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Heechee heaven?"
"We don't," I agreed. "Roll over this way."
"And the ship they showed us this morning doesn't hardly look like I thought it was going
to be, at all," she said, doing as I told her and putting a hand on the back of my neck.
There was a sharp whistle from somewhere, I couldn't tell where.
"What's that?"
"I don't know." It came again, sounding both out in the tunnel and, louder, inside my
room. "Oh, it's the phone." What I was hearing was my own piezophone and the ones on either side
of me, all ringing at once. The whistle stopped and there was a voice:
"This is Jim Chou. All you fish who want to see what a ship looks like when it comes back
after a bad trip, come to Docking Station Four. They're bringing it in now."
I could hear a murmuring from the Forehands' room next door, and I could feel Sheri's
heart pounding. "We'd better go," I said.
"I know. But I don't think I want to -- much."
The ship had made it back to Gateway, but not quite all the way. One of the orbiting
cruisers had detected it and closed in on it. Now a tug was bringing it in to the Corporation's
own docks, where usually only the rockets from the planets latched in. There was a hatch big
enough to hold even a Five. This was a Three, what there was left of it.
"Oh, sweet Jesus," Sheri whispered. "Rob, what do you suppose happened to them?"
"To the people? They died." There was not really any doubt of that. The ship was a wreck.
The lander stem was gone, just the interstellar vehicle itself, the mushroom cap, was still there,
and that was bent out of shape, split open, seared by heat. Split open! Heechee metal, that
doesn't even soften under an electric arc!
But we hadn't seen the worst of it.
We never did see the worst of it, we only heard about it. One man was still inside the
ship. All over the inside of the ship. He had been literally spattered around the control room,
and his remains had been baked onto the walls. By what? Heat and acceleration, no doubt. Perhaps
he had found himself skipping into the upper reaches of a sun, or in tight orbit around a neutron
star. The differential in gravity might have shredded ship and crew like that. But we never knew.
The other two persons in the crew were not there at all. Not that it was easy to tell; but
the census of the organs revealed only one jaw, one pelvis, one spine -- though in many short
pieces. Perhaps the other two had been in the lander?
"Move it, fish!"
Sheri caught my arm and pulled me out of the way. Five uniformed crewmen from the cruisers
came through, in American and Brazilian blue, Russian beige, Venusian work white and Chinese all-
purpose black-and-brown. The American and the Venusian were female; the faces were all different,
but the expressions were all the same mixture of discipline and distaste.
"Let's go." Sheri tugged me away. She didn't want to watch the crewmen poke through the
remnants, and neither did I. The whole class, Jimmy Chou, Klara and the other teachers and all,
began to straggle back to our rooms. Not quite quick enough. We had been looking through the ports
into the lock; when the patrol from the cruisers opened it, we got a whiff of the air inside. I
don't know how to describe it. A little bit like overripe garbage being cooked to swill to pigs.
Even in the rank air of Gateway, that was hard to take.
Teacher dropped off at her own level -- down pretty low, in the high-rent district around
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Easy Level. When she looked up after me as I said goodnight I observed for the first time that she
was crying.
Sheri and I said goodnight to the Forehands at their door, and I turned to her, but she
was ahead of me.
"I think I'll sleep this one out," she said. "Sorry, Rob, but, you know, I just don't feel
like it anymore."
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SAFETY RULES FOR GATEWAY SHIPS
The mechanism for interstellar travel is known to be contained in the diamond-shaped box
which is located under the center keel of 3-man and 5-man ships, and in the sanitary facilities of
the 1-man ships.
No one has successfully opened one of those containers. Each attempt has resulted in
explosion of approximately 1-kiloton force. A major research project is attempting to penetrate
this box without destroying it, and if you as a limited partner have any information or
suggestions in this connection you should contact a Corporation officer at once.
However, under no circumstances attempt to open the box yourself. Tampering with it in any
way, or docking a vessel on which the box has been tampered with, is strictly forbidden. The
penalty is forfeiture of all rights and immediate expulsion from Gateway.
The course-directing equipment also poses a potential danger. Under no circumstances
should you attempt to change the setting once you have begun your flight. No vessel in which this
has been done has ever returned.
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