The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Colors of Space, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Title: The Colors of Space
Author: Marion Zimmer Bradley
Release Date: March 11, 2007 [EBook #20796]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLORS OF SPACE ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
_A Juvenile Science Fiction Novel_
THE COLORS OF SPACE
Marion Zimmer Bradley
MONARCH BOOKS, INC.
Derby, Connecticut
Published in August, 1963
Copyright 1963 by Marion Zimmer Bradley
[Transcriber's note: This is a rule 6 clearance. PG has not been able
to find a copyright renewal.]
_Cover Painting by Ralph Brillhart_
Monarch Books are published by MONARCH BOOKS, INC., Capital Building,
Derby, Connecticut, and represent the works of outstanding novelists and
writers of non-fiction especially chosen for their literary merit and
reading entertainment.
Printed in the United States of America
All Rights Reserved
To
DAVID STEPHEN
SUDDEN PANIC
It was a week before the Lhari ship went into warp-drive, and all that
time young Bart Steele had stayed in his cabin. He was so bored with his
own company that the Mentorian medic was a welcome sight when he came to
prepare him for _cold-sleep_.
The Mentorian paused, needle in hand. "Do you wish to be wakened for the
time we shall spend in each of the three star systems, sir? You can, of
course, be given enough drug to keep you in cold-sleep until we reach
your destination."
Bart felt tempted--he wanted very much to see the other star systems.
But he couldn't risk meeting other passengers.
The needle went into his arm. In sudden panic, he realized he was
helpless. The ship would touch down on three worlds, and on any of them
the Lhari might have his description, or his alias! He could be taken
off, unconscious, and might never wake up! He tried to move, to protest,
but he couldn't. There was a freezing moment of intense cold and then
nothing....
CHAPTER ONE
The Lhari spaceport didn't belong on Earth.
Bart Steele had thought that, a long time ago, when he first saw it. He
had been just a kid then; twelve years old, and all excited about seeing
Earth for the first time--Earth, the legendary home of mankind before
the Age of Space, the planet of Bart's far-back ancestors. And the first
thing he'd seen on Earth, when he got off the starship, was the Lhari
spaceport.
And he'd thought, right then, _It doesn't belong on Earth._
He'd said so to his father, and his father's face had gone strange,
bitter and remote.
"A lot of people would agree with you, Son," Captain Rupert Steele had
said softly. "The trouble is, if the Lhari spaceport wasn't on Earth, we
wouldn't be on Earth either. Remember that."
Bart remembered it, five years later, as he got off the strip of moving
sidewalk. He turned to wait for Tommy Kendron, who was getting his
baggage off the center strip of the moving roadway. Bart Steele and
Tommy Kendron had graduated together, the day before, from the Space
Academy of Earth. Now Tommy, who had been born on the ninth planet of
the star Capella, was taking the Lhari starship to his faraway home, and
Bart's father was coming back to Earth, on the same starship, to meet
his son.
_Five years,_ Bart thought. _That's a long time. I wonder if Dad will
know me?_
"Let me give you a hand with that stuff, Tommy."
"I can manage," Tommy chuckled, hefting the plastic cases. "They don't
allow you much baggage weight on the Lhari ships. Certainly not more
than I can handle."
The two lads stood in front of the spaceport gate for a minute. Over the
gate, which was high and pointed and made of some clear colorless
material like glass, was a jagged symbol resembling a flash of
lightning; the sign, in Lhari language, for the home world of the Lhari.
They walked through the pointed glass gate, and stood for a moment, by
mutual consent, looking down over the vast expanse of the Lhari
spaceport.
This had once been a great desert. Now it was all floored in with some
strange substance that was neither glass, metal nor concrete; it looked
like gleaming crystal--though it felt soft underfoot--and in the glare
of the noonday sun, it gave back the glare in a million rainbow flashes.
Tommy put his hands up to his eyes to shield them. "The Lhari must have
funny eyes, if they can stand all this glare!"
Inside the glass gate, a man in a guard's uniform gave them each a pair
of dark glasses. "Put them on now, boys. And don't look directly at the
ship when it lands."
Tommy hooked the earpieces of the dark glasses over his ears, and sighed
with relief. Bart frowned, but finally put them on. Bart's mother had
been a Mentorian--from the planet Mentor, of the star Deneb, a hundred
times brighter than the sun. Bart had her eyes. But Mentorians weren't
popular on Earth, and Bart had learned to be quiet about his mother.
Through the dark lenses, the glare was only a pale gleam. Far out in the
very center of the spaceport, a high, clear-glass skyscraper rose,
catching the sunlight in a million colors. Around the building, small
copters and robotcabs veered, discharging passengers; and the moving
sidewalks were crowded with people coming and going. Here and there in
the crowd, standing out because of their height and the silvery metallic
cloaks they wore, were the strange tall figures of the Lhari.
"Well, how about going down?" Tommy glanced impatiently at his
timepiece. "Less than half an hour before the starship touches down."
"All right. We can get a sidewalk over here." Reluctantly, Bart tore his
eyes from the fascinating spectacle, and followed Tommy, stepping onto
one of the sidewalks. It bore them down a long, sloping ramp toward the
floor of the spaceport, then sped toward the glass skyscraper; came to
rest at the wide pointed doors, depositing them in the midst of the
crowd. The jagged lightning flash was there over the doors of the
building, and the words:
HERE, BY THE GRACE OF THE LHARI, IS THE DOORWAY TO ALL THE STARS.
Bart remembered, as if it were yesterday, how he and his father had
first passed through this doorway. And his father, looking up, had said
under his breath "Not for always, Son. Someday men will have a doorway
to the stars, and the Lhari won't be standing in the door."
Inside the building, it was searingly bright. The high open rotunda was
filled with immense mirrors, and glass ramps running up and down, moving
staircases, confusing signs and flashing lights on tall oddly shaped
pillars. The place was crowded with men from all over the planet, but
the dark glasses they all wore gave them a strange sort of family
resemblance.
Tommy said, "I'd better check my reservations."
Bart nodded. "Meet you on the upper level later," he said, and got on a
moving staircase that soared slowly upward, past level after level,
toward the information desk located on the topmost mezzanine.
The staircase moved slowly, and Bart had plenty of time to see
everything. On the step immediately in front of him, two Lhari were
standing; with their backs turned, they might almost have been men.
Unusually tall, unusually thin, but men. Then Bart amended that
mentally. The Lhari had two arms, two legs and a head apiece--they were
that much like men. Their faces had two eyes, two ears, and a nose and
mouth, all in the right places. But the similarity ended there.
They had skin of a curious pale silvery gray, and pale, pure-white hair
rising in what looked like a feathery crest. The eyes were long and
slanting, the forehead high and narrow, the nose delicately thin and
chiseled with long vertically slit nostrils, the ears long, pointed and
lobeless. The mouth looked almost human, though the chin was abnormally
pointed. The hands would almost have passed inspection as human
hands--except for the long, triangular nails curved over the fingertips
like the claws of a cat. They wore skin-tight clothes of some metallic
silky stuff, and long flowing gleaming silvery capes. They looked
unearthly, elfin and strange, and in their own way they were beautiful.
The two Lhari in front of Bart had been talking softly, in their fast
twittering speech; but as the hum of the crowds on the upper levels grew
louder, they raised their voices, and Bart could hear what they were
saying. He was a little surprised to find that he could still understand
the Lhari language. He hadn't heard a word of it in years--not since his
Mentorian mother died. The Lhari would never guess that he could
understand their speech. Not one human in a million could speak or
understand a dozen words of Lhari, except the Mentorians.
"Do you really think that _human_--" the first Lhari spoke the word as
if it were a filthy insult--"will have the temerity to come in by this
ship?"
"No reasonable being can tell what _humans_ will do," said the second
Lhari. "But then, no reasonable being can tell what our own Port
Authorities will do either! If the message had only reached us sooner,
it would have been easier. Now I suppose it will have to clear through a
dozen officials and a dozen different kinds of formalities."
The younger Lhari sounded angry. "And we have only a description--no
name, nothing! How do they expect us to do anything under those
conditions? What I can't understand is how it ever happened, or how the
man managed to get away. What worries me is the possibility that he may
have communicated with others we don't know about. Those bungling fools
who let the first man get away can't even be sure--"
"Do not speak of it here," said the old Lhari sharply. "There are
Mentorians in the crowd who might understand us." He turned and looked
straight at Bart, and Bart felt as if the slanted strange eyes were
looking right through to his bones. The Lhari said, in Universal, "Who
are you, boy? What iss your businesssses here?"
Bart replied in the same language, politely, "My father's coming in on
this ship. I'm looking for the information desk."
"Up there," said the old Lhari, pointing with a clawed hand, and lost
interest in Bart. He said to his companion, in their own language,
"Always, I regret these episodes. I have no malice against humans. I
suppose even this Vegan that we are seeking has young, and a mate, who
will regret his loss."
"Then he should not have pried into Lhari matters," said the younger
Lhari fiercely. "If they'd killed him right away--"
The soaring staircase swooped up to the top level; the two Lhari stepped
off and mingled swiftly with the crowd, being lost to sight. Bart
whistled in dismay as he got off and turned toward the information desk.
A Vegan! Some poor guy from his own planet was in trouble with the
Lhari. He felt a cold, crawling chill down his insides. The Lhari had
spoken regretfully, but the way they'd speak of a fly they couldn't
manage to swat fast enough. Sooner or later you had to get down to it,
they just weren't human!
Here on Earth, nothing much could happen, of course. They wouldn't let
the Lhari hurt anyone--then Bart remembered his course in Universal Law.
The Lhari spaceport in every system, by treaty, was Lhari territory.
Once you walked beneath the lightning-flash sign, the authority of the
planet ceased to function; you might as well be on that unbelievably
remote world in another galaxy that was the Lhari home planet--that
world no human had ever seen. On a Lhari spaceport, or on a Lhari ship,
you were under the jurisdiction of Lhari law.
Tommy stepped off a moving stair and joined him. "The ship's on time--it
reported past Luna City a few minutes ago. I'm thirsty--how about a
drink?"
There was a refreshment stand on this level; they debated briefly
between orange juice and a drink with a Lhari name that meant simply
_cold sweet_, and finally decided to try it. The name proved
descriptive; it was very cold, very sweet and indescribably delicious.
"Does this come from the Lhari world, I wonder?"
"I imagine it's synthetic," Bart said.
"I suppose it won't _hurt_ us?"
Bart laughed. "They wouldn't serve it to us if it would. No, men and
Lhari are alike in a lot of ways. They breathe the same air. Eat about
the same food." Their bodies were adjusted to about the same gravity.
They had the same body chemistry--in fact, you couldn't tell Lhari blood
from human, even under a microscope. And in the terrible Orion Spaceport
wreck sixty years ago, doctors had found that blood plasma from humans
could be used for wounded Lhari, and vice versa, though it wasn't safe
to transfuse whole blood. But then, even among humans there were five
blood types.
And yet, for all their likeness, they were _different_.
Bart sipped the cold Lhari drink, seeing himself in the mirror behind
the refreshment stand; a tall teen-ager, looking older than his
seventeen years. He was lithe and well muscled from five years of sports
and acrobatics at the Space Academy, he had curling red hair and gray
eyes, and he was almost as tall as a Lhari.
_Will Dad know me? I was just a little kid when he left me here, and now
I'm grown-up._
Tommy grinned at him in the mirror. "What are you going to do, now we've
finished our so-called education?"
"What do you think? Go back to Vega with Dad, by Lhari ship, and help
him run Vega Interplanet. Why else would I bother with all that
astrogation and math?"
"You're the lucky one, with your father owning a dozen ships! He must be
almost as rich as the Lhari."
Bart shook his head. "It's not that easy. Space travel inside a system
these days is small stuff; all the real travel and shipping goes to the
Lhari ships."
