That problem solved itself. The moment he touched the door it quietly slid open. He found himself looking out at the passage they had come in, terminating in that big spindle-shaped chamber. Estrella was close behind.
That faint Heechee odor of ammonia told him what he was going to see before he saw it. There were quite a few Heechee in the chamber now, a couple of them talking quietly to each other at one of the control carrels, another absorbedly selecting among the fan-shaped books to put into one of the reading machines. The rest of them, half a dozen at least, were eating and drinking around a couple of tables that had produced themselves from nowhere. None of these Heechee appeared to be the male who had visited them in their cabin, and, whatever they were doing, they all stopped it to look at Stan and Estrella.
After a moment's hesitation the female named Salt got up from the table and came toward them. "You persons wish to join us now for the eating?" she asked. "Are almost through here, us others. Did not know what to do when the eating began, since did not wish to disturb privacy."
"Oh, yes, we'd love to eat," Estrella said eagerly, and Stan chimed in: "Me too. Absolutely. But give me a minute to, ah, freshen up first."
When the Heechee saw Stan and Estrella trying to fit themselves into the Heechee perches some of them made a series of sneezing sounds, perhaps the equivalent of a laugh. When Estrella told Salt what they had done about the problem in their own room, there was a quick discussion in the Heechee language. Then additional reed-clusters were quickly brought in to fill the space between the prongs.
Then they were served a meal.
It was Heechee food again, and there was no way to avoid eating it because the ship they were on had nothing else. Reluctantly Stan gave it a try, several varieties of it. The stuff was odd of texture, bizarre of color, indescribable of taste—Stan was sure of that last part, because he tried to describe it to himself as he ate, and failed. Was this pink, stringy stuff supposed to be mint-flavored? Something aromatic, certainly, but more like catnip than any Christmas candy cane. And the dark brown pebbles that shattered crisply in the teeth had no taste at all that he could detect. Nevertheless, he resolutely told himself, they were food, and indeed they did seem to fill that interior void.
They had missed their ship's takeoff, Salt told them. "Did not feel what-you-call lurch of passage? Small shaking up? But have been en route for quite lengthy time. Hope had nice sleep."
"Oh, we didn't sleep," Estrella said. "We had a visitor, you know."
That made Salt pause in her desultory nibbling, done, Estrella was sure, mostly to keep them company. "Understanding minimal," she said. "Why say this? No person of ours intruded, I am of this sure."
"One did, though," Stan corrected her, his mouth full of something bitter in flavor but with the sticky texture of marshmallows. "He had funny clothes and a funny hat, and he spoke very good English."
The effect of those words on Salt was remarkable. The fur on the sides of her head bristled, her face muscles writhed like snakes under the skin, her mouth hung open. She seemed to be having trouble taking it in. "Person entered privacy of your private room?" she asked incredulously.
"Sure did," Stan said, nodding.
"But that is—" she began, then cut herself off. She flopped her wrists in obvious distress, then turned to speak to the other Heechee in the chamber. What she was saying neither Stan nor Estrella had any hope of understanding, because it was in Salt's own language, but it produced its effect. Suddenly all the Heechee seemed to be talking at once, flapping their skeletal arms, shaking their skull-like heads, pointing bony fingers at Estrella and Stan, and the faint ammoniacal smell grew more intense with emotion.
Stan swallowed the last of the fibrous wad in his mouth and turned to Estrella. "Are we in trouble?" he asked.
She shrugged worriedly. "Salt did tell us not to speak to him," she said. "I don't know how we could have avoided it, though. He's the one who came and talked to us."
And then, wonderfully, when every Heechee in the room had had his say, most of them several times, what Salt said to the two humans was much the same. "You have not offended," she told them. "The person visited and addressed to you. You did not visit or address to him. So there is no fault for you. Also should be no repetition of same, because person is now in own compartment with responsible senior companion name of Slightly Hitter. Who," she added glumly, "should not have allowed such visit in first place." She was silent for a moment, and then went on: "But is quite surprising to us he should do this thing of seeking out you company. You see, he hate you very much."
III
Estrella wanted to know why they were hated. ("Why should he hate us? He never even met us!") Stan wanted to be told what this person was likely to do to them if he hated them so. After half a dozen unsuccessful attempts to answer the questions individually Salt flopped her wrists in resignation and began from the beginning.
Their visitor (whose name, she said, was the word in the Heechee language for something like "One Who Accomplishes Much") had been part of the crew of an exploring party. There were three of them in this crew, and their mission had been to look for a race of spacefaring sentients known as "the Assassins."
When Estrella wanted to know why they were called that, Salt looked puzzled. "Because is what they were, assassins," she explained. "In days of old before Withdrawal these Assassins killed off every person they found, totally. Unanimously. What else may they be called? Although," she corrected herself, "we do sometimes also call them by the term the 'Foe,' since is what they are to us."
"I get it. This guy thought we were the Assassins?" Stan hazarded.
Salt made the choking Heechee laughter sound, then politely stopped herself. "Not at all is that the case. Please allow me to complete elucidation."
Resignedly Stan told her to elucidate away, and so she did. Those three Heechee explorers had traveled around the galaxy looking for signs of these Assassins without success. Stan couldn't quite figure out what "signs" Salt was talking about; as near as he could understand her their ship was sniffing various corners of the galaxy hoping to pick up some scent of the Assassins on the loose in inhabited portions of the galaxy. Literally she had used the word "scent." Stan objected, "But you can't smell anything in space," and then shook his head. "Never mind. Go on the way you want to."
The explorers didn't find their quarry, but they tried another tack. They took the ship to a place where, before the Withdrawal, the Heechee had left a number of their ships on an asteroid in orbit around a rather small yellowish star—
"Jesus!" Stan cried, and Estrella whispered:
"Gateway. You're talking about Gateway."
Salt waggled her jaw in agreement. "So he spoke of the place, yes. Was there for four years." And then she had trouble explaining just what the person had been doing for four years. It had something to do with the Gateway ships. One by one he had analyzed the mission plans each ship had stored, in case one of them could have tracked the Assassins in that last frantic period before the whole of the Heechee race ran into the Core to hide. And he went on doing this for four years.
"In which time," Salt said earnestly, "this person was alone. With many hundreds, even thousands, human persons, yes, but completely otherwise alone."