“No. That is, yes. I mean I just remembered, didn’t the explorers find that the Foe had holed up in a sort of aligned system that was actually outside the galaxy?”
“They did. We did, that is, since I was one of those explorers. The Foe were found to be in a cluster of such systems just outside the galactic halo.”
“Then what are we looking for?” Achiever demanded.
“We are looking to make sure that they are still there,” Burnish said somberly. He looked thoughtful for a moment, then his belly muscles rippled in the equivalent of a shrug. “Come into my chamber, both of you. Let me show you what I have been doing.”
The small chunks of unidentifiable instrumentation that Burnish had brought aboard had now been assembled into larger masses of unidentifiable instrumentation. A pile of blue-glowing boxes were stacked against one wall, the one at the top displaying a lookplate like the lookplate over the piloting module, but blank. Against another wall was a lustrous silvery cage, and within it a jagged diamond. Burnish touched a knurled wheel and the wall lookplate lit up, displaying a pebbly gray field. “It might be better if I had some help here,” he said, “so perhaps I had best teach you two how to do this. Watch.” As he adjusted the wheel the gray dissolved, and they were looking at the same exterior scene of the central galaxy. No, Achiever corrected himself, not quite the same. This lookplate narrowed the field and increased the magnification; now individual stars were visible, and many showed actual disks.
“You know,” Burnish said professorially, “that each voyage of a high-speed ship like ours leaves a sort of ripple in space behind it?”
“I have been taught this, yes,” Achiever said, and Breeze nodded.
“Then let me show you what these ripples look like.” He made other adjustments. The magnification increased again, while the stars themselves faded slightly. Breeze gasped, and then Achiever saw it too. Images like bundles of pinkly luminous straws showed among the stars. What they resembled most of all was what human scientists would have called Feynman diagrams. As no one in the ship had ever heard of Richard Feynman nor his graphic displays of the summation of probabilities, they only called them “representations of potential loci.”
“Those are signatures of such faster-than-light travel,” Burnish went on. “As it happens, our ships leave a particular identifiable signature, like those you are looking at; those are the ripples left by the transit of known ships, all of them our own. The tracks of the Assassins’ ships are quite different. If,” he corrected himself, “the Assassins have ships of any kind at all; it is not clear what means they employed to travel through space. Those artifactual signatures, however, do exist. Or at least they did, because they were observed and identified at the time of the Withdrawal. Some of them I observed myself. Such artifacts may take thousands of years to dissipate, and it is for those that I seek.”
“I see,” Achiever said, and then it was his turn to correct himself. “That is, there is one point that is unclear to me. You spoke of some thousands of years, but we were inside the Core for much longer than that. Is it not likely that they will all have dissipated by now?”
“Oh, I hope not,” Burnish said gloomily. “Because if the traces are gone we will have to start looking in places I do not wish to visit.”
IV
As the days passed the lookplate displays thinned out. What had been an undistinguishable fog of white now became a sprinkle of countless single stars—white ones or golden, bright-hot blue or darkly smoldering red. It became possible to isolate individual stars among them and even to see which ones had planets, though none of the orbiting worlds Achiever detected seemed likely to have borne life. “Planets are common enough,” Burnish assured his crew, “but life is not.” Which, Achiever thought, made those ancient crimes of the Foe even worse; if life was rare, how much more horrid was its violent extinction?
At the beginning of each watch he made sure to display the plot of their ship’s course in order to keep track of their progress; on the display the portion of their course they had already traveled was pale pink, the part yet to come in that shocking orange. But how slowly the pink line lengthened, and how depressingly long the orange remained!
When, in the old days, Achiever had found himself thinking about what might be Outside of the Core—which was not all that often, because he had had more than enough to think about in his everyday life on Three-Moon Largely Wet Planet, and in his regular job of flying back and forth to the other planets of other stars that were his usual destinations—when, that is to say, Achiever had thought about the matter at all, perhaps stimulated by those lessons that he had thought would never be put to use, on running the order disrupter—when, anyway, he had thought about what it would be like to really be Outside, the single thing that had seemed oddest to him was the incredibly rapid pace of events as they went on Outside the Core.
Now, however, he actually was Outside, and it did not seem that way at all. His fellow passengers did not flit rapidly about. They moved, as Heechee generally moved, sedately and not really very fast by any standard. Neither did those planets their instruments detected as they passed by spin dizzyingly around their primaries. Nor did the stars themselves wink when they were variables, nor visibly bloat and decay when they were supergiants.
But the difference in the rate of time was real enough on the personal level, and it made Achiever glum. Sometimes, as he burrowed into his sleep nest at the end of a shift, it occurred to him that he would sleep and wake and work and sleep again a dozen times in a time that, back on his own planet, would be measured by a single beat in either of his hearts.
Not only was time not passing faster than was normal. Sometimes it seemed to have stagnated entirely. Those were the times when Achiever woke to a work day that was different in no respect from the day that had gone before it. And when at last something did happen that hadn’t happened a dozen times before, it was a development of an unanticipated kind.