It was a sore point with everyone. Thousands of years ago, men had
spread out from Earth--first to the planets, then to the nearer stars,
crawling in ships that could travel no faster than the speed of light.
They had even believed that was an absolute limit--that nothing in the
universe could exceed the speed of light. It took years to go from Earth
to the nearest star.
But they'd done it. From the nearer stars, they had sent out colonizing
ships all through the galaxy. Some vanished and were never heard from
again, but some made it, and in a few centuries man had spread all over
hundreds of star-systems.
And then man met the people of the Lhari.
It was a big universe, with measureless millions of stars, and plenty of
room for more than two intelligent civilizations. It wasn't surprising
that the Lhari, who had only been traveling space for a couple of
thousand years themselves, had never come across humans before. But they
had been delighted to meet another intelligent race--and it was
extremely profitable.
Because men were still held, mostly, to the planets of their own
star-systems. Ships traveling between the stars by light-drive were rare
and ruinously expensive. But the Lhari had the warp-drive, and almost
overnight the whole picture changed. By warp-drive, hundreds of times
faster than light at peak, the years-long trip between Vega and Earth,
for instance, was reduced to about three months, at a price anyone could
pay. Mankind could trade and travel all over their galaxy, but they did
it on Lhari ships. The Lhari had an absolute, unbreakable monopoly on
star travel.
"That's what hurts," Tommy said. "It wouldn't do us any good to have the
star-drive. Humans can't stand faster-than-light travel, except in
cold-sleep."
Bart nodded. The Lhari ships traveled at normal speeds, like the regular
planetary ships, inside each star-system. Then, at the borders of the
vast gulf of emptiness between stars, they went into warp-drive; but
first, every human on board was given the cold-sleep treatment that
placed them in suspended animation, allowing their bodies to endure the
warp-drive.
He finished his drink. The increasing bustle in the crowds below them
told him that time must be getting short. A tall, impressive-looking
Lhari strode through the crowd, followed at a respectful distance by two
Mentorians, tall, redheaded humans wearing metallic cloaks like those of
the Lhari. Tommy nudged Bart, his face bitter.
"Look at those lousy Mentorians! How can they do it? Fawning upon the
Lhari that way, yet they're as human as we are! _Slaves_ of the Lhari!"
Bart felt the involuntary surge of anger, instantly controlled. "It's
not that way at all. My mother was a Mentorian, remember. She made five
cruises on a Lhari ship before she married my father."
Tommy sighed. "I guess I'm just jealous--to think the Mentorians can
sign on the Lhari ship as crew, while you and I will never pilot a ship
between the stars. What did she do?"
"She was a mathematician. Before the Lhari met up with men, they used a
system of mathematics as clumsy as the old Roman numerals. You have to
admire them, when you realize that they learned stellar navigation with
their old system, though most ships use human math now. And of course,
you know their eyes aren't like ours. Among other things, they're
color-blind. They see everything in shades of black or white or gray.
"So they found out that humans aboard their ships were useful. You
remember how humans, in the early days in space, used certain birds, who
were more sensitive to impure air than they were. When the birds keeled
over, they could tell it was time for humans to start looking over the
air systems! The Lhari use Mentorians to identify colors for them. And,
since Mentor was the first planet of humans that the Lhari had contact
with, they've always been closer to them."
Tommy looked after the two Mentorians enviously. "The fact is, I'd ship
out with the Lhari myself if I could. Wouldn't you?"
Bart's mouth twisted in a wry smile. "No," he said. "I could--I'm half
Mentorian, I can even speak Lhari."
"Why don't you? I would."
"Oh, no, you wouldn't," Bart said softly. "Not even very many Mentorians
will. You see, the Lhari don't trust humans too much. In the early days,
men were always planting spies on Lhari ships, to try and steal the
secret of warp-drive. They never managed it, but nowadays the Lhari give
all the Mentorians what amounts to a brainwashing--deep hypnosis, before
and after every voyage, so that they can neither look for anything that
might threaten the Lhari monopoly of space, nor reveal it--even under a
truth drug--if they find it out.
"You have to be pretty fanatical about space travel to go through that.
Oh, my mother could tell us a lot of things about her cruises with the
Lhari. The Lhari can't tell a diamond from a ruby, except by
spectrographic analysis, for instance. And she--"
A high gong note sounded somewhere, touching off an explosion of warning
bells and buzzers all over the enormous building. Bart looked up.
"The ship must be coming in to land."
"I'd better check into the passenger side," Tommy said. He stuck out his
hand. "Well, Bart, I guess this is where we say good-bye."
They shook hands, their eyes meeting for a moment in honest grief. In
some indefinable way, this parting marked the end of their boyhood.
"Good luck, Tom. I'm going to miss you."
They wrung each other's hands again, hard. Then Tommy picked up his
luggage and started down a sloping ramp toward an enclosure marked TO
PASSENGER ENTRANCE.
Warning bells rang again. The glare intensified until the glow in the
sky was unendurable, but Bart looked anyhow, making out the strange
shape of the Lhari ship from the stars.
It was huge and strange, glowing with colors Bart had never seen before.
It settled down slowly, softly: enormous, silent, vibrating, glowing;
then swiftly faded to white-hot, gleaming blue, dulling down through the
visible spectrum to red. At last it was just gleaming glassy Lhari-metal
color again. High up in the ship's side a yawning gap slid open,
extruding stairsteps, and men and Lhari began to descend.
Bart ran down a ramp and surged out on the field with the crowd. His
eyes, alert for his father's tall figure, noted with surprise that the
ship's stairs were guarded by four cloaked Lhari, each with a Mentorian
interpreter. They were stopping each person who got off the starship,
asking for identity papers. Bart realized he was seeing another segment
of the same drama he had overheard discussed, and wished he knew what it
was all about.
The crowd was thinning now. Robotcabs were swerving in, hovering above
the ground to pick up passengers, then veering away. The gap in the
starship's side was closing, and still Bart had not seen the tall, slim,
flame-haired figure of his father. The port on the other side of the
ship, he knew, was for loading passengers. Bart moved carefully through
the thinning crowd, almost to the foot of the stairs. One of the Lhari
checking papers stopped and fixed him with an inscrutable gray stare,
but finally turned away again.
Bart began really to worry. Captain Steele would never miss his ship!
But he saw only one disembarking passenger who had not yet been
surrounded by a group of welcoming relatives, or summoned a robotcab and
gone. The man was wearing Vegan clothes, but he wasn't Bart's father. He
was a fat little man, with ruddy cheeks and a fringe of curling gray
hair all around his bald dome. _Maybe he'd know if there was another
Vegan on the ship._
Then Bart realized that the little fat man was staring straight at him.
He returned the man's smile, rather hesitantly; then blinked, for the
fat man was coming straight toward him.
"Hello, Son," the fat man said loudly. Then, as two of the Lhari started
toward him, the strange man did an incredible thing. He reached out his
two hands and grabbed Bart.
"Well, boy, you've sure grown," he said, in a loud, cheerful voice, "but
you're not too grown-up to give your old Dad a good hug, are you?" He
pulled Bart roughly into his arms. Bart started to pull away and stammer
that the fat man had made a mistake, but the pudgy hand gripped his
wrist with unexpected strength.
"Bart, listen to me," the stranger whispered, in a harsh fast voice. "Go
along with this or we're both dead. See those two Lhari watching us?
Call me Dad, good and loud, if you want to live. Because, believe me,
your life's in danger--right now!"
CHAPTER TWO
For a moment, pulled off balance in the fat stranger's hug, Bart
remained perfectly still, while the man repeated in that loud, jovial
voice, "How you've grown!" He let him go, stepping away a pace or two,
and whispered urgently, "Say something. And take that stupid look off
your face."
As he stepped back, Bart saw his eyes. In the chubby, good-natured red
face, the stranger's eyes were half-mad with fear.
In a split second, Bart remembered the two Lhari and their talk of a
fugitive. In that moment, Bart Steele grew up.
He stepped toward the man and took him quickly by the shoulders.
"Dad, you sure surprised me," he said, trying to keep his voice from
shaking. "Been such a long time, I'd--half forgotten what you looked
like. Have a good trip?"
"About like always." The fat man was breathing hard, but his voice
sounded firm and cheerful. "Can't compare with a trip on the old
_Asterion_ though." The _Asterion_ was the flagship of Vega Interplanet,
Rupert Steele's own ship. "How's everything?"
Beads of sweat were standing out on the man's ruddy forehead, and his
grip on Bart's wrist was so hard it hurt. Bart, grasping at random for
something to say, gabbled, "Too bad you couldn't get to my graduation. I
made th-third in a class of four hundred--"
The Lhari had surrounded them and were closing in.
The fat man took a deep breath or two, said, "Just a minute, Son," and
turned around. "You want something?"
The tallest of the Lhari--the old one, whom Bart had seen on the
escalator--looked long and hard at him. When they spoke Universal, their
voices were sibilant, but not nearly so inhuman.
"Could we trrrouble you to sssshow us your paperrrssss?"
"Certainly." Nonchalantly, the fat man dug them out and handed them
over. Bart saw his father's name printed across the top.
The Lhari gestured to a Mentorian interpreter: "What colorrr isss thisss
man's hairrr?"
The Mentorian said in the Lhari language, "His hair is _gray_." He used
the Universal word; there were, of course, no words for colors in the
Lhari speech.
"The man we sssseek has hair of _red_," said the Lhari. "And he isss
tall, not fat."
"The boy is tall and with _red_ hair," the Mentorian volunteered, and
the old Lhari made a gesture of disdain.
"This boy is twenty years younger than the man whose description came to
us. Why did they not give us a picture or at least a name?" He turned to
the other Lhari and said in their own shrill speech, "I suspected this
man because he was alone. And I had seen this boy on the upper mezzanine
and spoken with him. We watched him, knowing sooner or later the father
would seek him. Ask him." He gestured and the Mentorian said, "Who is
this man, you?"
Bart gulped. For the first time he noted the energon-ray shockers at the
belts of the four Lhari. He'd heard about those. They could stun--or
they could kill, and quite horribly. He said, "This is my father. You
want my cards, too?" He hauled out his identity papers. "My name's Bart
Steele."
The Lhari, with a gesture of disgust, handed them back. "Go, then,
father and son," he said, not unkindly.
"Let's get going, Son," said the little bald man. His hand shook on
Bart's, and Bart thought, _If we're lucky, we can get out of the port
before he faints dead away._ He said "I'll get a copter," and then,
feeling sorry for the stranger, gave him his arm to lean on. He didn't
know whether he was worried or scared. _Where was his father?_ Why did
this man have his dad's papers? Was his father hiding inside the Lhari
ship? He wanted to run, to burst away from the imposter, but the guy was
shaking so hard Bart couldn't just leave him standing there. If the
Lhari got him, he was a dead duck.
A copter swooped down, the pilot signaling. The little man said
hoarsely, "No. Robotcab."
Bart waved the copter away, getting a dirty look from the pilot, and
punched a button at the stand for one of the unmanned robotcabs. It
swung down, hovered motionless. Bart boosted the fat man in. Inside, the
man collapsed on the seat, leaning back, puffing, his hand pressed hard
to his chest.
"Punch a combo for Denver," he said hoarsely.
Bart obeyed, automatically. Then he turned on the man.
"It's your game, mister! Now tell me what's going on? _Where's my
father?_"
The man's eyes were half-shut. He said, gasping, "Don't ask me any
questions for a minute." He thumbed a tablet into his mouth, and
presently his breathing quieted.
"We're safe--for the minute. Those Lhari would have cut us down."
