[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

what's called the ergosphere, it isn't black. You probably could see
something.
file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Heechee%201%20-%20Gatewa
y.txt (91 of 109) [1/15/03 6:31:21 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Heechee%201%20-%20Gatewa
y.txt
Question. What would it look like?
Dr. Asmenion. Beats the ass off me, Jer. If anybody ever goes and sees one,
he'll come back and tell us if he can. Only he probably can't. You could maybe
get that close in, get your readings and come back -- and collect, Jesus, I
don't know, a million dollars anyway. If you could get into your lander, see,
and kick the main mass of the ship away, backward, slowing it down, you might
be able to give yourself enough extra velocity to get away. Not easily. But
maybe, if things were just right. But then where would you go? You can't get
home in a lander. And doing it the other way wouldn't work, there isn't enough
mass in a lander to get you free. I see old Bob isn't enjoying this
discussion, so let's move on to planetary types and dust clouds.
----------------------------------------
every chance of a decent life forever. . . and the other one scared me out of
my mind.
Gateway was like a gentlemen's club in which you never knew what members were
in town.
Louise Forehand was gone; her husband, Sess, was patiently holding the fort,
waiting for her or their remaining daughter to return before shipping out
again himself. He helped me move back into my room, which had been temporarily
occupied by three Hungarian women until they had shipped out together in a
Three. Moving took no great effort; I didn't own anything anymore, except what
I had just bought in the commissary.
The only permanent feature was Shicky Bakin, unfailingly friendly and always
there. I
asked him if he had heard from Klara. He had not. "Go out again, Rob," he
urged. "it is the only thing to do."
"Yeah." I did not want to argue it; he was incontestably right. Maybe I would.
. . . I
said, "I wish I weren't a coward, Shicky, but I am. I just don't know how I
can make myself get into a ship again. I don't have the courage to face a
hundred days of fearing death every minute."
Page 117
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
He chuckled, and hopped off the chest of drawers to pat my shoulder. "You
don't need so much courage," he said, flapping back to the chest. "You only
need courage for one day: just to get in the ship and go. Then you don't have
to have courage anymore, because you don't anymore have a choice."
"I think I could have done it," I said, "if Metchnikov's theories about the
color codes had been right. But some of the 'safe' ones are dead."
"It was only a statistical matter, Rob. It is true that there is a better
safety record now, and a better success record, too. Only marginal, yes. But
better."
"The ones that died are just as dead," I said. "Still -- perhaps I'll talk to
Dane again."
Shicky looked surprised. "He's out."
"When?"
"Around when you left. I thought you knew."
I had forgotten. "Wonder if he found the soft touch he was looking for."
Shicky scratched his chin with his shoulder, keeping himself balanced with
lazy wing strokes. Then he hopped off the chest and fluttered over to the
piezophone. "Let's see," he said, punched buttons. The locator board jumped
into view on the screen. "Launch 88-173," he read.
"Bonus, $150,000. That's not much, is it?"
"I thought he was going for something bigger."
"Well," said Shicky, reading, "he didn't get it. Says he came back last
night."
Since Metchnikov had halfway promised to share his apt with me, it made sense
for me to talk to him; but I wasn't so sensible. I got as far as checking out
that he had returned with a find and with nothing to show for his efforts but
the bonus; didn't go to see him.
I didn't do much of anything, in fact. I hung around.
Gateway is not the most amenity-filled place to live in the universe, but I
found things to do. It beat the food mines. Each passing hour brought me an
hour closer to the time when the tech's report would arrive, but I managed not
to think about that most of the time. I nursed drinks in the Blue Hell, making
friends with the tourists, the visiting cruiser crews, the returnees, the fish
that kept coming up from the sweltering planets, looking I guess, for another
Klara. None showed up.
I read over the letters I had written her on the trip back from Gateway Two,
and then I
tore them up. Instead I wrote a silly short note to apologize and tell her
that I loved her and took it down to radio it off to her on Venus. But she
wasn't there. I'd forgotten how long the slow Hohmann orbits took. The flight
office identified the ship she had left on easily enough; it was a right-angle
orbiter, which spent its whole life changing delta to rendezvous with
plane-of-
file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Heechee%201%20-%20Gatewa
y.txt (92 of 109) [1/15/03 6:31:21 PM]
file:///F|/rah/Frederik%20Pohl/Pohl,%20Frederik%20-%20Heechee%201%20-%20Gatewa
y.txt the-ecliptic flights between the planets. According to the records, her
ship had made a rendezvous with a Mars-bound freighter, and then a Venus-bound
high-G liner; she had presumably transferred to one of them, but didn't know
which, and neither one of them would reach its destination for a month or more
yet.
I sent duplicate copies to each ship, but there wasn't any answer.
The closest I came to a new girlfriend was a Gunner Third from the Brazilian
cruiser.
Francy Hereira brought her around. "This is Susie, my
----------------------------------------
Classifieds.
AREN'T THERE any English-speaking nonsmokers on Gateway to fill out our crew?
Page 118
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
Maybe you want to shorten your life (and our life-support reserves!) but we
two don't. 88-775.
WE DEMAND prospector representation on Gateway Corporation Board! Mass meeting
tomorrow [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

  • zanotowane.pl
  • doc.pisz.pl
  • pdf.pisz.pl
  • supermarket.pev.pl

    •