Pohl, Frederik - Beyond the Blue Event Horizon

“I did not think you would enjoy it,” Wan observed spitefully. “Turn it off, Wan,” Lurvy said; and then, energetically, “We want to take as many of these things as we can. Paul, take off your shirt. Load up as many as you can and take them back to the Dead Men’s room. And take that old camera, too; give it to the bioassay unit, and see if it can make anything out of the Heechee blood.”

“And what are you going to do?” Paul asked. But he had already slipped off his blouse and was filling it with the glittery “books”.

“We’ll be right along. Go ahead, Paul. Wan? Can you tell which are which-I mean, which are the ones you don’t bother with?”

“Of course I can, Lurvy. They are very much older, sometimes a little chipped-you can see.”

“All right. You two, take off your top clothes too-as much as you need to make a carrying-bag out of. Go ahead. We’ll be modest some other time,” she said, slipping out of her coverall. She stood in bra and panties, tying knots in the arms and legs of the garment. She could fit at least fifty or sixty of the fans in that, she calculated-with Wan’s tunic and Janine’s dress they could carry at least half of the objects away. And that would be enough. She would not be greedy. There were plenty more on the Food Factory, anyway-although probably they were the ones Wan had brought there, and thus only the ones he had found he could understand. “Are there readers on the Food Factory, Wan?”

“Of course,” he said. “Why else would I bring books there?” He was sorting irritably through the fans, muttering to himself as he tossed the oldest, “useless” ones to Janine and Lurvy. “I am cold,” he complained.

“We all are. I wish you’d worn a bra, Janine,” she said, frowning at her sister.

Janine said indignantly, “I wasn’t planning to take my clothes off. Wan’s right. I’m cold, too.”

“It’s only for a little while. Hurry it up, Wan. You too, Janine, let’s see how fast we can pick out the Heechee ones.” They had her coverall nearly full, and Wan, scowling and dignified in his kilt, was beginning to stuff the fans into his. It would be possible, Lurvy calculated, to wrap a few dozen more in the kilt. After all, he had a breechcloth under it. But they were really doing very well. Paul had already taken at least thirty or forty. Her coverall seemed able to hold nearly seventy-five. And, in any event, they could always come back another time for the rest, if they chose,

Lurvy did not think she would choose to do that. Enough was enough. Whatever else they might do in Heechee Heaven, they had already acquired one priceless fact. The prayer fans were books! Knowing that that was so was half the battle; with that certainty before them, scientists would surely be able to unlock the secret of reading them. If they could not do it from scratch, there were the readers on the Food Factory; if worst came to worst they could read every fan before one of Vera’s remotes, encode sound and image, and transmit the whole thing to Earth. Perhaps they could wrench a reading machine loose and bring it back with them. . . . And back they would go, Lurvy was suddenly sure. If they could not find a way to move the Food Factory, they would abandon it. No one could fault them. They had done enough. If there was a need for more, other parties could follow them, but meanwhile-Meanwhile they would have brought back richer gifts than any other human beings since the discovery of the Gateway asteroid itself! They would be rewarded accordingly, there was no question of that-she even had Robinette Broadhead’s word. For the first time since they had left the Moon on the searing chemical flame of their takeoff rockets, Lurvy let herself think of herself not as someone who was striving for a prize, but as someone who had won. And how happy her father would be. . .

“That’s enough,” she said, helping Janine grip the spilling sack of prayer fans. “Let’s take them right to the ship.”

Janine hugged the clumsy bundle to her small breasts and picked up a few more with a free hand. “You sound as if we’re going home,” she said.

“Maybe so,” Lurvy grinned. “Of course, we’ll have to have a conference and decide-Wan? What’s the matter?”

He was at the door, his shirtful of fans under an arm. And he looked stricken. “We waited too long,” he whispered, peering down the corridor. “There are Old Ones by the berryfruit.”

“Oh, no.” But it was true. Lurvy peered cautiously out into the corridor and there they were, staring up at the camera Paul had fixed to the wall. One reached up and effortlessly pulled it loose while she watched. “Wan? Is there another way home?”

“Yes, through the gold, but-“ His nose was working. “I think there are some there, too. I can smell them and, yes, I can hear them!” And that was true, too; Lurvy could hear a faint sound of mellow, chirrupy grunts, from where the corridor bent.

“We don’t have a choice,” she said. “There are only two of them back the way we came. We’ll take them by surprise and just push our way through. Come on!” Still carrying the tapes, she hustled the others ahead of her. The Heechee might be strong, but Wan had said they were slow. With any luck at all-They had no luck at all. As they reached the opening she saw that there were more than two, half a dozen more, standing around and looking toward them in the entrances to the other corridors. “Paul!” she shouted at the camera. “We’re caught! Get in the ship, and if we don’t get away-“ And she could say no more, because they were upon her; and, yes, they were strong!

They were hustled up through half a dozen levels, their captors one to each arm, stolidly chirping at each other, ignoring their struggles and their words. Wan did not speak. He let them pull him as they would, all the way up to a great open spindleshaped volume, where another dozen Old Ones waited and a huge blue-lit machine sat silent behind them. Did the Heechee believe in sacrifice? Or perform experiments on captives? Would they wind up as Dead Men themselves, rambling and obsessed, ready for the next batch of visitors? Lurvy looked upon all of these as interesting questions, and had no answers for any of them. She was not yet afraid. Her feelings had not caught up with the facts; it was too recently that she had allowed herself to feel triumph. The realization of defeat would have to wait.

The Old Ones chirruped to each other, gesticulating toward the prisoners, the corridors, the great silent machine, like a battle tank without guns. Like a nightmare. Lurvy could not understand any of it, even though the situation was clear enough. After minutes of jabber they were pushed into a cubicle, and found in it-astonishingly!---quite familiar objects. Behind the closed door Lurvy shuffled through them-clothing; a chess set; long desiccated rations. In the toe of one shoe was a thick roll of Brazilian currency, more than a quarter of a million dollars of it, she guessed. They had not been the first captives here! But in none of the rubble was anything like a weapon. She turned to Wan, who was pale and shaking. ‘What will happen?” she demanded.

He waggled his head like an Old One. It was the only answer he could give. “My father-“ he began, and had to swallow before he could go on. “They captured my father once and, yes, truly, they let him go again. But I do not think that is a rule, since my father told me I must never let myself be caught.”

Janine said, “At least Paul got away. Maybe-maybe he can bring help. . . .” But she stopped there, and did not expect an answer. Any hopeful answer would have been fantasy, defined by the four years it would take another vessel like theirs to reach the Food Factory. If help came, it would not be soon. She began to sort through the old clothing. “At least we can get something on,” she said. “Come on, Wan. Get yourself dressed.”