Gateway - Frederik Pohl Page 0,96

doing, that means you'll come out about as far apart as Gateway travels in thirty seconds."

Forehand wrinkled his brow. "Relative to what?"

"Good question," she nodded. "Relative, we think, to the Sun. The stellar motion relative to the Galaxy — we think — can be neglected. At least, assuming that your destination turns out to be inside the Galaxy, and not so far away that the galactic motion has a markedly different vector. I mean, if you came out on the opposite side, it would be seventy kilometers a second, relative to the galactic center. We don't think that's involved. We only expect a relatively minor difference in velocity and direction, and — well, anyway, you should come out within somewhere between two and two hundred kilometers of each other.

"Of course," she said, smiling cheerfully, "that's only theoretical. Maybe the relative motions won't mean anything at all. In that case, the problem is to keep you from colliding with each other. But we're sure — pretty sure — that there will be at least some displacement. All you really need is about fifteen meters — the long diameter of a Five."

"How sure is pretty sure?" one of the girls asked.

"Well," Emma admitted, "reasonably sure. How do we know until we try?"

"It sounds dangerous," Sess commented. He did not seem deterred by it. He was only stating an opinion. In this he was unlike me; I was very busy ignoring my inner sensations, trying to concentrate on the technicalities of the briefing.

A NOTE ON SIGNATURES

Dr. Asmenion. So when you're looking for signs of life on a planet, you don't expect a big neon sign that says "Aliens Live Here." You look for signatures. A "signature" is something that shows something else is there. Like your signature on a check. If I see that, I know it shows that you want it paid, so I cash it. Not yours, of course, Bob.

Question. God hates a smart-assed teacher. Dr. Asmenion. No offense, Bob. Methane is a typical signature. It shows the presence of warm-blooded mammals, or something like them.

Question. I thought methane could come from rotting vegetation and all that?

Dr. Asmenion. Oh, sure. But mostly it comes from the guts of large ruminants. Most of the methane in the Earth's air is cow farts.

Emma looked surprised. "That part? Look, I haven't come to the dangerous part yet. This is a nonaccepted destination for all Ones, most Threes, and some Fives."

"Why?" someone asked.

"That's what you're going there to find out," she said patiently. "It happens to be the setting the computer picked out as best for testing the correlations between course settings. You've got armored Fives, and both accept this particular destination. That means you have what the Heechee designers figured was a good chance to handle it, right?"

"That was a long time ago," I objected.

"Oh, sure. I never said otherwise. It is dangerous — at least to some extent. That's what the million is for."

She stopped there, gravely considering us, until someone obliged by asking, "What million?"

"The million-dollar bonus each one of you gets when you come back," she said. "They've appropriated ten million dollars out of Corporation funds for this. Equal shares. Of course, there's a good chance that it will be more than a million each. If you find anything worthwhile, the regular pay scales apply. And the computer thinks this is a good prospect."

"Why is it worth ten million?" I asked.

"I don't make these decisions," she said patiently. And then she looked at me as a person, not part of the group, and added, "And by the way, Broadhead. We're writing off your damage to the ship. So whatever you get is yours to keep. A million dollars? That's a nice little nest egg. You can go back home, buy yourself a little business, live the rest of your life on that."

We looked at each other, and Emma just sat there, smiling gently and waiting. I don't know what the others were thinking about. What I was remembering was Gateway Two and the first trip, wearing our eyes out at the instruments, looking for something that wasn't there. I suppose each of the others had washouts of their own to remember.

"Launch," she said at last, "is day after tomorrow. The ones who want to sign, come see me in my office."

They accepted me. They turned Shicky down.

But it wasn't as easy as that, nothing ever is; the one who made sure Shicky was not going to go along was me. They