredibly far away. But the constantly flickering tube displays held me even more strongly. Summaries of every mission ever launched displayed one after another. A constant total of missions versus returns; of royalties paid to lucky prospectors; the roster of the unlucky ones, name after name in a slow crawl along one whole wall of the room, over the display cases. The totals told the story: 2355 launches (the number changed to 2356, then 2357 while we were there; we felt the shudder of the two launches), 841 successful returns.

Standing in front of that particular display, Klara and I didn't look at each other, but I felt her hand squeeze mine.

That was defining "successful" very loosely. It meant that the ship had come back. It didn't say anything about how many of the crew were alive and well.

We left the museum after that, and didn't speak much on the way to the upshaft.

The thing in my mind was that what Emma Fother had said to me was true: the human race needed what we prospectors could give them. Needed it a lot. There were hungry people, and Heechee technology probably could make all their lives a lot more tolerable, if prospectors went out and brought samples of it back.

Even if it cost a few lives.

Even if the lives included Klara's and mine. Did I, I asked myself, want my son — if I ever had a son — to spend his childhood the way I had spent mine?

We dropped off the up-cable at Level Babe and heard voices. I didn't pay attention to them. I was coming to a resolution in my mind. "Klara," I said, "listen. Let's—"

But Klara was looking past my shoulder. "For Christ's sake!" she said. "Look who's here!"

And I turned, and there was Shicky fluttering in the