VIII
When Stan and Estrella could take no more, they staggered back to those queer Heechee beds. They didn't talk; there was too frighteningly much that needed to be talked about, and no good place for them to begin.
Estrella dropped off at once, but not Stan. His head was too full of arithmetic, and all the sums were scary. The man had said forty thousand to one! Why, that meant that every minute that passed here in the Heechee's Core was more than a month in the outside world! An hour was five years! A day would be over a century, a week would be—
But then fatigue would no longer be denied. He fell into an uneasy sleep, but it didn't last. There was too much haunting his dreams. But when he woke enough to reach out for Estrella her bunk was empty, and she was gone.
Stan staggered to his feet and went in search of her. It was urgent that he find her. Even more urgently there was only one thing that he really wanted, and that was for the two of them to get right back in their Five, if it would still work after everything the Heechee had done to it, and head for home ... before everyone they knew was irrevocably dead and gone.
Estrella wasn't in the hallway, though there were voices coming from somewhere, lots of them. She wasn't in the room they had entered in, either, though there were plenty of Heechee there who were looking very busy, at what Stan could not say. One of the Heechee took pity on him. He led Stan, chattering cheerfully, with plenty of those reassuring shoulder pats, to still another entrance chamber. It was the biggest yet, and the most crowded, with a constant stream of Heechee going in and out of the port to a docked ship. The guide led Stan to the door and gently nudged him inside.
The ship was the biggest he'd ever seen, and it was full of people, both human and Heechee. When one of the humans looked up he saw that it was Estrella, and she was talking—yes, apparently talking—to a couple of Heechee. She beckoned Stan over, holding up a flask of something brown. "It's coffee, Stan," she said with pleasure. "They've got a great kitchen on the immigrant ship. Want some?"
"Sure," he said absently, staring at the Heechee. Incongruously, the creature was wearing a Texas sombrero, a sweatshirt that bore the legend Welcome to Houston and what looked like red and gold leather cowboy boots. He stuck out an affable hand to Stan.
"Great seeing you again, Mr. Avery," he said—in English! "I've been introducing your good wife to our exploration pilot, Achiever. He's about to go Outside on a very important mission, and we've been briefing him on conditions." When Stan stared dumbly, the Heechee said apologetically, "Oh, sure, you don't remember me, do you? My name is Gradient. I was the Doorwatcher in charge of the entry lock when you and Ms. Pancorbo arrived." And added proudly, "I went with the first party of ours to go Outside, as soon as we saw what was happening."
"Nice to see you again," Stan said faintly. "You, ah, speak English very well."
The Doorwatcher made a deprecating gesture with those skeletal hands. "I spent four years on your planet, so I had plenty of time to learn. Then when this ship was leaving to bring some of your people to the Core I came home." Someone was chattering urgently to him in the Heechee language. He replied briefly, then sighed. "I'd better get back to work. Achiever's about to leave and I've got to finish the briefing. And I'm anxious to see my significant persons, too. It's been a long time for me ... though they don't even know I was gone!"
IX
Later on when Stan tried to remember that very long day, that forty-thousand-days-in-a-day day, its events and discoveries flew wildly around in his mind like infuriated bees when the hive is attacked. The surprises were too many and too great. The humans on that ship weren't captives or invaders. They were immigrants. They had come to the Core to visit the Heechee for a few days or weeks (which was to say, centuries!). Then that same ship was going to go right back to Earth for more. The Door—the floating dock they had come to—was already as warm with other humans from previous ships, waiting for still other ships which would take them to one of the Heechee planets, where they would go on display for the fascinated Heechee people. Some of these arrivals were dignitaries from Gateway Corp or from one of the nations of Earth, now in the Core to open embassies from the human race to the Heechee. Some of them were simply people who hadn't liked the lives they had on Earth, and jumped at the chance to start new ones in the Core. "Like us, Stan," Estrella told him as he blearily tried to take it all in. "Like everybody who came to Gateway, and the wonderful thing is that they're going to get what they want here. The Heechee are wild to meet us, Stan. Every human being who gets here is going to live like a king." And then she added worriedly, "Drink your coffee, hon. I think they put something in it to wake us up. You'll need it."
They had. It did. When Stan had swallowed his second flask of the stuff, fatigue was banished, and his mind was racing. "What do you mean, live like a king?" he demanded.
"What I said, Stan," she said patiently—or not all that patiently; she was on overdrive, too, her eyes sparkling in a way Stan had never seen before. "They're welcoming us, Stan. They want to hear everything about the human race. They're fascinated by the idea that we have different nations and cultures and all. When I told the Doorwatcher about herding bison, he begged me to come to his own planet and talk about it—seems he'd missed that when he was on Earth. He says they'll give us our own home, and a wonderful home, too, and ... and I don't think they know anything about Istanbul, either, or human history, and they'll want to hear it all from you—"
But Stan was shaking his head. "We won't have time," he announced.
Estrella stopped short, peering at him from under her dragging eyelid. "Why won't we?" she asked, suddenly shot down from her enthusiasm.
"Because we've got to be on that ship when it goes back, Estrella. We have to get there while we're still news, the first people to come back from the Core. Can you imagine what that will be worth? Not just the bonus— I bet that'll be huge—but we'll be famous! And rich, Full Medical and all!" He ran out of steam then, peering at Estrella's face, trying to read her expression. "Don't you see what we're missing, Estrella?"
She said contemplatively, "Full Medical. Long, rich lives. On Earth."
He nodded with vigor. "Exactly! And time is passing us by. We have to go back!"
Estrella took his hand and pressed it to her cheek. She asked simply, "Why?"
He blinked at her. "What do you mean, why?"
"Well, Stan," she said reasonably, "there's no real hurry, is there? What have we got to go back to that we won't have right here?"
"Our friends—" he began, but she shook her head. She kissed his hand before she released it and spoke.
"Have you looked at the time, dear? Our friends are getting old. They might even have died by now. You wanted to live a long, long time. Now we're doing it." She took pity on the look on his face and hugged him tightly. "Besides," she said persuasively, "we've come all this way. As long as we're here, we might as well see what the place looks like."