"You, maybe. I haven't done anything. Look, you," Bart said in sudden
rage, "you owe me some explanations. For all I know, you're a criminal
and the Lhari have every right to chase you! Why have you got my
father's papers? Did you steal them to get away from the Lhari? _Where's
my father?_"
"It's your father they were looking for, you young fool," said the man,
gasping hard. "Lucky they had only a description and not a name--but
they've probably got that by now, uncoded. We've only confused them for
a little while. But if you hadn't played along, they'd have had you
watched, and when they get hold of the name Steele--they will, sooner or
later, the people in the Procyon system--"
_"Where is my father?"_
"I hope I don't know," the fat man said. "If he's still where I left
him, he's dead. My name is Briscoe. Edmund Briscoe. Your father saved my
life years ago, never mind how. The less you know, the safer you'll be
for a while. His major worry just now is about you. He was afraid, if he
didn't turn up here, you'd take the first ship back to Vega. So he gave
me his papers and sent me to warn you--"
Bart shook his head. "It all sounds phony as can be. How do I know
whether to believe you or not?" His hand hovered over the robotcab
controls. "We're going straight to the police. If you're okay, they
won't turn you over to the Lhari. If you're not--"
"You young fool," said the fat man, with feeble violence, "there's no
_time_ for all that! Ask me questions--I can prove I know your father!"
"What was my mother's name?"
"Oh, God," Briscoe said, "I never saw her. I knew your father long
before you were born. Until he told me, I never knew he'd married or
had a son. I'd never have known you, except that you're the living
image--" He shook his head helplessly, and his breathing sounded hoarse.
"Bart, I'm a sick man, I'm going to die. I want to do what I came here
to do, because your father saved my life once when I was young and
healthy, and gave me twenty good years before I got old and fat and
sick. Win or lose, I won't live to see you hunted down like a dog, like
my own son--"
"Don't talk like that," Bart said, a creepy feeling coming over him. "If
you're sick, let me take you to a doctor."
Briscoe did not even hear. "Wait, there is something else. Your father
said, 'Tell Bart I've gone looking for the Eighth Color. Bart will know
what I mean.'"
"That's crazy. I don't know--"
He broke off, for the memory had come, full-blown:
_He was very young: five, six, seven. His mother, tall and slender and
very fair, was bending over a blueprint, pointing with a delicate finger
at something, straightening, saying in her light musical voice:_
_"The fuel catalyst--it's a strange color, a color you never saw
anywhere. Can you_ think _of a color that isn't red, orange, yellow,
green, blue, violet, indigo or some combination of them? It isn't any of
the colors of the spectrum at all. The fuel is a real eighth color."_
_And his father had used the phrase, almost adopted it. "When we know
what the eighth color is, we'll have the secret of the star-drive,
too!"_
Briscoe saw his face change, nodded weakly. "I see it means something to
you. Now will you do as I tell you? Within a couple of hours, they'll be
combing the planet for you, but by that time the ship I came in on will
have taken off again. They only stop a short time here, for mail,
passengers--no cargo. They may get under way again before all messages
are cleared and decoded." He stopped and breathed hard. "The Earth
authorities might protect you, but you would never be able to board a
Lhari ship again--and that would mean staying on Earth for the rest of
your life. You've got to get away before they start comparing notes.
Here." His hand went into his pockets. "For your hair. It's a dye--a
spray."
He pressed a button on the bulb in his hand; Bart gasped, feeling cold
wetness on his head. His own hand came away stained black.
"Keep still." Briscoe said irritably. "You'll need it at the Procyon end
of the run. Here." He stuck some papers into Bart's hand, then punched
some buttons on the robotcab's control. It wheeled and swerved so
rapidly that Bart fell against the fat man's shoulder.
"Are you crazy? What are you going to do?"
Briscoe looked straight into Bart's eyes. In his hoarse, sick voice, he
said, "Bart, don't worry about me. It's all over for me, whatever
happens. Just remember this. What your father is doing is _worth_ doing,
and if you start stalling, arguing, demanding explanations, you can foul
up a hundred people--and kill about half of them."
He closed Bart's fingers roughly over the papers. The robotcab hovered
over the spaceport. "Now listen to me, very carefully. When I stop the
cab, down below, jump out. Don't stop to say good-bye, or ask questions,
or anything else. Just get out, walk straight through the passenger door
and straight up the ramp of the ship. Show them that ticket, and get on.
Whatever happens, don't let anything stop you. Bart!" Briscoe shook his
shoulder. "Promise! Whatever happens, you'll _get on that ship_!"
Bart swallowed, feeling as if he'd been shoved into a silly
cops-and-robbers game. But Briscoe's urgency had convinced him. "Where
am I going?"
"All I have is a name--Raynor Three," Briscoe said, "and the message
about the Eighth Color. That's all I know." His mouth twisted again in
that painful gasp.
The cab swooped down. Bart found his voice. "But what then? Is Dad
there? Will I know--"
"I don't know any more than I've told you," Briscoe said. Abruptly the
robotcab came to a halt, swaying a little. Briscoe jerked the door open,
gave Bart a push, and Bart found himself stumbling out on the ramp
beside the spaceport building. He caught his balance, looked around, and
realized that the robotcab was already climbing the sky again.
Immediately before him, neon letters spelled TO PASSENGER ENTRANCE
ONLY. Bart stumbled forward. The Lhari by the gate thrust out a
disinterested claw. Bart held up what Briscoe had shoved into his hand,
only now seeing that it was a thin wallet, a set of identity papers and a
strip of pink tickets.
"Procyon Alpha. Corridor B, straight through." The Lhari gestured, and
Bart went through the narrow passageway, came out at the other end, and
found himself at the very base of a curving stair that led up and up
toward a door in the side of the huge Lhari ship. Bart hesitated. In
another minute he'd be on his way to a strange sun and a strange world,
on what might well be the wild-goose chase of all time.
Passengers were crowding the steps behind him. Someone shouted suddenly,
"Look at that!" and someone else yelled, "Is that guy crazy?"
Bart looked up. A robotcab was swooping over the spaceport in wild,
crazy circles, dipping down, suddenly making a dart like an enraged wasp
at a little nest of Lhari. They ducked and scattered; the robotcab
swerved away, hovered, swooped back. This time it struck one of the
Lhari grazingly with landing gear and knocked him sprawling. Bart stood
with his mouth open, as if paralyzed.
_Briscoe! What was he doing?_
The fallen Lhari lay without moving. The robotcab moved in again, as if
for the kill, buzzing viciously overhead.
Then a beam of light arced from one of the drawn energon-ray tubes. The
robotcab glowed briefly red, then seemed to sag, sink together; then
puddled, a slag heap of molten metal, on the glassy floor of the port. A
little moan of horror came from the crowd, and Bart felt a sudden,
wrenching sickness. It had been like a game, a silly game of cops and
robbers, and suddenly it was as serious as melted death lying there on
the spaceport. _Briscoe!_
Someone shoved him and said, "Come on, quit gawking, kid. They won't
hold the ship all day just because some nut finds a new way to commit
suicide."
Bart, his legs numb, walked up the ramp. Briscoe had died to give him
this chance. Now it was up to him to make it worth having.
CHAPTER THREE
At the top of the ramp, a Lhari glanced briefly at his papers, motioned
him through. Bart passed through the airlock, and into a brightly lit
corridor half full of passengers. The line was moving slowly, and for
the first time Bart had a chance to think.
He had never seen violent death before. In this civilized world, you
didn't. He knew if he thought about Briscoe, he'd start bawling like a
baby, so he swallowed hard a couple of times, set his chin, and
concentrated on the trip to Procyon Alpha. That meant this ship was
outbound on the Aldebaran run--Proxima Centauri, Sirius, Pollux,
Procyon, Capella and Aldebaran.
The line of passengers was disappearing through a doorway. A woman ahead
of Bart turned and said nervously, "We won't be put into cold-sleep
right away, will we?"
He reassured her, remembering his inbound trip five years ago. "No, no.
The ship won't go into warp-drive until we're well past Pluto. It will
be several days, at least."
Beyond the doorway the lights dwindled, and a Mentorian interpreter took
his dark glasses, saying, "Kindly remove your belt, shoes and other
accessories of leather or metal before stepping into the decontamination
chamber. They will be separately decontaminated and returned to you.
Papers, please."
With a small twinge of fright, Bart surrendered them. Would the
Mentorian ask why he was carrying two wallets? Inside the other one, he
still had his Academy ID card which identified him as Bart Steele, and
if the Mentorian looked through them to check, and found out he was
carrying two sets of identity papers....
But the Mentorian merely dumped all his pocket paraphernalia, without
looking at it, into a sack. "Just step through here."
Holding up his trousers with both hands, Bart stepped inside the
indicated cubicle. It was filled with faint bluish light. Bart felt a
strong tingling and a faint electrical smell, and along his forearms
there was a slight prickling where the small hairs were all standing on
end. He knew that the invisible R-rays were killing all the
microorganisms in his body, so that no disease germ or stray fungus
would be carried from planet to planet.
The bluish light died. Outside, the Mentorian gave him back his shoes
and belt, handed him the paper sack of his belongings, and a paper cup
full of greenish fluid.
"Drink this."
"What is it?"
The medic said patiently, "Remember, the R-rays killed _all_ the
microorganisms in your body, including the good ones--the antibodies
that protect you against disease, and the small yeasts and bacteria that
live in your intestines and help in the digestion of your food. So we
have to replace those you need to stay healthy. See?"
The green stuff tasted a little brackish, but Bart got it down all
right. He didn't much like the idea of drinking a solution of "germs,"
but he knew that was silly. There was a big difference between disease
germs and helpful bacteria.
Another Mentorian official, this one a young woman, gave him a key with
a numbered tag, and a small booklet with WELCOME ABOARD printed
on the cover.
The tag was numbered 246-B, which made Bart raise his eyebrows. B class
was normally too expensive for Bart's father's modest purse. It wasn't
quite the luxury class A, reserved for planetary governors and
ambassadors, but it was plenty luxurious. Briscoe had certainly sent him
traveling in style!
B Deck was a long corridor with oval doors; Bart found one numbered 246,
and, not surprisingly, the key opened it. It was a pleasant little
cabin, measuring at least six feet by eight, and he would evidently have
it to himself. There was a comfortably big bunk, a light that could be
turned on and off instead of the permanent glow-walls of the cheaper
class, a private shower and toilet, and a placard on the walls informing
him that passengers in B class had the freedom of the Observation Dome
and the Recreation Lounge. There was even a row of buttons dispensing
synthetic foods, in case a passenger preferred privacy or didn't want to
wait for meals in the dining hall.
A buzzer sounded and a Mentorian voice announced, "Five minutes to Room
Check. Passengers will please remove all metal in their clothing, and
deposit in the lead drawers. Passengers will please recline in their
bunks and fasten the retaining straps before the steward arrives.
Repeat, passengers will please...."
Bart took off his belt, stuck it and his cuff links in the drawer and
lay down. Then, in a sudden panic, he got up again. His papers as Bart
Steele were still in the sack. He got them out, and with a feeling as if
he were crossing a bridge and burning it after him, tore up every scrap
of paper that identified him as Bart Steele of Vega Four, graduate of
the Space Academy of Earth. Now, for better or worse, he was--who _was_
he? He hadn't even looked at the new papers Briscoe had given him!
He glanced through them quickly. They were made out to David Warren
Briscoe, of Aldebaran Four. According to them, David Briscoe was twenty
years old, hair black, eyes hazel, height six foot one inch. Bart
wondered, painfully, if Briscoe had a son and if David Briscoe knew
where his father was. There was also a license, validated with four runs
on the Aldebaran Intrasatellite Cargo Company--planetary ships--with the
rank of Apprentice Astrogator; and a considerable sum of money.
Bart put the papers in his pants pocket and the torn-up scraps of his
old ones into the trashbin before he realized that they looked exactly
like what they were--torn-up legal identity papers and a broken plastic
card. _Nobody_ destroyed identity papers for any good reason. What could
he do?
