Beyond the Blue Event Horizon

  "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 nam
e?"

  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 than I would have believed possible. It was going on all the time I cut the lander loose and sent it up on its little hydrogen jets to where the Heechee drive could work. I jammed and heaved the course-guidance wheels about until they showed that well-learned pattern Albert had taught me.

  And then I squeezed the launch teat, and I was on my way. The ship began its lurchy, queasy acceleration. The star patterns I could see, barely see, by craning past a memory-storage unit, began to drift together. No one could stop me now. I could not even stop myself.

  By all the data Albert had been able to collect the trip would be twenty-two days exactly. Not very long-not unless you are squeezed into a ship that is already filled to capacity. There was room for me-more or less. I could stretch out. I could stand up. I could even lie down, if the vagrant motion of the ship let me know where "down" was, and if I did not mind being folded over between pieces of metal. What I could not do, for those twenty-two days, was move more than half a meter in any direction-not to eat, not to sleep, not to bathe or excrete; not for anything.

  There was plenty of time on my hands for the purpose of remembering how terrifying Heechee flight was, and to feel all of it.

  There was plenty of time, too, to learn. Albert had been careful to record for me all the data I had not had the wit to ask him for, and those tapes were available for me to play. They were not very interesting or sophisticated in delivery. The PMAL-2 was all memory: plenty of brain, not much display. There was no three-dimensional tank, only a stereo flat-plate goggle system when my eyes would bear watching it, or a screen the size of the palm of my hand when they would not.