Gateway (Heechee Saga)
(fragment)
The man who opened the door seemed as tall as I, but was not. His eyes were on a level with my own. But he stopped at the waist. He had no legs.
He said something, but I didn't understand it; it wasn't in English. It wouldn't have mattered. My attention was taken up with him. He wore gauzy bright fabric strapped from wrists to waist, and he fluttered the wings gently to stay in the air. It wasn't hard, in Gateway's low-G. But it was surprising to see. I said, "I'm sorry. I just wanted to know how to get to Level Tanya." I was trying not to stare, but I wasn't succeeding.
He smiled, white teeth in an unlined, old face. He had jet eyes under a crest of short white hair. He pushed past me out into the corridor and said in excellent English, "Certainly. Take the first turning on your right. Go to the next star, and take the second turning on your left. It'll be marked." He indicated with his chin the direction toward the star.
I thanked him and left him floating behind me. I wanted to turn back, but it didn't seem good manners. It was strange. It hadn't occurred to me that there would be any cripples on Gateway.
That's how naive I was then.
Having seen him, I knew Gateway in a way I had not known it from the statistics. The statistics are clear enough, and we all studied them, all of us who came up as prospectors, and all of that vastly larger number who only wished they could. About eighty percent of flights from Gateway come up empty. About fifteen percent don't come back at all. So one person in twenty, on the average, comes back from a prospecting trip with something that Gateway -- that mankind in general -- can make a profit on. Most of even those are lucky if they collect enough to pay their costs for getting here in the first place.
And if you get hurt while you're out . . . well, that's tough. Terminal Hospital is about as well equipped as any anywhere. But you have to get there for it to do you any good. You can be months in transit. If you get hurt at the other end of your trip -- and that's where it usually happens -- there's not much that can be done for you until you get back to Gateway. By then it can be too late to make you whole, and likely enough too late to keep you alive.
There's no charge for a return trip to where you came from, by the way. The rockets always come up fuller than they return. They call it wastage.
The return trip is free . . . but to what?
|