Then he remembered something from the Academy. Starships were
closed-system cycles, no waste was discarded, but everything was
collected in big chemical tanks, broken down to separate elements,
purified and built up again into new materials. He threw the paper into
the toilet, worked the plastic card back and forth, back and forth until
he had wrenched it into inch-wide bits, and threw it after them.
The cabin door opened and a Mentorian said irritably, "Please lie down
and fasten your straps. I haven't all day."
Hastily Bart flushed the toilet and went to the bunk. Now everything
that could identify him as Bart Steele was on its way to the breakdown
tanks. Before long, the complex hydrocarbons and cellulose would all be
innocent little molecules of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen; they might turn
up in new combinations as sugar on the table!
The Mentorian grumbled, "You young people think the rules mean everybody
but you," and strapped him far too tightly into the bunk. Bart felt
resentful; just because Mentorians could work on Lhari ships, did they
have to act as if they owned everybody?
When the man had gone, Bart drew a deep breath. Was he really doing the
right thing?
If he'd refused to get out of the robotcab--
If he'd driven Briscoe straight to the police--
Then maybe Briscoe would still be alive. And now it was too late.
A warning siren went off in the ship, rising to hysterical intensity.
Bart thought, incredulously, _this is really happening_. It felt like a
nightmare. His father a fugitive from the Lhari. Briscoe dead. He
himself traveling, with forged papers, to a star he'd never seen.
He braced himself, knowing the siren was the last warning before
takeoff. First there would be the hum of great turbines deep in the
ship, then the crushing surge of acceleration. He had made a dozen trips
inside the solar system, but no matter how often he did it, there was
the strange excitement, the little pinpoint of fear, like an exotic
taste, that was almost pleasant.
The door opened and Bart grabbed a fistful of bed-ticking as two Lhari
came into the room.
One of them said, in their strange shrill speech, "This boy is the right
age."
Bart froze.
"You're seeing spies in every corner, Ransell," said the other, then in
Universal, "Could we trrouble you for your paperesses, sirr?"
Bart, strapped down and helpless, moved his head toward the drawer,
hoping his face did not betray his fear. He watched the two Lhari riffle
through his papers with their odd pointed claws.
"What isss your planet?"
Bart bit his lip, hard--he had almost said, "Vega Four."
"Aldebaran Four."
The Lhari said in his own language, "We should have Margil in here. He
actually saw them."
The other replied, "But I saw the machine that disintegrated. I still
say there was enough protoplasm residue for two bodies."
Bart fought to keep his face perfectly straight.
"Did anyone come into your cabin?" The Lhari asked in Universal.
"Only the steward. Why? Is something wrong?"
"There iss some thought that a stowaway might be on boarrd. Of courrrse
we could not allow that, anyone not prrroperly prrotected would die in
the first shift into warp-drive."
"Just the steward," Bart said again. "A Mentorian."
The Lhari said, eying him keenly, "You are ill? Or discommoded?"
Bart grasped at random for an excuse. "That--that stuff the medic made
me drink made me feel--sort of sick."
"You may send for a medical officer after acceleration," said the Lhari
expressionlessly. "The summoning bell is at your left."
They turned and went out and Bart gulped. Lhari, in person, checking the
passenger decks! Normally you never saw one on board; just Mentorians.
The Lhari treated humans as if they were too dumb to bother about. Well,
at least for once someone was acting as if humans were worthy
antagonists. _We'll show them--someday!_
But he felt very alone, and scared....
A low hum rose, somewhere in the ship, and Bart grabbed ticking as he
felt the slow surge. Then a violent sense of pressure popped his ear
drums, weight crowded down on him like an elephant sitting on his chest,
and there was a horrible squashed sensation dragging his limbs out of
shape. It grew and grew. Bart lay still and sweated, trying to ease his
uncomfortable position, unable to move so much as a finger. The Lhari
ships hit 12 gravities in the first surge of acceleration. Bart felt as
if he were spreading out, under the weight, into a puddle of
flesh--_melted flesh like Briscoe's_--
Bart writhed and bit his lip till he could taste blood, wishing he were
young enough to bawl out loud.
Abruptly, it eased, and the blood started to flow again in his numbed
limbs. Bart loosened his straps, took a few deep breaths, wiped his
face--wringing wet, whether with sweat or tears he wasn't sure--and sat
up in his bunk. The loudspeaker announced, "Acceleration One is
completed. Passengers on A and B Decks are invited to witness the
passing of the Satellites from the Observation Lounge in half an hour."
Bart got up and washed his face, remembering that he had no luggage with
him, not so much as a toothbrush.
At the back of his mind, packed up in a corner, was the continuing worry
about his father, the horror at Briscoe's ghastly death, the fear of the
Lhari; but he slammed the lid firmly on them all. For the moment he was
safe. They might be looking for Bart Steele by now, but they weren't
looking for David Briscoe of Aldebaran. He might just as well relax and
enjoy the trip. He went down to the Observation Lounge.
It had been darkened, and one whole wall of the room was made of clear
quartzite. Bart drew a deep breath as the vast panorama of space opened
out before him.
They were receding from the sun at some thousands of miles a minute.
Swirling past the ship, gleaming in the reflected sunlight like iron
filings moving to the motion of a magnet, were the waves upon waves of
cosmic dust--tiny free electrons, ions, particles of gas; free of the
heavier atmosphere, themselves invisible, they formed in their billions
into bright clouds around the ship; pale, swirling veils of mist. And
through their dim shine, the brilliant flares of the fixed stars burned
clear and steady, so far away that even the hurling motion of the ship
could not change their positions.
One by one he picked out the constellations. Aldebaran swung on the
pendant chain of Taurus like a giant ruby. Orion strode across the sky,
a swirling nebula at his belt. Vega burned, cobalt blue, in the heart of
the Lyre.
Colors, colors! Inside the atmosphere of Earth's night, the stars had
been pale white sparks against black. Here, against the misty-pale
swirls of cosmic dust, they burned with color heaped on color; the
bloody burning crimson of Antares, the metallic gold of Capella, the
sullen pulsing of Betelgeuse. They burned, each with its own inward
flame and light, like handfuls of burning jewels flung by some giant
hand upon the swirling darkness. It was a sight Bart felt he could watch
forever and still be hungry to see; the never-changing, ever-changing
colors of space.
* * * * *
Behind him in the darkness, after a long time, someone said softly,
"Imagine being a Lhari and not being able to see anything out there but
bright or brighter light."
A bell rang melodiously in the ship and the passengers in the lounge
began to stir and move toward the door, to stretch limbs cramped like
Bart's by tranced watching, to talk quickly of ordinary things.
"I suppose that bell means dinner," said a vaguely familiar voice at
Bart's elbow. "Synthetics, I suppose, but at least we can all get
acquainted."
The light from the undarkened hall fell on their faces as they moved
toward the door. "Bart! Why, it can't be!"
In utter dismay, Bart looked down into the face of Tommy Kendron.
In the rush of danger, he had absolutely forgotten that Tommy Kendron
was on this ship--to make his alias useless; Tommy was looking at him in
surprise and delight.
"Why didn't you tell me, or did you and your father decide at the last
minute? Hey, it's great that we can go part way together, at least!"
Bart knew he must cut this short very quickly. He stepped out into the
full corridor light so that Tommy could see his black hair.
"I'm sorry, you're confusing me with someone else."
"Bart, come off it--" Tommy's voice died out. "Sorry, I'd have sworn you
were a friend of mine."
Bart wondered suddenly, had he done the wrong thing? He had a feeling he
might need a friend. Badly.
Well, it was too late now. He stared Tommy in the eye and said, "I've
never seen you before in my life."
Tommy looked deflated. He stepped back slightly, shaking his head.
"Never saw such a resemblance. Are you a Vegan?"
"No," Bart lied flatly. "Aldebaran. David Briscoe."
"Glad to know you, Dave." With undiscourageable friendliness, Tommy
stuck out a hand. "Say, that bell means dinner, why don't we go down
together? I don't know a soul on the ship, and it looks like
luck--running into a fellow who could be my best friend's twin brother."
Bart felt warmed and drawn, but sensibly he knew he could not keep up
the pretense. Sooner or later, he'd give himself away, use some habitual
phrase or gesture Tommy would recognize.
Should he take a chance--reveal himself to Tommy and ask him to keep
quiet? No. This wasn't a game. One man was already dead. He didn't want
Tommy to be next.
There was only one way out. He said coldly, "thank you, but I have other
things to attend to. I intend to be very busy all through the voyage."
He spun on his heel and walked away before he could see Tommy's eager,
friendly smile turn hurt and defensive.
Back in his cabin, he gloomily dialed some synthetic jellies, thinking
with annoyance of the anticipated good food of the dining room. He knew
he couldn't risk meeting Tommy again, and drearily resigned himself to
staying in his cabin. It looked like an awfully boring trip ahead.
It was. It was a week before the Lhari ship went into warp-drive, and
all that time Bart stayed in his cabin, not daring to go to the
observation Lounge or dining hall. He got tired of eating synthetics
(oh, they were nourishing enough, but they were altogether
uninteresting) and tired of listening to the tapes the room steward got
him from the ship's library. By the time they had been in space a week,
he was so bored with his own company that even the Mentorian medic was a
welcome sight when he came in to prepare him for cold-sleep.
Bart had had the best education on Earth, but he didn't know precisely
how the Lhari warp-drive worked. He'd been told that only a few of the
Lhari understood it, just as the man who flew a copter didn't need to
understand Newton's Three Laws of Motion in order to get himself back
and forth to work.
But he knew this much; when the ship generated the frequencies which
accelerated it beyond the speed of light, in effect the ship went into a
sort of fourth dimension, and came out of it a good many light-years
away. As far as Bart knew, no human being had ever survived warp-drive
except in the suspended animation which they called cold-sleep. While
the medic was professionally reassuring him and strapping him in his
bunk, Bart wondered what humans would do with the Lhari star-drive if
they had it. Well, he supposed they could use automation in their ships.
The Mentorian paused, needle in hand. "Do you wish to be wakened for the
week we shall spend in each of the Proxima, Sirius and Pollux systems,
sir? You can, of course, be given enough drug to keep you in cold-sleep
until we reach the Procyon system."
Bart wondered if the room steward had mentioned the passenger so bored
with the trip that he didn't even visit the Observation Lounge. He felt
tempted--he was getting awfully tired of staring at the walls. On the
other hand, he wanted very much to see the other star-systems. When he
passed through them on the trip to Earth, he'd been too young to pay
much attention.
Firmly he put the temptation aside. Better not to risk meeting other
passengers, Tommy especially, if he decided he couldn't take the
boredom.
The needle went into his arm. He felt himself sinking into sleep, and,
in sudden panic, realized that he was helpless. The ship would touch
down on three worlds, and on any of them the Lhari might have his
description, or his alias! He could be taken off, drugged and
unconscious, and might never wake up! He tried to move, to protest, to
tell them he was changing his mind, but already he was unable to speak.
There was a freezing moment of intense, painful cold. Then he was
floating in what felt like waves of cosmic dust, swirling many-colored
before his eyes. And then there was nothing, no color, nothing at all
except the nowhere night of sleep.
CHAPTER FOUR
Bart felt cold. He stirred, moved his head in drowsy protest; then
memory came flooding back, and in sudden panic he sat up, flinging out
his arms as if to ward away anyone who would lay hands on him.
"Easy!" said a soothing voice. A Mentorian--not the same Mentorian--bent
over him. "We have just entered the gravitational field of Procyon
planet Alpha, Mr. Briscoe. Touchdown in four hours."
Bart mumbled an apology.
"Think nothing of it. Quite a number of people who aren't used to the
cold-sleep drug suffer from minor lapses of memory. How do you feel
now?"
