"At least we're not trussed up like Christmas pigs anymore," Estrella offered hopefully, holding tightly to Stan's hand. They weren't. They were allowed to roam freely around the chamber, the busy Heechee dodging apologetically around them on their errands.
"I wonder if they'll let us go back in the ship," Stan said, peering inside. A couple of Heechee were playing the Message again, holding what might have been a camera to record what it showed. Another patted Stan's shoulder encouragingly as he stood at the entrance.
He took it for permission. "Let's try it," he said, leading the way. No one interfered, but Estrella gasped when she saw what had been done to their Five. Most of the movables had been taken away, and two Heechee were puzzling over the fixtures in the toilet.
Estrella asserted herself. "Get out!" she ordered, flapping her arms to show what she meant. The Heechee jabbered at each other for a moment, then hesitantly complied.
That made a difference. The toilet had been partly disassembled, but it still worked. So did the washstand. A little cleaner, a lot more comfortable, Stan and Estrella took care of their next needs: they were hungry. It was impossible to use the food-preparation equipment, because that was already in fragments, but among the odds and ends that had been hauled out of the Five they found a packet of biscuits that could be eaten as they were, and a couple of bulbs of water. Every move they made was watched by the Heechee with interest and approval.
Then the boss Heechee came back, trailing half a dozen excited assistants who trundled what looked like a portable video screen. One of the Heechee touched something, and a picture appeared in the screen.
They were looking at a Heechee male who was talking to them excitedly—and, of course, incomprehensibly. Behind him was what seemed to be the interior of a Heechee ship, but not any ship Stan had ever seen before. It was much larger than even a Five, and the only recognizable item in it was one of those queer, dome-shaped machineries that had got them into the Core.
Then the Heechee who had been talking from the screen gestured. The scene widened, and then they saw something else that was familiar.
"Mother of God," Estrella whispered. "Isn't that Robinette Broad-head?"
Indeed it was Broadhead. He was grinning widely, and he was touching the Heechee in the screen, offering a handshake, which the Heechee clumsily accepted.
Beside Stan, the boss Heechee was patting his shoulder enthusiastically with his splayed hand. It seemed to be a gesture of apology, and hesitantly Stan returned it. The Heechee's shoulder was warm but bony, and his flat, bony face bore an expression that could have been intended as something like a smile.
"Well," Estrella said wonderingly. "It looks like we're all friends together now." And that was the end of the second hour in this longest of days.
It was good to be friends with these people, better to have had the chance to eat and drink and relieve themselves, best of all to be free. Stan appreciated all those things, though what he really wanted was some sleep. There didn't seem much chance of that. All of the Heechee, singly and in groups, kept trying to tell them things with their jabbering and their crude sign language. Stan and Estrella kept not comprehending. When the boss Heechee approached, inquiringly carrying Stan's horn, Stan got that message right away. "It's a trumpet," he told them. He repeated the name a couple of times, touching the instrument, then gave up. "Here, let me show you." And he blew a scale, and then a couple of the opening bars of the Cab Calloway version of the "St. Louis Blues." All the Heechee jumped back, then made gestures urging him to play more.
That was as far as Stan was prepared to go. He shook his head. "We're tired," he said, demonstrating by closing his eyes and resting his check on his folded hands. "Sleep. We need rest."
Estrella took a hand. Beckoning to the nearest Heechee, she led him to the entrance to the Five, pointing to their sleep shelves, now bare. After more jabbering, the Heechee seemed to get the idea. A couple of them raced away, and the boss Heechee gestured to them to follow. They left behind that single big chamber that, until now, had been their entire experience of the no doubt multitudinous and various worlds of the Heechee, and followed the leader down a short corridor. Its walls, Stan saw, seemed to be Heechee metal still, but, like some of those on the huge vessel Robinette Broadhead had found, with a veined rose-pink instead of the familiar blue. They paused at a chamber. A waiting Heechee showed them the ruins of their own sleep sacks, then pointed hopefully inside. There were two side-by-side heaps of something on the floor. Beds? Anyway the Heechee closed the door on them, and Estrella immediately stretched out on one of the pods. When Stan followed her example, it felt more like burrowing into a pile of dried leaves than any bed he had ever had. But it wasn't uncomfortable, and best of all it was both flat and horizontal, and no one was yelling at him.
Thankfully he stretched out and closed his eyes.... But only for what seemed like no more than a moment.
He was awakened as the door opened again. It was the boss Heechee, jabbering in excitement but beckoning insistently.
"Oh, hell," Stan muttered. Things happened pretty fast in this place; but the two humans got up and followed. Farther, this time, along the rose-pink corridor and then one where the veining was bright gold. They stopped in a chamber like the one they had first entered, where half a dozen Heechee were chattering and pointing at the airlock.
"I think they're trying to tell us that another ship's coming in," Estrella said.
"Fine," Stan grumbled. "They could've let us sleep a little bit, though."
They didn't have long to wait. There was a faint sound of metal against metal from outside the door. One of the Heechee, watching a display of color from something beside the door, waited just a moment, then opened it. A pair of Heechee came in, talking excitedly to the equally excited ones meeting them, and then they were followed by a pair of human beings.
Human beings!
Stan's mouth dropped open, and beside him he heard Estrella's gasp. The human beings were talking, too, but the people they were talking to were the Heechee. In their own Heechee language. And then one of the human arrivals caught sight of Stan and Estrella. His eyes went wide. "Jesus," he said unbelievingly. "Who the hell are you?"
Who the hell the man himself was was somebody named Lon Alvarez, one of Robinette Broadhead's personal assistants, and as soon as Stan told him their names Alvarez snapped his fingers. "Oh, God, yes! The kids who took off from Gateway right after the discovery! Sure, I remember hearing about you. I guess everybody thought you were dead."
"Well, we're not," Estrella said, "just dead tired."
But Stan had a sudden sense of guilt. Everybody thought they were dead? And so they'd be telling Tan that that was so, and Naslan. "Is there some way you can communicate with Gateway? Because if there is I'd better get a message off to them right away."
Puzzlingly, Lon Alvarez gave Stan a doubtful look. "A message to who?"
"To the Gateway authorities, of course," Stan snapped. "They'll be waiting to hear from us."
Alvarez glanced at the Heechee, then back at Stan. "I don't think they're exactly waiting, Mr. Avery. You know you're in a black hole, don't you?"
"A black hole?" Stan blinked at the man, and heard Estrella make a little moan beside him.
The man nodded. "That's right. That's what the Core is, you know. It's a big black hole, where the Heechee went to hide long ago, and inside a black hole there's time dilation." He looked at Stan to see if he was following this, but Stan's muddled stare wasn't reassuring. Alvarez sighed. "That means things go slower inside a black hole. In this one, the dilation comes to about forty thousand to one, you see, so a lot of time has passed Outside while you were here. How much? Well, when we left it would have been about, let's see, about eleven years."