They didn't stop at watching the postings on the screen. They went to see the dispatcher himself, a fat and surly Brazilian named Hector Montefiore. To get to Montefiore's office you had to go all the way to Gateway's outermost shell, where the ships nestled in their pods as they waited for a mission. Some of the pods were empty, the outer port closed against the vacuum of space; their ships were actually Out. The boys looked their fill, then shook the curtain of Montefiore's office and went in.
The dispatcher was idly watching an entertainment screen, eating something that had not come out of the Gateway mess hall. He listened to them for a bare moment, then shook his head. "Fuck off, you guys," he advised. "I can't help you. I don't assign the missions. The big domes do that. When they decide on a flight, the computer puts it up on the board and I just take the names of the volunteers. Next big one? How the hell do I know?"
Stan was disposed to argue. Tan pulled him away. In the corridor outside Stan snarled at his friend. "He's bound to know something, isn't he?"
"Maybe so, but he isn't going to tell us, is he? We could try bribing him—"
Stan laughed sourly. "With what?"
"Exactly, Stan. So let's get out of here."
They retired to the common space in Gateway's central spindle, the place they called the Blue Hell, to consider their options over cups of Gateway's expensive and watery coffee. Coffee was not all you could buy in the Blue Hell. You didn't have to pay for your basic meals on Gateway; their cost, like the price of the water they drank, the cubicle they lived in and the air they breathed, was covered by their daily rent. If you wanted more than that, you had to go to the Blue Hell. There was fine food, if you could pay the price, and liquor of all sorts, and the gambling that gave the place its name. The boys jealously smelled the great steaks they saw more fortunate others devouring, and watched the magnetized roulette ball spin around. Then Stan took a deep breath.
He poked Tan in the shoulder. "Hey, man! We're on Gateway! Let's at least do a little wandering around the joint!"
They did, almost forgetting that their money was going and the mission they had come for had not appeared. They went to a place called Central Park, where fruit trees and berry bushes grew—but were not to be picked unless you paid their price. They looked at Gateway's great water reservoir, curling up with the shape of the asteroid's shell but, to them, mostly reminiscent of the big underground reservoir lakes of Istanbul. And they went, reverently, to Gateway's museum.
Everything they saw there was halfway familiar to Stan, from the Gateway stories he had devoured in his youth. Being in the museum itself was different. It was filled with Heechee artifacts, brought back from one mission or another: prayer fans, fire pearls, gadgets of all kinds. There were holos of planets that had been visited; the boys admired Peggys Planet, with its broad, cultivated fields and handsome woods; they shivered at Valhalla—habitable, the Gateway authorities claimed, but more like Siberia than Paradise. Even worse were the holos of the murdered planets, the mysterious ones that had once held civilizations of which nothing was left but ruins. How? Why? No one knew. The boys looked at the holos in silence, and turned away.
Most interesting, in a practical way, were the holos of the various models of Heechee ships, the Ones, the Threes and the Fives. (Well, that was what the human beings on Gateway called them, according to the size of the crew they held. What the Heechee themselves called them was more than anyone could say.)
Some of the ships had fittings that didn't seem to do anything, particularly the few that contained a Heechee-metal dome that, after a few disasters, no one had dared try to open. Many were armored, particularly the Threes and Fives. Nearly all had human-installed external sensors and cameras, as well as racks of food, tanks of oxygen, rebreathers, all the things that made it possible for a prospector to stay alive while he flew; if the Heechee themselves had had anything of the sort it was long gone.
While they were puzzling over these questions they heard a cough from behind. When they turned it was the girl with the lopsided face who had come up from Earth with them, whose name was Estrella Pancorbo. She seemed a lot less pale. Surprised, Stan said, "You're looking, uh, well." Meaning, apart from the fact that your face looks as though someone sat on it.
She gave him a searching look, but bobbed her head to acknowledge the compliment. "Better every day, thank you. I fooled them," she added cryptically, but didn't say who the "them" was. She didn't want to continue the conversation, either; had studying to do, she said, and immediately began running through the ship holos and taking notes.
The boys lingered for a while, but then they left because it was clear she preferred to be alone—but not without having had her effect on Stan, who had not been near a girl of anything like his own age since Naslan.
On the way out Tan mused, "I wonder how the folks are getting along back home."
Stan nodded. He recognized homesickness when he saw it. He even felt a little of it himself, though he hadn't had much experience of having a real home. "We could write them a letter," he offered.
Tan shook himself, and gave Stan a grin. "And pay transmission costs? Not me, Stan. I'm not much for writing letters anyway, and besides, what would we have to say? Let's get some more of that piss-poor coffee."
II
That day passed. So did another day. A couple of Ones appeared on the mission screen, but nothing better, and even those were snapped up at once by less picky prospectors. The boys spent more and more of their time hanging around the Blue Hell, wondering, but not willing to ask each other, what they were going to do when their money ran out.
They did not lack for advice. Old Gateway hands, many of them wearing the wrist bracelets that showed that they had been Out, were often willing to share their lore. The friendliest was a spry, middle-aged Englishwoman with a drawn face and unshakable views on what missions to take. "Do you know what the Heechee control wheels look like? What you want are settings that show two bands in the red on the first wheel and none in the yellow on the second," she lectured.
"Why?" Tan asked, hanging on every word.
"Because they are safe settings! No mission with those settings has ever been lost. Trust me on this, I know." And when she had finished the coffee she had cadged from them and left, Tan pursed his lips.
"She may have something there," he said.
"She has nothing there," Stan scoffed. "Did you count her bangles? Nine of them! She has been Out nine times and hasn't earned the price of a cup of coffee. No, Tan. We want something that might be less safe, but would be more profitable."
Tan shrugged, conceding the point. "In any case," he said philosophically, "it is true that if any of them did know what to do they would be doing it instead of telling us about it. So let us go eat."
"All right," Stan said, and then shook his head, struck with a thought. "The hell with that. I'm not hungry. Besides, I've got a better idea. We lugged those instruments with us, why not jam a little?"
Tan blinked at him. "Here? They'd throw us out."
"So we can go somewhere where nobody would be bothered by our practicing. Maybe Central Park?"
Stan was right, there was nobody there. They picked a corner with plenty of holdfasts, and set up to play.
Stan had no problem with his trumpet, once he was securely hooked to a wall bracket. Tan's drums were another matter. He had to lash them to each other and to a pair of holdfasts, and then he complained that the sticks wouldn't bounce properly without solid gravity. All the same they managed "When the Saints Come Marching in," after a fashion, and did better on "A String of Pearls." Stan was riffing on "St. James Infirmary Blues" when Tan stopped drumming and caught his arm. "Look there!"