Bart's legs were numb and his hands tingled when he sat up; but his body
processes had been slowed so much by the cold-sleep that he didn't even
feel hungry; the synthetic jelly he'd eaten just before going to sleep
wasn't even digested yet.
When the Mentorian left for another cabin, Bart looked around, and
suddenly felt he would stifle if he stayed here another minute. He
wasn't likely to run into Tommy twice in a row, and if he did, well,
Tommy would probably remember the snub he'd had and stay away from Dave
Briscoe. And he wanted another sight of the stars--before he went into
worry and danger.
He went down to the Observation Lounge.
The cosmic dust was brighter out here, and the constellations looked a
little flattened. Textbook tables came back to him. He had traveled 47
light-years--he couldn't remember how many _billions_ of miles that was.
Even so, it was only the tiniest hop-skip-and-jump in the measureless
vastness of space.
The ship was streaking toward Procyon, a sol-type star, bright yellow;
the three planets, Alpha, Beta and Gamma, ringed like Saturn and veiled
in shimmering layers of cloud, swung against the night. Past them other
stars, brighter stars, faraway stars he would never see, glimmered
through the pale dust....
"Hello, Dave. Been space-sick all this time? Remember me? I met you
about six weeks ago in the lounge down here--just out from Earth."
_Oh, no!_ Bart turned, with a mental groan, to face Tommy. "I've been in
cold-sleep," he said. He _couldn't_ be rude again.
"What a dull way to face a long trip!" Tommy said cheerily. "I've
enjoyed every minute of it myself."
It was hard for Bart to realize that, for Tommy, their meeting had been
six weeks ago. It all seemed dreamlike. The closer he came to it, the
less he could realize that in a few hours he'd be getting off on a
strange world, with only the strange name _Raynor Three_ as a guide. He
felt terribly alone, and having Tommy close at hand helped, even though
Tommy didn't know he was helping.
"Maybe I should have stayed awake."
"You should," Tommy said. "I only slept for a couple of hours at each
warp-drive shift. We had a day-long stopover at Sirius Eighteen, and I
took a tour of the planet. And I've spent a lot of time down here, just
star-gazing--not that it did me much good. Which one is Antares? How do
you tell it from Aldebaran? I'm always getting them mixed up."
Bart pointed. "Aldebaran--that's the big red one there," he said. "Think
of the constellation Taurus as a necklace, with Aldebaran hanging from
it like a locket. Antares is much further down in the sky, in relation
to the arbitrary sidereal axis, and it's a deeper red. Like a burning
coal, while Aldebaran is like a ruby--"
He broke off in mid-word, realizing that Tommy was gazing at him in a
mixture of triumph and consternation. Too late, Bart realized he had
been tricked. Studying for an exam, the year before, he had explained
the difference between the two red stars in almost the same words.
"Bart," Tommy said in a whisper, "I knew it had to be you. Why didn't
you tell me, fella?"
Bart felt himself start to smile, but it only stretched his mouth. He
said, very low, "Don't say my name out loud Tom. I'm in terrible
trouble."
"Why didn't you tell me? What's a friend for?"
"We can't talk here. And all the cabins are wired for sound in case
somebody stops breathing, or has a heart attack in space," Bart said,
glancing around.
They went and stood at the very foot of the quartz window, seeming to
tread the brink of a dizzying gulf of cosmic space, and talked in low
tones while Alpha and Beta and Gamma swelled like blown-up balloons in
the port.
Tommy listened, almost incredulous. "And you're hoping to find your
father, with no more information than that? It's a big universe," he
said, waving at the gulf of stars. "The Lhari ships, according to the
little tourist pamphlet they gave me, touch down at nine hundred and
twenty-two different stars in this galaxy!"
Bart visibly winced, and Tommy urged, "Come to Capella with me. You can
stay with my family as long as you want to, and appeal to the
Interplanet authority to find your father. They'd protect him against
the Lhari, surely. You can't chase all over the galaxy playing
interplanetary spy all by yourself, Bart!"
But Briscoe had deliberately gone to his death, to give Bart the chance
to get away. He wouldn't have died to send Bart into a trap he could
easily have sprung on Earth.
"Thanks, Tommy. But I've got to play it my way."
Tommy said firmly, "Count me in then. My ticket has stopover privileges.
I'll get off at Procyon with you."
It was a temptation--to have a friend at his back. He put his hand on
Tommy's shoulder, grateful beyond words. But fresh horror seized him as
he remembered the horrible puddle of melted robotcab with Briscoe
somewhere in the residue. _Protoplasm residue enough for two bodies._ He
couldn't let Tommy face that.
"Tommy, I appreciate that, believe me. But if I did find my father and
his friends, I don't want anyone tracing me. You'd only make the danger
worse. The best thing you can do is stay out of it."
Tommy faced him squarely. "One thing's for sure. I'm not going to let
you go off and never know whether you're alive or dead."
"I'll try to get a message to you," Bart said, "if I can. But whatever
happens, Tommy, stay with the ship and go on to Capella. It's the one
thing you can do to help me."
A warning bell rang in the ship. He broke sharply away from Tommy,
saying over his shoulder, "It's all you can do to help, Tom. Do
it--please? Just stay clear?"
Tommy reached out and caught his arm. "Okay," he said reluctantly, "I
will. But you be careful," he added fiercely. "You hear me? And if I
don't hear from you in some reasonable time, I'll raise a stink from
here to Vega!"
Bart broke away and ran. He was afraid, if he didn't, he'd break up
again. He closed the cabin door behind him, trying to calm down so that
the Mentorian steward, coming to strap him in for deceleration, wouldn't
see how upset he was. He was going to need all his nerve.
* * * * *
He went through another decontamination chamber, and finally moved, with
a line of passengers, out of the yawning airlock, under the strange sun,
into the strange world.
At first sight it was a disappointment. It was a Lhari spaceport that
lay before him, to all appearances identical with the one on Earth:
sloping glass ramps, tall colorless pylons, a skyscraper terminus
crowded with men of all planets. But the sun overhead was brilliant and
clear gold, the shadows sharp and violet on the spaceport floor. Behind
the confines of the spaceport he could see the ridges of tall hills and
unfamiliarly colored trees. He longed to explore them, but he got a grip
on his imagination, surrendering his ticket stub and false papers to the
Lhari and Mentorian interpreter who guarded the ramp.
The Lhari said to the Mentorian, in the Lhari language, "Keep him for
questioning but don't tell him why." Bart felt a cold chill icing his
spine. _This was it._
The Mentorian said briefly, "We wish to check on the proper antibody
component for Aldebaran natives. There will be a delay of about thirty
minutes. Will you kindly wait in this room here?"
The room was comfortable, furnished with chairs and a vision-screen with
some colorful story moving on it, small bright figures in capes, curious
beasts racing across an unusual veldt; but Bart paced the floor
restlessly. There were two doors in the room. Through one of them, he
had been admitted; he could see, through the glass door, the silhouette
of the Mentorian outside. The other door was opaque, and marked in large
letters:
DANGER HUMANS MUST NOT PASS WITHOUT SPECIAL LENSES TYPE X.
ORDINARY SPACE LENSES WILL NOT SUFFICE DANGER! LHARI OPENING!
ADJUST X LENSES BEFORE OPENING!
Bart read the sign again. Well, _that_ was no way out, for sure! He had
heard that the Lhari sun was almost 500 times as bright as Earth's. The
Mentorians alone, among humans, could endure Lhari lights--he supposed
the warning was for ordinary spaceport workers.
A sudden, rather desperate plan occurred to Bart. He didn't know how
much light he _could_ tolerate--he'd never been on Mentor--but he _had_
inherited some of his mother's tolerance for light. And blindness would
be better than being burned down with an energon-gun! He went hesitantly
toward the door, and pushed it open.
His eyes exploded into pain; automatically his hands went up to shield
them. Light, light--he had never known such cruelly glowing light. Even
through the lids there was pain and red afterimages; but after a moment,
opening them a slit, he found that he could see, and made out other
doors, glass ramps, pale Lhari figures coming and going. But for the
moment he was alone in the long corridor beyond which he could see the
glass ramps.
Nearby, a door opened into a small office with glass walls; on a peg,
one of the silky metallic cloaks worn by Mentorians doing spaceport work
was hanging. On an impulse, Bart caught it up and flung it around his
shoulders.
It felt cool and soft, and the hood shielded his eyes a little. The ramp
leading down to what he hoped was street level was terribly steep and
there were no steps. Bart eased himself over the top of the ramp and let
go. He whooshed down the slick surface on the flat of his back, feeling
the metal of the cloak heat with the friction, and came to a breathless
jarring stop at the bottom. Whew, what a slide! Three stories, at least!
But there was a door, and outside the door, maybe, safety.
A voice hailed him, in Lhari. "You, there!"
Bart could see well now. He made out the form of a Lhari, only a
colorless blob in the intense light.
"You people know better than to come back here without glasses. Do you
want to be blinded, my friend?" He actually sounded kind and concerned.
Bart tensed, his heart pounding. Now that he was caught, could he bluff
his way out? He hadn't actually spoken the Lhari language in years,
though his mother had taught it to him when he was young enough to learn
it without a trace of accent.
Well, he must try. "Margil sent me to check," he improvised quickly.
"They were holding someone for questioning, and he seems to have gotten
away somehow, so I wanted to make sure he didn't come through here."
"What is the matter that one man can give us all the slip this way?" the
Lhari said curiously. "Well, one thing is sure, he's Vegan or Solarian
or Capellan, one of the dim-star people. If he comes through here, we'll
catch him easily enough while he's stumbling around half blind. You know
that you shouldn't stay long." He gestured. "Out this way--and don't
come back without special lenses."
Bart nodded, jerking the cloak around his shoulders, forcing himself not
to break into a run as he stepped through the door the Lhari indicated.
It closed behind him. Bart blinked, feeling as if he had stepped into
pitch darkness. Only slowly did his eyes adapt and he became aware that
he was standing in a city street, in the full glow of Procyon sunlight,
and apparently outside the Lhari spaceport entirely.
He'd better get to cover! He took off the Mentorian cloak, thrust it
under his arm. He raised his eyes, which were adjusting to ordinary
light again, and stopped dead.
Just across the street was a long, low, rainbow colored building. And
the letters--Bart blinked, thinking his eyes deceived him--spelled out:
EIGHT COLORS TRANSSHIPPING CORPORATION
CARGO, PASSENGERS, MESSAGES, EXPRESS
A. RAYNOR ONE, MANAGER
CHAPTER FIVE
For a moment the words swirled before Bart's still-watering eyes. He
wiped them, trying to steady himself. Had he so soon reached the end of
his dangerous quest? Somehow he had expected it to lie in deep, dark
concealment.
Raynor One. The existence of Raynor _One_ presupposed a Raynor _Two_ and
probably a Raynor _Three_--for all he knew, Raynors Four, Five, Six, and
Sixty-six! The building looked solid and real. It had evidently been
there a long time.
With his hand on the door, he hesitated. Was it, after all, the _right_
Eight Colors? But it was a family saying; hardly the sort of thing you'd
be apt to hear outside. He pushed the door and went in.
The room was filled with brighter light than the Procyon sun outdoors,
the edges of the furniture rimmed with neon in the Mentorian fashion. A
prim-looking girl sat behind a desk--or what should have been a desk,
except that it looked more like a mirror, with little sparkles of
lights, different colors, in regular rows along one edge. The mirror-top
itself was blue-violet and gave her skin and her violet eyes a bluish
tinge. She was smooth and lacquered and glittering and she raised her
eyebrows at Bart as if he were some strange form of life she hadn't seen
very often.
"I'd--er--like to see Raynor One," he said.
Her dainty pointed fingernail, varnished blue, stabbed at points of
light. "On what business?" she asked, not caring.
"It's a personal matter."
