[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
an onion. The outer shell was where the Heechee ships were docked, their
lander ports snuggled into hatch chambers. (Those chambers were the things
that looked from the outside like bird peckings.)
Then, inside, there were layers with great open spaces which the humans used
for storing supplies and parts, and for the large water reservoir they called
"Lake Superior." Closer to the center were the residential tunnels, lined with
small rooms like monastery cells, where the humans lived while they waited for
their ships. In the heart of the asteroid was a spindle-shaped cavern. The
Heechee seemed to like spindle-shaped spaces, though no one knew why.
Gateway's tenants used this one for a meeting place-and drinking place, and
gambling place, and a place to try to forget what lay ahead of them.
Gateway didn't smell good. Air was precious. It didn't feel good, either, at
least not to fresh prospectors just up from Earth. The asteroid had a slow
spin, so there was a sort of microgravity, but there wasn't much of it. Anyone
who made a sudden move anywhere in Gateway was likely to find himself floating
away.
Of course, no one ever looked at the Gateway asteroid as a resort paradise.
There was only one reason why any human being would be willing to put up with
its expense, its inaccessibility, its discomforts, and its stink, and the
reason was the Heechee spaceships.
Flying a Heechee spaceship took a lot of courage, and not much else. Each ship
was like every other ship in its class. The biggest of them, the Fives, were
not very big-about the same volume of space as a hotel bathroom, and that to
be shared by five people. The ships called the Ones (because they could hold
only one person for any length of time) were not much bigger than the bathtub
itself. Each ship contained a minimum of fittings, and most of the fittings
were of unknown importance. There was always a golden coil that seemed to have
something to do with the ship's drive, because it was observed to change color
at start, finish, and turnaround of each trip. There was always a diamond-
shaped golden box about the size of a coffin, too. In a few of the ships there
was an even more mysterious
device that looked like a twisted rod of crystal in a black ebon base; it
didn't seem to do anything at all (but, as it turned out much later, was
capable of some truly astonishing feats). No one knew exactly what was inside
any of those things, because whenever anyone tried to open one it exploded.
And then there was the control system, with a curious, painful forked bench to
sit on before it. Knurled knobs, flashing lights, the go-teat-they were what
made the ship go.
Of course, the ships lacked a great many things that human beings really
didn't want to get along without: the people who ultimately flew them had some
human furnishings added, like freezers, more comfortable seats, bunks, cooking
tools-and a whole catalogue of cameras, radio antennae, and scientific
instruments of all kinds.
There was nothing hard about flying a Heechee ship. Anybody could learn as
much as anybody else knew in half an hour: you fiddled around with the course-
setting wheels, pretty much at random because no one knew what the settings
meant. Actually (it was learned, much later and at great cost) there were some
14,922 separate destinations preprogrammed into the 731 operable ships on the
asteroid-there were about another 200 ships that simply didn't work at all.
But it took a lot of time, and a lot of lives, to find out what some of those
destinations were.
Then, when you had set up some combination (and crossed your fingers, or
yourself), you squeezed the go-teat. After that you were on your way. That was
all there was to it.
For that reason, anybody could become a prospector. Anybody, that is, who was
willing to pay his way to Gateway and then to jay the steep charges for air,
food, water, and living space while he was in the asteroid. .. and who was
brave enough, or desperate enough, to take his chances on a highly likely and
Page 54
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
often very nasty death.
Over the years a great many human beings escaped from their Earthside poverty
to take their chances in a Gateway ship. First and last, there were 13,842 of
these gold-rush gamblers, in those chancy years before exact navigation of a
Heechee ship became possible and the random exploration program was
discontinued.
Quite a few of the prospectors survived. Many became famous. A few became
vastly rich. And no one remembers the others.
When one of those bold, faintly crazy early prospectors set out in a Heechee
spacecraft, he didn't expect the ship to go exactly where he wanted it to go.
He (or, almost as often, she) could never coun~ on that for many reasons, not
least because none of those early prospectors had any idea what destinations
were worth aiming for. But that ignorance carried no penalty, anyway. Since no
Gateway prospector knew how to navigate a Heechee ship, the first ships
followed whatever destination settings had been left on the board by the last
long-ago Heechee pilot.
Considering the risks, it was a good thing for those early Gateway prospectors
that the Heechee had been so much like human beings in important ways. For
instance, the Heechee had possessed the primate-human itch of curiosity-in
fact, they had a lot of it. That meant that a lot of the preprogrammed
destinations were to places that human beings also found interesting to look
at. They were just as interesting to human beings as they had been to the old
Heechee, and the particular branch of the human race that delighted most in
what the first waves of Gateway explorers found was the astronomers. Those
astronomical people had become very ingenious at teasing information from [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
zanotowane.pl doc.pisz.pl pdf.pisz.pl ocenkijessi.opx.pl
an onion. The outer shell was where the Heechee ships were docked, their
lander ports snuggled into hatch chambers. (Those chambers were the things
that looked from the outside like bird peckings.)