Breeze had just brought him a meal. She reported that Burnish had once again refused his own food. “He is quite obsessed,” she told Achiever as they shared their own spicy protein and sweet carbohydrates in the pretty pastel colors Breeze herself had chosen. “I think he wishes he could find that the Assassins are still roaming the galaxy somewhere. If it were me, I would have no such feelings. I would hope they had never stirred from their hideaway.”
Achiever considered that, then gave the belly-writhing that was the Heechee equivalent of a shrug. “I suppose he knows what he is doing.”
“I suppose,” she agreed. “He seemed pretty worried, though.” She chewed for a moment, then said reflectively, “Do I imagine this or is this food unusually tasty?”
“How surprising!” Achiever exclaimed. “I was on the point of making the same observation to you.” And what was most surprising about that, to both of them, was that taste in CHON-food was not a variable. Unless the specifications were changed, which Breeze denied, the flavor of any particular form of CHON-food remained identically the same year in and year out. Amused at the thought, Achiever widened his mouth in the Heechee equivalent of a smile. He noticed that Breeze was smiling back at him. Charmingly. Almost enticingly…
Enticingly?
The muscles under Achiever’s cheek skin suddenly stilled. Realization came; of course! The food wasn’t unusually tasty, Breeze’s smile no different from any other time. What colored everything for him—for both of them—was simply pheromones.
As soon as that thought crossed his mind he saw what he had not noticed before. The color of Breeze’s skin had perceptibly darkened. In some places—the hollow of her throat, the eyelids—it had become almost purplish.
She was, without warning, coming into sexual season.
The mating customs of the Heechee were thoroughly civilized. When an available male and a sexually receptive female were proximate, they did not at once spring into copulation. The process took time. From the first signs of approaching receptivity to the culminatin
g act seldom took less than a full day, sometimes—particularly when the female was young—as much as ten days, or even more. And Breeze was still quite young. So at this early stage nothing sexual passed between Achiever and Breeze. Well, nothing overt. Covert, however, you bet. When Breeze had finished eating the pale blue and crunchy part of the meal it was Achiever who unwrapped and handed her the sweet, gummy next course. When Breeze accepted it she allowed her skinny forefinger to rest for a moment on the back of his wrist.
Things might have progressed farther—a little—but that was the moment when Burnish chose to join them. He wore an expression Achiever could not read—sorrowful? Yes, probably that was one description, but also he looked even more worn and worried than usual. The muscles of his cheek working agitatedly, but he brought up short in the doorway, sniffing curiously.
Although jealousy is not a very marked Heechee trait, it would be untrue to suggest that Achiever failed to take note of Burnish’s actions. But Burnish’s evident worry was considerable—not to mention, Achiever thought to himself, that old Burnish must have been nearly past the maximally sexual phase of life. His worries overrode Breeze’s pheromones. “I have made a decision,” he said sternly. “We must accept the fact that there are no recent traces of the Assassins.”
Achiever was not wholly distracted from his new concerns, but he gave Burnish a puzzled look. “But surely,” he said, “that is welcome news?”
The old one paused, seeming to weigh the question in his mind, and, Achiever thought, taking a lot longer to do it than seemed reasonable. At length he exhaled through his nose. “It is better news, perhaps, than if we had found evidence they had come out,” he said meditatively, “but it means that you and I must do certain things that I would have preferred to avoid. Two of us must inspect the place where the Foe have hidden themselves, and make sure that they are still there.”
He crossed the room to the lookplate and touched its knurled knob. At once it displayed the assorted blobs that marked the Foe’s hiding place. “There is the Kugelblitz,” he said—well, of course “Kugelblitz” is not the word he used; it was simply the word that humans would come to use once they had learned that such things existed. But Burnish’s explanation was very much how a human physicist would have described it: “The Assassins are creatures of energy, not matter. Energy, however, also has mass. Consequently the nature of the locus into which they have withdrawn is an aligned system”—a “black hole,” we would say—“of their own, one in which the density of the energy it contains has created it.”
Breeze seemed more exhilarated than frightened by the news, even after Burnish added, “Our visit will not be a simple look-and-depart. No,” he said somberly, “the two of us who do this must remain for a significant period of time, perhaps a year, perhaps more, so that we can make as sure as we can that the Foe are staying inside their hole. Achiever, you have a question?”
“You said two of us. What about the third?”
Burnish looked away. “As you may know,” he said, “at the time of the Withdrawal we left a number of small ships in various places around the galaxy. One particular cache of them was discovered, and those ships have been used, by that other species which has just visited us. Each ship, of course, records all its flights. Each of those records must be checked to see if they have any data regarding the Assassins. So one of us will need to go there and access all available records, while the other two go to observe the place of the Foe.” He glanced at Achiever, who knew before the words were spoken what they were going to be. “That one person remaining there, Achiever,” he said, “will be you.”
4
* * *
Three Days on Door
I
Here is what Stan and Estrella discovered: it was one thing to be the very first visitors from Outside ever to have crashed in on the flabbergasted Heechee. It was quite another thing just to be two out of dozens of them…then out of scores…then to be merely a tiny fraction of a flood of more visitors than either Stan or Estrella could count. Especially when most of the other visitors had a lot more interesting things to say than either Estrella or Stan.
