He gave her a guarded look. "On what?"
"On some decent clothes, for God's sake! Look, Friday's my day off. Dad won't let me skip morning prayers, but afterward how about if I take you shopping?"
So the first thing that Friday morning Stan and Naslan were on a bus to the big supersouks and Stan was accumulating his first grown-up wardrobe. Everything seemed to cost far more than Stan wanted to pay, but Naslan was good at sniffing out bargains. Of course, she made him try on six different versions of everything before letting him buy any. Then, when they had all the bundles they could carry and half his bankroll was gone, they were waiting for a bus when a car pulled up in front of them. "Hey, you!" a man's voice called.
It was a consulate car, with the logo of the United States of America in gold on its immaculate black door, and the driver was leaning out, gesturing urgently to Stan. "Aren't you Stan Avery, Walter Avery's son? Sure you are. Listen, Mr. Goodpastor's been looking all over hell and gone for you. Where've you been hiding yourself, for God's sake?"
Stan gave Naslan a trapped look. "I, uh, I've been staying with friends."
Behind the stopped car half a dozen others were stuck, and they were all blowing their horns. The driver flipped them an obscene gesture, then barked at Stan: "I can't stay here. Look, Mr. Goodpastor's got something for you. Have you at least got an address?"
While Stan was trying to think of an answer, Naslan cut in smoothly. "But you're not sure of what your address will be, are you, Stan? He's getting ready to move into his own place," she informed the driver. "Why don't you send whatever it is to where he works? That's the Eklek Linen Supply Company. It's in Zincirlikuyu, Kaya Aldero Sok, Number 34/18. Here, I'll write it down for you." And when the consulate driver at last unplugged the street and was gone, she said sweetly, "Who knows what it might be, Stan? Maybe they want money for something or other, maybe your father's funeral? Anyway, there's a foreman at the linen supply who likes me. He'll see that I get whatever it is, and he won't tell anybody where it went."
But when Naslan brought the envelope home, thick with consular seals, it wasn't a bill. There was a testy note from Mr. Goodpastor:
Dear Stanley:
When we checked the files it turned out your father still held a life-insurance policy, with you as beneficiary. The face amount is indexed, so it amounts to quite a sum. I hope it will help you make a proper life for yourself.
Stan held the note in one hand, the envelope it was attached to in the other, looking perplexedly at Mr. Kusmeroglu. "What does 'indexed' mean?"
"It means the face value of the policy is tied to the cost of living, so the amount goes up with inflation. Open it, Stanley. It might be quite a lot of money."
But when Stan plucked the green U.S. government voucher out of its envelope the numbers were a cruel disappointment. "Well," he said, trying to smile as he displayed it to the family, "what shall we do with it? Buy a pizza all around?"
But Naslan's eyes were sharper than his, She snatched it from his hand. "You stupid boy," she scolded, half laughing, "don't you see? It isn't lira, it is in American dollars! You're rich now, Stan! You can do what you like. Buy yourself Full Medical. Marry. Start a business. Even go to a whole new life in America!"
"Or," Tan put in, "you can pay your way to the Gateway asteroid, Stan."
Stan blinked at him, then again, more carefully, at the voucher. What Naslan had said was true. There was plenty of money there—easily enough for the fare to Gateway, indeed much more than even that would cost.
Stan didn't stop to think it over. His voice trembled as he said, "Actually, there's enough for two. Shall we do it, Tan? Shall we go to Gateway?"
2
In the Steps of Heroes
I
The first thing that struck Stan about the Gateway asteroid was that, since he weighed next to nothing at all there, the place had no real up. His body had only one way of dealing with that. It became violently ill. This sudden mal d'espace took Stan completely by surprise. He had never had any experience of being seasick or airsick—well, couldn't have, since he had never been on either a ship or a plane at all before the trip to the asteroid. He was wiped out by the sudden dizzying vertigo as much as by the quick and copious fountaining that followed. The guards at Reception weren't surprised. "New meat," one sighed to another, who quickly produced a paper sack for Stan to finish puking into.
Mercifully, Stan wasn't the only one affected. Both of the other two strange men in his group were hurling as violently as he. The one woman, sallow, frail and young—and with something very wrong about the way her face was put together, so that the left side seemed shorter than the right—was in obvious distress, too, but she waved the sick bag away. Tan was spared. So he was the one who collected their belongings—drums, trumpet, music and not much else—and got himself and Stan registered. Then he managed to haul Stan, baggage and all, through the labyrinthine drops and corridors of Gateway to their assigned cubicle. Stan succeeded in hitching himself into his sleeping sack, miserably closed his eyes and was gone.
When he woke, Tan was looming over him, one hand on a holdfast, the other carrying a rubbery pouch of coffee. "Don't spill,' he cautioned. "It is weak, but it is coffee. Do you think you can keep it down?"
Stan could. In fact, he was suddenly hungry. Nor was the twisting, falling feeling as bad as it had been, though there were enough remnant discomforts to make him uneasy.
Tan remained immune. "While you slept I have been busy, old Stan," he announced affectionately. "I have found where we eat, and where we can go for pleasure. There do not seem to be any people from Istanbul on Gateway, but I have met another Moslem here. Tarsheesh. He is a Shiite from Iran, but seems a good enough fellow. He checked and told me that we have funds enough to stay for eighteen days, while we select a mission. Unfortunately there are not very many missions scheduled for some reason, but we'll find something. We have to. If our funds run out before that they will simply deport us." Then he grinned. "I also spoke with the young woman who came up with us. One could get used to the way her face looks, I think. With luck, soon I will know her quite well."
"Congratulations," Stan said. Experimentally he released himself from the sleep sack, grabbing a holdfast. Weightlessness was not permanently unbearable, he discovered, but there was another problem. "Have you also discovered where I can pee?" he asked.
"Of course. I'll show you. Then we can start studying the list of missions. There is no sense hanging around here when we could be making our fortunes."
Time was, Stan knew, when any brave or desperate volunteer who got to Gateway could have his choice of a score of the cryptic Heechee ships. You got into the one you had picked. You set the funny-looking control wheels any which way you liked, because nobody had a clue which ways were "right." You squeezed the go-teat. And then—traveling faster than light, though no one knew how that was done—you were on your way to adventure and fortune. Or to disappointment and frustration, when the chance-set destination held nothing worthwhile. Or, frequently enough, to a horrible death ... but that was the risk you had to take for such great rewards.
That was then. It was different now. Over the years, nearly two hundred of the ships that had bravely set off had never come back. Another few dozen of those that remained on the asteroid particularly the larger ships, the Fives and a few Threes—were now employed in transport duty, ferrying their trickle of colonists to such livable worlds as Valhalla or Peggys Planet, or to exploit the other cache of usable ships that had been found on Gateway Two. When the boys checked the listings they were disappointed. Three or four missions were open, but every one of them was in a One—that is, in a ship that would hold any one person—no use at all to two young men who were determined to ship out together.