"Then I suggest you see him at his home."
"It can't wait that long."
The girl studied the glassy surface and punched at some more of the
little lights. "Name, please?"
"David Briscoe."
He had thought her perfect-painted face could not show any emotion
except disdain, but it did. She looked at him in open, blank
consternation. She said into the vision-screen, "He calls himself David
Briscoe. Yes, I know. Yes, sir, yes." She raised her face, and it was
controlled again, but not bored. "Raynor One will see you. Through that
door, and down to the end of the hall."
At the end of the hallway was another door. He stepped through into a
small cubicle, and the door slid shut like a closing trap. He whirled in
panic, then subsided in foolish relief as the cubicle began to rise--it
was just an automatic elevator.
It rose higher and higher, stopping with an abrupt jerk, and slid open
into a lighted room and office. A man sat behind a desk, watching Bart
step from the elevator. The man was very tall and very thin, and the
gray eyes, and the intensity of the lights, told Bart that he was a
Mentorian. _Raynor One?_
Under the steady, stern gray stare, Bart felt the slow, clutching suck
of fear again. Was this man a slave of the Lhari, who would turn him
over to them? Or someone he could trust? His own mother had been a
Mentorian.
"Who are you?" Raynor One's voice was harsh, and gave the impression of
being loud, though it was not.
"David Briscoe."
It was the wrong thing. The Mentorian's mouth was taut, forbidding. "Try
again. I happen to know that David Briscoe is dead."
"I have a message for Raynor Three."
The cold gray stare never altered. "On what business?"
On a sudden inspiration, Bart said, "I'll tell you that if you can tell
me what the Eighth Color is."
There was a glint in the grim eyes now, though the even, stern voice did
not soften. "I never knew myself. I didn't name it Eight Colors. Maybe
it's the original owner you want."
On a sudden hope, Bart asked, "Was he, by any chance, named Rupert
Steele?"
Raynor One made a suspicious movement. "I can't imagine why you think
so," he said guardedly. "Especially if you've just come in from Earth.
It was never very widely known. He only changed the name to Eight Colors
a few weeks ago. And it's for sure that your ship didn't get any
messages while the Lhari were in warp-drive. You mention entirely too
many names, but I notice you aren't giving out any further information."
"I'm looking for a man called Rupert Steele."
"I thought you were looking for Raynor Three," said Raynor One, staring
at the Mentorian cloak. "I can think of a lot of people who might want
to know how I react to certain names, and find out if I know the wrong
people, if they are the wrong people. What makes you think I'd admit it
if I did?"
Now, Bart thought, they had reached a deadlock. Somebody had to trust
somebody. This could go on all night--parry and riposte, question and
evasive answer, each of them throwing back the other's questions in a
verbal fencing-match. Raynor One wasn't giving away any information.
And, considering what was probably at stake, Bart didn't blame him much.
He flung the Mentorian cloak down on the table.
"This got me out of trouble--the hard way," he said. "I never wore one
before and I never intend to again. I want to find Rupert Steele because
he's my father!"
"Your father. And just how are you going to prove that exceptionally
interesting statement?"
Without warning, Bart lost his temper.
"I don't care whether I prove it or not! _You_ try proving something for
a change, why don't you? If you know Rupert Steele, I don't have to
prove who I am--just take a good look at me! Or so Briscoe told me--a
man who called himself Briscoe, anyway. He gave me papers to travel
under that name! I didn't ask for them, he shoved them into my hand.
_That_ Briscoe is dead." Bart struck his fist hard on the desk, bending
over Raynor One angrily.
"He sent me to find a man named Raynor Three. But the only one I really
care about finding is my father. Now you know as much as I do, how about
giving _me_ some information for a change?"
He ran out of breath and stood glaring down at Raynor One, fists
clenched. Raynor One got up and said, quick, savage and quiet, "Did
anyone see you come here?"
"Only the girl downstairs."
"How did you get through the Lhari? In that?" He moved his head at the
Mentorian cloak.
Bart explained briefly, and Raynor One shook his head.
"You were lucky," he said, "you could have been blinded. You must have
inherited flash-accommodation from the Mentorian side--Rupert Steele
didn't have it. I'll tell you this much," he added, sitting down again.
"In a manner of speaking, you're my boss. Eight Colors--it used to be
Alpha Transshipping--is what they call a middleman outfit. The
interplanet cargo lines transport from planet to planet within a
system--that's free competition--and the Lhari ships transport from star
to star--that's a monopoly all over the galaxy. The middleman outfits
arrange for orderly and businesslike liaison between the two. Rupert
Steele bought into this company, a long time ago, but he left it for me
to manage, until recently."
Raynor punched a button, said to the image of the glossy girl at the
desk, "Violet, get Three for me. You may have to send a message to the
_Multiphase_."
He swung round to Bart again. "You want a lot of explanations? Well,
you'll have to get 'em from somebody else. I don't know what this is all
about. I don't _want_ to know: I have to do business with the Lhari. The
less I know, the less I'm apt to say to the wrong people. But I promised
Three that if you turned up, or if anyone came and asked for the Eighth
Color, I'd send you to him. That's all."
He motioned Bart ungraciously to a seat, and shut his mouth firmly, as
if he had already said too much. Bart sat. After a while he heard the
elevator again; the panel slid open and Raynor Three came into the room.
It had to be Raynor Three; there was no one else he could have been. He
was as like Raynor One as Tweedledum to Tweedledee: tall, stern, ascetic
and grim. He wore the full uniform of a Mentorian on Lhari ships: the
white smock of a medic, the metallic blue cloak, the low silvery
sandals.
He said, "What's doing, One? Violet--" and then he caught sight of Bart.
His eyes narrowed and he drew a quick breath, his face twisting up into
apprehension and shock.
"It must be Steele's boy," he said, and immediately Bart saw the
difference between the--were they brothers? For Raynor One's face,
controlled and stern, had not altered all during their interview, but
Raynor Three's smile was wry and kindly at once, and his voice was low
and gentle. "He's the image of Rupert. Did he come in on his own name?
How'd he manage it?"
"No. He had David Briscoe's papers."
"So the old man got through," said Raynor Three, with a low whistle.
"But that's not safe. Quick, give them to me, Bart."
"The Lhari have them."
Raynor One walked to the window and said in his deadpan voice, "It's
useless. But get the kid out of here before they come looking for me.
Look."
He pointed. Below them, the streets were alive with uniformed Lhari and
Mentorians. Bart felt sick.
"If they had the same efficiency with red tape that we humans have, he'd
never have made it this far."
Raynor Three actually smiled. "But you can count on them for that much
inefficiency," he said, and his eyes twinkled for a moment at Bart.
"That's how it was so easy to work the old double-shuffle trick on them.
They had Steele's description but not his name, so Briscoe took Steele's
papers and managed to slip through. Once they landed on Earth, they had
the Steele _names_, but by the time that cleared, you were outbound with
another set of papers. It may have confused them, because they knew
_David_ Briscoe was dead--and there was just a chance you were an
innocent bystander who could raise a real row if they pulled you in. Did
old Briscoe get away?"
"No," Bart said, harshly, "he's dead."
Raynor Three's mobile face held shocked sadness. "Two brave men," he
said softly, "Edmund Briscoe the father, David Briscoe the son. Remember
the name, Bart, because I won't remember it."
"Why not?"
Raynor Three gave him a gold-glinting, enigmatic glance. "I'm a
Mentorian, remember? I'm good at not remembering things. Just be glad I
remember Rupert Steele. If you'd been a few days later, I wouldn't have
remembered him, though I promised to wait for you."
Raynor One demanded, "Get him _out_ of here, Three!"
Raynor Three swung to Bart. "Put that on again." He indicated the
Mentorian cloak. "Pull the hood right up over your head. Now, if we meet
anyone, say a polite good afternoon in Lhari--you _can_ speak
Lhari?--and leave the rest of the talking to me."
Bart felt like cringing as they came out into the street full of Lhari;
but Raynor Three whispered, "Attack is the best defense," and went up to
one of the Lhari. "What's going on, _rieko mori_?"
"A passenger on the ship got away without going through Decontam. He may
spread disease, so of course we have alerted all authorities," the Lhari
said.
As the Lhari strode past, Raynor Three grimaced. "Clever, that. Now the
whole planet will be hunting for any stranger, worrying themselves into
fits about some unauthorized germ. We'd better get you to a safe place.
My country house is a good way off, but I have a copter."
Bart demanded, as they climbed in, "Are you taking me to my father?"
"Wait till we get to my place," Raynor Three said, taking the controls
and putting the machine in the air. "Just lean back and enjoy the trip,
huh?"
Bart relaxed against the cushions, but he still felt apprehensive. Where
was his father? If he was a fugitive from the Lhari, he might by now be
at the other end of the galaxy. But if his father couldn't travel on
Lhari ships, and if he had been here, the chances were that he was still
somewhere in the Procyon system.
They flew for a long time; across low hills, patchwork agricultural
districts, towns, and then for a long time over water. The copter had
automatic controls, but Raynor Three kept it on manual, and Bart
wondered if the Mentorian just didn't want to talk.
It began to descend, at last, toward a small green hill, bright in the
last gold rays on sunset. A small domelike pink bubble rose out of the
hill. Raynor Three set the copter neatly down on a platform that slid
shut after them, unfastened their seat belts and gave Bart a hand to
climb out.
He ushered him into a living room of glass and chrome, softly lighted,
but deserted and faintly dusty. Raynor pushed a switch; soft music came
on, and the carpets caressed his feet. He motioned Bart to a chair.
"You're safe here, for a while," Raynor Three said, "though how long,
nobody knows. But so far, I've been above suspicion."'
Bart leaned back; the chair was very comfortable, but the comfort could
not help him to relax.
"Where is my father?" he demanded.
Raynor Three stood looking down at him, his mobile face drawn and
strange. "I guess I can't put it off any longer," he said softly. Then
he covered his face with his hands. From behind them hoarse words came,
choked with emotion.
"Your father is dead, Bart. I--I killed him."
CHAPTER SIX
For a moment Bart stared, frozen, unable to move, his very ears refusing
the words he heard. Had this all been another cruel trick, then, a trap,
a betrayal? He rose and looked wildly around the room, as if the glass
walls were a cage closing in on him.
"Murderer!" he flung at Raynor, and took a step toward him, his clenched
fists coming up. He'd been shoved around too long, but here he had one
of them right in front of him, and for once he'd hit back! He'd start by
taking Raynor Three apart--in small pieces! "You--you rotten murderer!"
Raynor Three made no move to defend himself. "Bart," he said
compassionately, "sit down and listen to me. No, I'm no murderer. I--I
shouldn't have put it that way."
Bart's hands dropped to his sides, but he heard his voice crack with
pain and grief: "I suppose you'll tell me he was a spy or a traitor and
you _had_ to kill him!"
"Not even that. I tried to save your father, I did everything I could.
I'm no murderer, Bart. I killed him, yes--God forgive me, because I'll
never forgive myself!"
Bart's fists unclenched and he stared down at Raynor Three, shaking his
head in bewilderment and pain. "I knew he was dead! I knew it all along!
I was trying not to believe it, but I knew!"
"I liked your father. I admired him. He took a long chance, and it
killed him. I could have stopped him, I should have stopped him, but how
could I? Where did I have the right to stop him, after what I did
to--" he stopped, almost in mid-word, as if a switch had been turned.
But Bart was not listening. He swung away, striding to the wall as if he
would kick it in, striking it with his two clenched fists, his whole
being in revolt. _Dad, oh, Dad! I kept going, I thought at the end of it
you'd be here and it would all be over. But here I am at the end of it
all, and you're not here, you won't ever be here again._
Dimly, he knew when Raynor Three rose and left him alone. He leaned his
head on his clenched fists, and cried.