They weren’t neglected, exactly. Now and then some particularly kindly Heechee might pause in its dash from one part of Door to another long enough to inquire if they needed additional food or drink, or a place to relieve their bladders. But if the answer was no, that was the end of it, and that particular Heechee was gone, never to be seen again. “Or,” Stan said moodily, “maybe it’s the same one every time, because how do you tell them apart?”
Estrella didn’t give him an answer to that, because she didn’t have one. Some of the Heechee were considerate enough to wear something unusual about their costume—an unexpected color of the tunic, a gewgaw around their thin necks, an unusual pattern on the eight-sided medallion they wore on their undignified between-the-legs pouches—unusual enough that Estrella could keep it in her mind for a time, but not usually for a very long time.
This place they called “Door” was really getting crowded. Ship traffic seemed to be heavy both ways, plenty of Heechee ships heading Out into the great external galaxy, even more ships coming in. Sometimes these latter were returning Heechee back from hastily surveying the outside worlds, but by the second day, more and more often they were ships with human crews. And those were just the ships that had slipped through the Schwarzschild barrier in one direction or the other. Local traffic was heavier still. Ships were coming to Door from all over the Core, either because they were needed for some Heechee purpose Estrella could not imagine, or simply because Door was where the excitement was. The extreme excitement. In fact just about the only real excitement the Heechee race had known for that whole generation that had passed since they had hidden themselves in the Core.
It was no wonder that half the Heechee race seemed to want to come and share in it.
After spending so many dull and lonely days in the cramped space of their souped-up old Five, Stan and Estrella weren’t averse to a little company. Not necessarily this company, though, with their skull-bare heads and squeezed-flat bodies. The press of alien bodies cramped their style.
As their second day in this bizarre new place became their third, the problem began to be acute. During the many days they had been locked up in their spartan Five Stan had rarely suffered boredom because, when all else failed, there had always remained one always delightful, never-failing source of entertainment for the two of them.
But that was then. This was now. Now Estrella demurred whenever Stan put a friendly hand on her, because there was always the chance, often a very good chance, that some Heechee would burst in to catch them at some private moment.
Then the bad situation got worse.
As the crowding increased, the two humans could no longer be spared a chamber of their own. Their room now had to be shared with two, three, even more fellow tenants, Heechee tenants, who might look as though they were sound asleep in their bundles of fake vegetation, but were as likely as not to be peering out at the strangers.
At least Estrella thought they might, and that was just as bad. She didn’t even seem to want to cuddle, either, not with those skeletal snorers in the same room. Even more perplexing to Stan was that Estrella, who on the trip had given as much attention to lovemaking as Stan himself, now didn’t seem to regret its absence. The novelty of the place excited her. She was trying to learn a few words of the Heechee language, without success. Fortunately there were humans arriving who spoke Heechee and, wonderfully, even a few Heechee who spoke English. It seemed that Estrella had met one or two of them.
In fact, she made a friend.
Stan found this out while he was standing in the hallway, looking up and down to see where Estrella had gotten herself this time. A Heechee approached purposefully. This Heechee was taller and heavier than most but was, Stan was pretty sure, female. “Are you the Stan person?” she asked—blessedly, in English! “By my name I am called Salt, and I have an inviting for you. T
hat is inviting to come to my home in valley below Shining Mica Mountains, on Forested Planet of Warm Old Star Twenty-Four. Climate will have been to your liking. Diurnal cycle, same. And there many persons of my species are extremely eager to meet persons of your species. To live there with us. For, if this is your wish, all of your life.”
“Not a chance,” Stan said at once, thinking that was a pretty hateful proposition—live the rest of his life as a spectacle for a planet of nosy scarecrows!—and almost immediately changing his mind because it did seem a lot better than anything they had going for them here on Door. “I mean, uh—well, I’ll have to ask Estrella about that before I can say one way or another. She’s gone off somewhere, I don’t know who with—”
“Was with I,” said Salt. “Has agreed pending confirmation. Now up to you.”
II
Salt had spent some eighteen months Outside, mostly on Peggys Planet, Estrella told him when she came back. “That’s where she learned English. Notice anything different about me?”
She pirouetted before him, waiting for a response. He didn’t have one, so he tried the standard male cop-out: “You look prettier than ever, hon.”
Estrella seemed resigned. “Not me, I mean. My dress. Salt helped me let it out, out of human-being clothes she brought home from Peggys Planet. Do you like it?”
“Of course I do,” Stan said, doing his best to be reasonable, “but is that what we want to talk about right now?”
“Not if you don’t want to. I was just thinking that, you know, you’ve never seen me in a real dress before. Salt has lots of them, too. You can see them on the ship.”
Stan didn’t have to say, What do you mean, on the ship? What ship? The expression on his face said it for him, and Estrella answered just as though he had asked it out loud. “The ship to Forested Planet of Warm Old Star Twenty-Four, of course. I’m sure we’ll like it.” She paused, then remembered the other thing she wanted to tell him. “Oh, yes. Salt says it’s a big ship. Big enough so that you and I will have a room of our own.”