Pohl, Frederik - The Gateway Trip

It was actually physically difficult for me to force my lips to speak the next part, but I got it out. "Anyway, Sub Vastra thought they were targets. He said the higher brass didn't believe him, and I think the matter has been pigeonholed on the reservation now. But what they found was triangular pieces of Heechee wall material-that blue, light-emitting stuff they lined the tunnels with. There were dozens of the things. They all had a pattern of radiating lines; Sub says they looked like targets to him. And they had been drilled through, by something that left the holes as chalky as talcum powder. Do you happen to know of anything that will do that to Heechee wall material?"

Dornie was about to say she didn't, but Cochenour said it for her. "That's impossible," he said flatly.

"Right, that's what the brass told Sub Vastra. They decided that the holes were made in the process of fabrication, for some Heechee purpose we'll never know. Vastra doesn't believe that. Vastra says he figured they were just about the same as the paper targets soldiers use on the firing range. The holes weren't all in the same place. The lines looked to him like scoring markers. That's all the evidence there is that Vastra's right. Not proof. Even Vastra doesn't think it's proof. But it's evidence, anyway."

"And you think you can find the gun that made those holes where we located Site C?" Cochenour asked.

I hesitated. "I wouldn't put it that strongly. Call it a hope. Maybe even a very outside hope. But there's one more thing.

"These targets, or whatever they are, were turned up by a prospector nearly forty years ago. There wasn't any military reservation then. He turned them in to see if anybody would buy them, and nobody was very interested. Then he went out looking for something better, and after a while he got himself killed. That happened a lot in those days. No one paid much attention to the things until some military types got a look at them, and then somebody had the same idea Vastra had years later. So they got serious. They identified the site where he'd reported finding them, near the South Pole. They staked off everything for a thousand kilometers around and labeled it off limits: that's how come the reservation is where it is. And they dug and dug. They turned up about a dozen Heechee tunnels, but most of them were bare and the rest were cracked and spoiled. They didn't find anything like a weapon."

"Then there's nothing there," Cochenour growled, looking perplexed.

"There's nothing they found," I corrected him. "Remember, this was forty years ago."

Cochenour looked at me, puzzled, then his expression cleared. "Oh," he said. "The location of the find."

I nodded. "That's right. In those days prospectors lied a lot-if they found something good, they didn't want other people horning

in. So he gave the wrong location for his tunnel. At that time, he was shacked up with a young lady who later married a man named Allemang-her son, Booker, is a friend of mine. BeeGee. You met him. And he had a map."

Cochenour was looking openly skeptical now. "Oh, right," he said sourly. "The famous treasure map. And he just gave it to you out of friendship."

"He sold it to me," I said.

"Wonderful. How many copies do you suppose he sold other suckers."

"Not many." I didn't blame Cochenour for doubting the story, but he was rubbing me the wrong way. "I got him right when he came back from trying to find it on his own; he didn't have time to try anybody else." I saw Cochenour opening his mouth and went ahead to forestall him. "No, he didn't find anything. Yes, he thought he followed the map. That's why I didn't have to pay much. But you see I think he missed the right place. The right location on the map, as near as I can figure-the navigation systems then weren't what they are now-is right about where we set down the first time, give or take some. I saw some digging marks a couple of times. I think they were pretty old." I slipped the little private magnetofiche out of my pocket while I was talking and put it into the virtual map display. It showed one central mark, an orange X. "That's where I think we might find the right tunnel, somewhere near that X. And, as you can see, that's pretty close to our old Site C."

Silence for a minute. I listened to the distant outside rumble of the winds, waiting for the others to say something.

Dorrie was looking troubled. "I don't know if I like the idea of trying to find a new weapon," she said. "It's-it's like bringing back the bad old days."

I shrugged.

Cochenour was beginning to look more like himself again. "The point isn't whether we really want to find a weapon, is it? The point is that we want to find an untapped Heechee dig for whatever's in

it. But the soldiers think there might be a weapon somewhere around, so they aren't going to let us dig, right?"

"Not 'think.' 'Thought.' I doubt any of them believe it anymore.

"All the same, they'll shoot us first and ask questions later. Isn't that what you said?"

"That's what I said. Nobody's ever allowed on the reservation without clearance. Not because of Heechee weapons; they've got lots of their own stuff there that they don't want people seeing."

He nodded. "So how do you propose to get around that little problem?" he asked.

If I were a completely truthful man I probably should have said that I wasn't sure I would get around it. Looked at honestly, the odds were pretty poor. We could easily get caught and, although I didn't think it was certain, very possibly shot.

But we had so little to lose, Cochenour and I at least, that I didn't think that was important enough to mention. I just said, "We'll try to fool them. We'll send the airbody off. You and I will stay behind to do the digging. If they think we're gone, they won~'t be keeping us under surveillance. All we'd have to worry about is being picked up on a routine perimeter patrol, but they're fairly careless about those. I hope."

"Audee!" the girl cried. "What are you talking about? If you and Boyce stay here, who's going to run the airbody? I can't!"

"No," I agreed, "you can't, or not very well-even after I give you a couple of lessons. But you can let the thing fly itself. Oh, you'll waste fuel, and you'll get bounced around a lot. But you'll get where you're going on autopilot. It'll even land you on its own."

"You haven't landed that way," Cochenour pointed out.

"I didn't say it would be a good landing. You'd better be strapped in." What it would be, of course, was something more like a controlled crash; I closed my mind to the thought of what an autopilot landing might do to my one and only airbody. Dorrie would survive it, though. Ninety-nine chances out of a hundred.

"Then what do I do?" Dorrie asked.

There were big holes in my plan at that point, too, but I closed my mind to them, as well. "That depends on where you go. I think the best plan would be for you to head right back to the Spindle."

"And leave you here?" she demanded, looking suddenly rebellious.

"Not permanently. In the Spindle you look up my friend BeeGee Allemang and tell him what's been going on. He'll want a share, naturally, but that's all right; we can give him twenty-five percent, and he'll be happy with that. I'll give you a note for him with all the coordinates and so on, and he'll fly the airbody right back here to pick us up. Say twenty-four hours later."

"Can we do all that in a day?" Cochenour wanted to know.

"Sure we can. We have to."

"And what if Dorrie can't find him, or he gets lost, or something?"

"She'll find him, and he won't get lost. Of course," I admitted, "there's always the possibility of some 'something.' We have a little margin for error. We can take tanks for extra air and power-we should be all right for as much as forty-eight hours. No more than that. It'll be cutting it very close, but that's plenty of time, I think. If he's late, of course, we're in trouble; but he won't be. What I really worry about is that we'll dig that tunnel and it'll be no good. Then we've wasted our time. But if we do find anything .. ." I left it there.