After a long time he raised his head and blew his nose, his face setting
itself in new, hard, unaccustomed lines, slowly coming to terms with the
hard, painful reality. His father was dead. His dangerous,
dead-in-earnest game of escape had no happy ending of reunion with his
father. They couldn't sit together and laugh about how scared he had
been. His father was _dead_, and he, Bart, was alone and in danger. His
face looked very grim indeed, and years older than he was.
After a long time Raynor Three opened the door quietly. "Come and have
something to eat, Bart."
"I'm not hungry."
"Well, I am," Raynor Three said, "and you ought to be. You'll need it."
He pulled knobs and the appropriate tables and chairs extruded
themselves from the walls. Raynor unsealed hot cartons and spread them
on the table, saying lightly, "Looks good--not that I can claim any
credit, I subscribe to a food service that delivers them hot by
pneumatic tube."
Bart felt sickened by the thought of eating, but when he put a polite
fork in the food, he discovered that he was famished and ate up
everything in sight. When they had finished, Raynor dumped the cartons
into a disposal chute, went to a small portable bar and put a glass into
his hand.
"Drink this."
Bart touched his lips to the glass, made a face and put it away.
"Thanks, but I don't drink."
"Call it medicine, you'll need something," Raynor Three said crossly.
"I've got a lot to tell you, and I don't want you going off half-primed
in the middle of a sentence. If you'd rather have a shot of
tranquilizer, all right; otherwise, I prescribe that you drink what I
gave you." He gave Bart a quick, wry grin. "I really am a medic, you
know."
Feeling like a scolded child, Bart drank. It burned his mouth, but after
it was down, he felt a sort of warm burning in his insides that
gradually spread a sense of well-being all through him. It wasn't
alcohol, but whatever it was, it had quite a kick.
"Thanks," he muttered. "Why are you taking this trouble, Raynor? There
must be danger--"
"Don't you know--" Raynor broke off. "Obviously, you don't. Your mother
never said much about your Mentorian family tree, I suppose? She was a
Raynor." He smiled at Bart, a little ruefully. "I won't claim a
kinsman's privileges until you decide how much to trust me."
Raynor Three settled back.
"It's a long story and I only know part of it," he began. "Our family,
the Raynors, have traded with the Lhari for more generations than I can
count. When I was a young man, I qualified as a medic on the Lhari
ships, and I've been star-hopping ever since. People call us the slaves
of the Lhari--maybe we are," he added wryly. "But I began it just
because space is where I belong, and there's nowhere else that I've ever
wanted to be. And I'll take it at any price.
"I never questioned what I was doing until a few years ago. It was your
father who made me wonder if we Mentorians were blind and selfish--this
privilege ought to belong to everyone, not just the Lhari. More and
more, the Lhari monopoly seemed wrong to me. But I was just a medic. And
if I involved myself in any conspiracy against the Lhari, they'd find it
out in the routine psych-checking.
"And then we worked out how it could be done. Before every trip, with
self-hypnosis and self-suggestion, I erase my own memories--a sort of
artificial amnesia--so that the Lhari can't find out any more than I
want them to find out. Of course, it also means that I have no memory,
while I'm on the Lhari ships, of what I've agreed to while I'm--" His
face suddenly worked, and his mouth moved without words, as if he had
run into some powerful barrier against speech.
It was a full minute, while Bart stared in dismay, before he found his
voice again, saying, "So far, it was just a sort of loose network,
trying to put together stray bits of information that the Lhari didn't
think important enough to censor.
"And then came the big breakthrough. There was a young Apprentice
astrogator named David Briscoe. He'd taken some runs in special test
ships, and read some extremely obscure research data from the early days
of the contact between men and Lhari, and he had a wild idea. He did the
bravest thing anyone has ever done. He stripped himself of all
identifying data--so that if he died, no one would be in trouble with
the Lhari--and stowed away on a Lhari ship."
"But--" Bart's lips were dry--"didn't he die in the warp-drive?"
Slowly, Raynor Three shook his head.
"No, he didn't. No drugs, no cold-sleep--but he didn't die. Don't you
see, Bart?" He leaned forward, urgently.
"_It's all a fake!_ The Lhari have just been saying that to justify
their refusal to give us the secret of the catalyst that generates the
warp-drive frequencies! Such a simple lie, and it's worked for all these
years!"
* * * * *
"A Mentorian found him and didn't have the heart to turn him over to the
Lhari. So he was smuggled clear again. But when that Mentorian underwent
the routine brain-checks at the end of the voyage, the Lhari found out
what had happened. They didn't know Briscoe's name, but they wrung that
Mentorian out like a wet dishcloth and got a description that was as
good as fingerprints. They tracked down young Briscoe and killed him.
They killed the first man he'd talked to. They killed the second. The
third was your father."
"The murdering devils!"
Raynor sighed. "Your father and Briscoe's father were old friends.
Briscoe's father was dying with incurable heart disease; _his_ son was
dead, and old Briscoe had only one thought in his mind--to make sure he
didn't die for nothing. So he took your father's papers, knowing they
were as good as a death warrant, slipped away and boarded a Lhari ship
that led roundabout to stars where the message hadn't reached yet. He
led them a good chase. Did he die or did they track him down and kill
him?" Bart bowed his head and told the story.
"Meanwhile," Raynor Three continued, "your father came to me, knowing I
was sympathetic, knowing I was a Lhari-trained surgeon. He had just one
thought in his mind: to do, again, what David Briscoe had done, and make
sure the news got out this time. He cooked up a plan that was even
braver and more desperate. He decided to sign on a Lhari ship as a
member of the crew."
"As a Mentorian?" Bart asked, but something cold, like ice water
trickling down his back, told him this was not what Raynor meant. "The
brainwashing--"
"No," said Raynor, "not as a Mentorian; he couldn't have escaped the
psych-checking. _As a Lhari._"
Bart gasped. "How--"
"Men and Lhari are very much alike," Raynor Three said. "A few small
things--skin color, the shape of the ears, the hands and claws--keep
humans from seeing that the Lhari are men."
"Don't say that," Bart almost yelled. "Those filthy, murdering devils!
You call those monsters men?"
"I've lived among the Lhari all my life. They're not devils, Bart, they
have their reasons. Physiologically, the Lhari are--well, _humanoid_, if
you like that better. They're a lot more like a man than a man is like,
for instance, a gorilla. Your father convinced me that with minor
plastic and facial surgery, he could pass as a Lhari. And finally I gave
in, and did the surgery--"
"And it killed him!"
"Not really. It was a completely unforeseeable thing--a blood clot broke
loose in a vein, and lodged in his brain. He was dead in seconds. It
could have happened at any time," he said, "yet I feel responsible, even
though I keep telling myself I'm not. And I'll help you as much as I
can--for his sake, and for your mother's. The Lhari don't watch me too
closely--they figure that anything I do they'll catch in the
brainwashing. But I'm still one step ahead of them, as long as I can
erase my own memories."
Bart was sifting it all, slowly, in his mind.
"Why was Dad doing this? What could he gain?"
"You know we can build ships as good as the Lhari ships, but we don't
know anything about the rare catalyst they use for warp-drive fuel.
Captain Steele had hopes of being able to discover where they got it."
"But couldn't they find out where the Lhari ships go for fueling?"
"No. There's no way to trail a Lhari ship," he reminded Bart. "We can
follow them inside a star-system, but then they pop into warp-drive, and
we don't know where they go when they aren't running between _our_
stars.
"We've gathered together what information we _do_ have, and we know that
after a certain number of runs in our part of the galaxy, ships take off
in the direction of Antares. There's a ship, due to come in here in
about ten days, called the _Swiftwing_, which is just about due to make
the Antares run. Captain Steele had managed to arrange--I don't know
how, and I don't want to know how--for a vacancy on that ship, and
somehow he got credentials. You see, it's a very good spy system, a
network between the stars, but the weak link is this: everything, every
message, every man, has to travel back and forth by the Lhari ships
themselves."
He rose, shaking it all off impatiently. "Well, it's finished now. Your
father is dead. What are you going to do? If you want to go back to
Vega, you can probably convince the Lhari you're just an innocent
bystander. They _don't_ hurt bystanders or children, Bart. They aren't
bad people. They're just protecting their business monopoly.
"The safest way to handle it would be this: let me erase your memories
of what I've told you tonight. Then just let the Lhari capture you. They
won't kill you. They'll just give you a light psych-check. When they
find out you don't know anything, they'll send you back to Vega, and you
can spend the rest of your life in peace, running Vega Interplanet and
Eight Colors."
Bart turned on him furiously. "You mean, go home like a good little boy,
and pretend none of this ever happened? What do you think I am, anyhow?"
Bart's chin set in the new, hard line. "What I want is a chance to go on
where Dad left off!"
"It won't be easy, and it could be dangerous," Raynor Three said, "but
there's nothing else to be done. We had the arrangements all made; and
now somebody's got to take the dangerous risk of calling them off. Are
you game for a little plastic surgery--just enough to change your looks
again, with new forged papers? You can't go by the _Swiftwing_--it
doesn't carry passengers--but there's another route you can take."
Bart sprang up. "No," he said, "I know a better way. Let me go on the
_Swiftwing_--in Dad's place--_as a Lhari_!"
"Bart, no," Raynor Three said. "You'd never get away with it. It's too
dangerous." But his gold eyes glinted.
"Why not? I speak Lhari better than Dad ever did. And my eyes can stand
Lhari lights. You said yourself, it's going to be a dangerous job just
calling off all the arrangements. So let's _not_ call them off. Just let
me take Dad's place!"
"Bart, you're only a boy--"
"What was Dave Briscoe? No, Raynor. Dad left me a lot more than Vega
Interplanet, and you know it. I'll finish what he started, and then
maybe I'll begin to deserve what he left me."
Raynor Three gripped Bart's hand. He said, in a voice that shook, "All
right, Bart. You're your father's son. I can't say more than that. I
haven't any right to stop you."
CHAPTER SEVEN
"All right, Bart, today we'll let you look at yourself," Raynor Three
said.
Bart smiled under the muffling layers of bandage around his face. His
hands were bandaged, too, and he had not been permitted to look in a
mirror. But the transition had been surprisingly painless--or perhaps
his sense of well-being had been due to Raynor Three slipping him some
drug.
He'd been given injections of a chemical that would change the color of
his skin; there had been minor operations on his face, his hands, his
feet.
"Let's see you get up and walk around."
Bart obeyed awkwardly, and Raynor frowned. "Hurt?"
"Not exactly, but I feel as if I were limping."
"That's to be expected. I changed the angle of the heel tendon and the
muscle of the arch. You're using a different set of muscles when you
walk; until they harden up, you'll have some assorted Charley horses.
Have any trouble hearing me?"
"No, though I'd hear better without all these bandages," Bart said
impatiently.
"All in good time. Any trouble breathing?"
"No, except for the bandages."
"Fine. I changed the shape of your ears and nostrils, and it might have
affected your hearing or your breathing. Now, listen, Bart: I'm going to
take the bandages off your hands first. Sit down."
Bart sat across the table from him, obediently sticking out his hands.
Raynor Three said, "Shut your eyes."
Bart did as he was told and felt Raynor Three's long fingers working at
the bandages.
"Move each finger as I touch it." Bart obeyed, and Raynor said
neutrally, "Good. Now, take a deep breath and then open your eyes."
Impatiently Bart flicked his lids open. In spite of the warning, his
breath went out in a harsh, jolting gasp. His hands lay on the table
before him--but they were not his hands.
The narrow, long fingers were pearl-gray, tipped with whitish-pink claws
that curved out over the tips. Nervously Bart moved one finger, and the
long claw flicked out like a cat's, retracted. He swallowed.
"Golly!" He felt strangely wobbly.
"A beautiful job, if I do say so. Be careful not to scratch yourself,
and practice picking up small things."