Then, inside, there were layers with great open spaces which the humans used
for storing supplies and parts, and for the large water reservoir they called
"Lake Superior." Closer to the center were the residential tunnels, lined with
small rooms like monastery cells, where the humans lived while they waited for
their ships. In the heart of the asteroid was a spindle-shaped cavern. The
Heechee seemed to like spindle-shaped spaces, though no one knew why.
Gateway's tenants used this one for a meeting place-and drinking place, and
gambling place, and a place to try to forget what lay ahead of them.
Gateway didn't smell good. Air was precious. It didn't feel good, either, at
least not to fresh prospectors just up from Earth. The asteroid had a slow
spin, so there was a sort of microgravity, but there wasn't much of it. Anyone
who made a sudden move anywhere in Gateway was likely to find himself floating
away.
Of course, no one ever looked at the Gateway asteroid as a resort paradise.
There was only one reason why any human being would be willing to put up with
its expense, its inaccessibility, its discomforts, and its stink, and the
reason was the Heechee spaceships.
Flying a Heechee spaceship took a lot of courage, and not much else. Each ship
was like every other ship in its class. The biggest of them, the Fives, were
not very big-about the same volume of space as a hotel bathroom, and that to
be shared by five people. The ships called the Ones (because they could hold
only one person for any length of time) were not much bigger than the bathtub
itself. Each ship contained a minimum of fittings, and most of the fittings
were of unknown importance. There was always a golden coil that seemed to have
something to do with the ship's drive, because it was observed to change color
at start, finish, and turnaround of each trip. There was always a diamond-
shaped golden box about the size of a coffin, too. In a few of the ships there
was an even more mysterious
device that looked like a twisted rod of crystal in a black ebon base; it
didn't seem to do anything at all (but, as it turned out much later, was
capable of some truly astonishing feats). No one knew exactly what was inside
any of those things, because whenever anyone tried to open one it exploded.
And then there was the control system, with a curious, painful forked bench to
sit on before it. Knurled knobs, flashing lights, the go-teat-they were what
made the ship go.
Of course, the ships lacked a great many things that human beings really
didn't want to get along without: the people who ultimately flew them had some
human furnishings added, like freezers, more comfortable seats, bunks, cooking
tools-and a whole catalogue of cameras, radio antennae, and scientific
instruments of all kinds.
There was nothing hard about flying a Heechee ship. Anybody could learn as
much as anybody else knew in half an hour: you fiddled around with the course-
setting wheels, pretty much at random because no one knew what the settings
meant. Actually (it was learned, much later and at great cost) there were some
14,922 separate destinations preprogrammed into the 731 operable ships on the
asteroid-there were about another 200 ships that simply didn't work at all.
But it took a lot of time, and a lot of lives, to find out what some of those
destinations were.
Then, when you had set up some combination (and crossed your fingers, or
yourself), you squeezed the go-teat. After that you were on your way. That was
all there was to it.
For that reason, anybody could become a prospector. Anybody, that is, who was
willing to pay his way to Gateway and then to jay the steep charges for air,
food, water, and living space while he was in the asteroid. .. and who was
brave enough, or desperate enough, to take his chances on a highly likely and
Page 54
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
often very nasty death.
Over the years a great many human beings escaped from their Earthside poverty
to take their chances in a Gateway ship. First and last, there were 13,842 of
these gold-rush gamblers, in those chancy years before exact navigation of a
Heechee ship became possible and the random exploration program was
discontinued.
Quite a few of the prospectors survived. Many became famous. A few became
vastly rich. And no one remembers the others.
When one of those bold, faintly crazy early prospectors set out in a Heechee
spacecraft, he didn't expect the ship to go exactly where he wanted it to go.
He (or, almost as often, she) could never coun~ on that for many reasons, not
least because none of those early prospectors had any idea what destinations
were worth aiming for. But that ignorance carried no penalty, anyway. Since no
Gateway prospector knew how to navigate a Heechee ship, the first ships
followed whatever destination settings had been left on the board by the last
long-ago Heechee pilot.
Considering the risks, it was a good thing for those early Gateway prospectors
that the Heechee had been so much like human beings in important ways. For
instance, the Heechee had possessed the primate-human itch of curiosity-in
fact, they had a lot of it. That meant that a lot of the preprogrammed
destinations were to places that human beings also found interesting to look
at. They were just as interesting to human beings as they had been to the old
Heechee, and the particular branch of the human race that delighted most in
what the first waves of Gateway explorers found was the astronomers. Those
astronomical people had become very ingenious at teasing information from [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]