Bart saw that the long grayish claws were trembling. "How did you
make--the claws?"
"Quite simple, really," Raynor beamed. "I injected protein compounds
into the nail matrix, which speeded up nail growth terrifically, and
then, as they grew, shaped them. Joining on those tiny muscles for the
retracting mechanism was the tricky part though."
Bart was moving his hands experimentally. Once over the shock, they felt
quite normal. The claws didn't get in his way half so much as he'd
expected when he picked up a pen that lay beside him and, with the blunt
tip, made a few of the strange-looking dots and wedges that were the
Lhari alphabet.
"Practice writing this," said Raynor Three, and laid a plastic-encased
folder down beside him. It was a set of ship's papers printed in Lhari.
Bart read it through, seeing that it was made out to the equivalent of
Astrogator, First Class, Bartol.
"That's your name now, the name your father would have used. Memorize
it, get used to the sound of it, practice writing it. Don't worry too
much about the rating; it's an elementary one, what we'd call Apprentice
rating, and I have a training tape for you anyhow. My brother got hold
of it, don't ask me how--and don't ask him!"
"When am I going to see my face?"
"When I think you're ready for the shock," Raynor said bluntly. "It
almost threw you when I showed you your hands."
He made Bart walk around some more briefly, slowly, he unwound the
bandages; then turned and picked up a mirror at the bottom of his
medic's case, turning it right side up. "Here. But take it easy."
But when Bart looked in the mirror he felt no unexpected shock, only an
unnerving revulsion.
His hair was bleached-white and fluffy, almost feathery to the touch.
His skin was grayish-rose, and his eyelids had been altered just enough
to make his eyes look long, narrow and slanted. His nostrils were mere
slits, and he moved his tongue over lips that felt oddly thin.
"I did as little to your teeth as I thought I could get away with-capped
the front ones," Raynor Three told him. "So if you get a toothache
you're out of luck--you won't dare go to a Lhari dentist. I could have
done more, but it would have made you look too freakish when we changed
you back to human again--if you live that long," he added grimly.
_I hadn't thought about that. And if Raynor is going to forget me, who
will do it?_ The cold knot of fear, never wholly absent, moved in him
again.
Watching his face, Raynor Three said gently, "It's a big network, Bart.
I'm not telling you much, for your own safety. But when you get to
Antares, they'll tell you all you need to know."
He lifted Bart's oddly clawed hands. "I warned you, remember--the change
isn't completely reversible. Your hands will always look--strange. The
fingers had to be lengthened, for instance. I wanted to make you as safe
as possible among the Lhari. I think you'll pass anything but an X-ray.
Just be careful not to break any bones."
He gave Bart a package. "This is the Lhari training tape. Listen to it
as often as you can, then destroy it--_completely_--before you leave
here. The _Swiftwing_ is due in port three days from now, and they stay
here a week. I don't know how we'll manage it, but I'll guarantee
there'll be a vacancy of one Astrogator, First Class, on that ship." He
rose. "And now I'm going back to town and erase the memory." He stopped,
looking intently at Bart.
"So if you see me, stay away from me and don't speak, because I won't
know you from any other Lhari. Understand? From here on, you're on your
own, Bart."
He held out his hand. "This is the rough part, Son." His face moved
strangely. "I'm part of this network between the stars, but I don't know
what I've done before, and I'll never know how it comes out. It's funny
to stand here and look at you and realize that I won't even remember
you." The gold-glinted eyes blinked rapidly. "Goodbye, Bart. And--good
luck, Son."
Bart took his hand, deeply moved, with the strange sense that this was
another death--a worse one than Briscoe's. He tried to speak and
couldn't.
"Well--" Raynor's mouth twisted into a wry grin. "Ouch! Careful with
those claws. The Lhari don't shake hands."
He turned abruptly and went out of the door and out of Bart's life,
while Bart stood at the dome-window, feeling alone as he had never felt
alone before.
* * * * *
He had to wait six days, and they felt like six eternities. He played
the training tape over and over. With his Academy background, it wasn't
nearly so difficult as he'd feared. He read and reread the set of papers
identifying him as Astrogator, First Class, Bartol. Forged, he supposed.
Or was there, somewhere, a real Bartol?
The last morning he slept uneasily late. He finished his last meal as a
human, spent part of the day removing all traces of his presence from
Raynor's home, burned the training tape, and finally got into the silky,
silvery tights and cloak that Raynor had provided. He could use his
hands now as if they belonged to him; he even found the claws handy and
useful. He could write his signature, and copy out instructions from the
training tape, without a moment's hesitation.
Toward dusk, a young Lhari slipped unobserved out of Raynor's house and
hiked unnoticed to the edges of a small city nearby, where he mingled
with the crowd and hired a skycab from an unobservant human driver to
take him to the spaceport city. The skycab driver was startled, but not,
Bart judged, unusually so, to pick up a Lhari passenger.
"Been doing a little sight-seeing on our planet, hey?"
"That's right," Bart said in Universal, not trying to fake his idea of
the Lhari accent. Raynor had told him that only a few of the Lhari had
that characteristic sibilant "r" and "s" and warned him against trying
to imitate it. _Just speak naturally; there are dialects of Lhari, just
as there are dialects of the different human languages, and they all
sound different in Universal anyhow._ "Just looking around some."
The skycab driver frowned and looked down at his controls, and Bart felt
curiously snubbed. Then he remembered. He himself had little to say to
the Lhari when they spoke to him.
_He was an alien, a monster. He couldn't expect to be treated like a
human being any more._
When the skycab let him off before the spaceport, it felt strange to see
how the crowds edged away from him as he made a way through them. He
caught a glimpse of himself in one of the mirror-ramps, a tall thin
strange form in a metallic cloak, head crested with feathery white, and
felt overwhelmingly homesick for his own familiar face.
He was beginning to feel hungry, and realized that he could not go into
an ordinary restaurant without attracting attention. There were
refreshment stands all over the spaceport, and he briefly considered
getting a snack at one of these.
No, that was just putting it off. The time had to come when he must face
his fear and test his disguise among the Lhari themselves. Reviewing his
knowledge of the construction of spaceports, he remembered that one side
was the terminal, where humans and visitors and passengers were freely
admitted; the other side, for Lhari and their Mentorian employees only,
contained--along with business offices of many sorts--a sort of arcade
with amusement centers, shops and restaurants catering to the personnel
of the Lhari ships. With nine or ten ships docking every day, Raynor had
assured him that a strange Lhari face would be lost in the crowds very
easily.
He went to one of the doors marked DANGER, LHARI LIGHTS BEYOND, and
passed through the glaring corridor of offices and storage-warehouses,
finally coming out into a sort of wide mall. The lights were fierce, but
he could endure them without trouble now, though his head ached faintly.
Raynor, testing his light tolerance, had assured him that he could endure
anything the Lhari could, without permanent damage to his optic nerves,
though he would have headaches until he got used to them.
There were small shops and what looked like bars, and a glass-fronted
place with a sign lettered largely, in black letters, a Lhari phrase
meaning roughly HOME AWAY FROM HOME: MEALS SERVED, SPACEMEN WELCOME,
REASONABLE.
Behind him a voice said in Lhari, "Tell me, does that sign mean what it
says? Or is this one of those traps for separating the unwary spaceman
from his hard-earned credits? How's the food?"
Bart carefully took hold of himself.
"I was just wondering that myself." He turned as he spoke, finding
himself face to face with a young Lhari in the unadorned cloak of a
spaceman without official rank. He knew the Lhari was young because his
crest was still white.
The young Lhari extended his claws in the closed-fist, hidden-claw
gesture of Lhari greeting. "Shall we take a chance? Ringg son of Rahan
greets you."
"Bartol son of Berihun."
"I don't remember seeing you in the port, Bartol."
"I've mostly worked on the Polaris run."
"Way off there?" Ringg son of Rahan sounded startled and impressed. "You
really get around, don't you? Shall we sit here?"
They sat on triangular chairs at a three-cornered table. Bart waited for
Ringg to order, and ordered what he did. When it came, it was a sort of
egg-and-fish casserole which Bart found extremely tasty, and he dug into
it with pleasure. Allowing for the claws, Lhari table manners were not
so much different from human--_and remember, their customs differ as
much as ours do. If you do something differently, they'll just think
you're from another planet with a different culture._
"Have you been here long?"
"A day or so. I'm off the _Swiftwing_."
Bart decided to hazard his luck. "I was told there's a vacancy on the
_Swiftwing_."
Ringg looked at him curiously. "There is," he said, "but I'd like to
know how you found it out. Captain Vorongil said that anyone who talked
about it would be sent to Kleeto for three cycles. But what happened to
you? Miss your ship?"
"No, I've just been laying off--traveling, sight-seeing, bumming
around," Bart said. "But I'm tired of it, and now I'd like to sign out
again."
"Well, we could use another man. This is the long run we're making, out
to Antares and then home, and if everybody has to work extra shifts,
it's no fun. But if old Vorongil knows that there's been talk in the
port about Klanerol jumping ship, or whatever happened to him, we'll all
have to walk wide of his temper."
Bart was beginning to relax a little; Ringg apparently accepted him
without scrutiny. At this close range Ringg did not seem a monster, but
just a young fellow like himself, hearty, good-natured--in fact, not
unlike Tommy.
Bart chased the thought away as soon as it sneaked into his brain--one
of those _things_, like _Tommy_? Then, rather grimly, he reminded
himself, _I'm one of those things_. He said irritably, "So how do I
account for asking your captain for the place?"
Ringg cocked his fluffy crest to one side. "I know," he said, "_I_ told
you. I'll say you're an old friend of mine. You don't know what
Vorongil's like when he gets mad. But what he doesn't know, he won't
shout about." He shoved back the triangular chair. "Who _did_ tell you,
anyway?"
This was the first real hurdle, and Bart's brain raced desperately, but
Ringg was not listening for an answer. "I suppose somebody gossiped, or
one of those fool Mentorians picked it up. Got your papers? What
rating?"
"Astrogator first class."
"Klanerol was second, but you can't have everything, I suppose." Ringg
led the way through the arcades, out across a guarded sector, passing
half a dozen of the huge ships lying in their pits. Finally Ringg
stopped and pointed. "This is the old hulk."
Bart had traveled only in Lhari passenger ships, which were new and
fresh and sleek. This ship was enormous, ovoid like the egg of some
space-monster, the sides dented and discolored, thin films of chemical
discoloration lying over the glassy metallic hull.
Bart followed Ringg. This was real, it was happening. He was signing out
for his first interstellar cruise on one of the Lhari ships. Not a
Mentorian assistant, half-trusted, half-tolerated, but one of the crew
themselves. _If I'm lucky_, he reminded himself grimly.
There was Lhari, in the black-banded officer's cloak, at the doorway. He
glanced at Ringg's papers.
"Friend of mine," Ringg said, and Bart proffered his folder. The Lhari
gave it a casual glance, handed it back.
"Old Baldy on board?" Ringg asked.
"Where else?" The officer laughed. "You don't think _he'd_ relax with
cargo not loaded, do you?"
They seemed casual and normal, and Bart's confidence was growing. They
had accepted him as one of themselves. But the great ordeal still lay
before him--an interview with the Lhari captain. And the idea had Bart
sweating scared.
The corridors and decks seemed larger, wider, more spacious, but
shabbier than on the clean, bright, commercial passenger decks Bart had
seen. Dark-lensed men were rolling bales of cargo along on wheeled
dollies. The corridors seemed endless. More to hear the sound of his own
voice, and reassure himself of his ability to speak and be understood,
than because he cared, he asked Ringg, "What's your rating?"
"Well, according to the logbooks, I'm an Expert Class Two,
Metals-Fatigue," said Ringg. "That sounds very technical and
interesting. But what it means is just that I go all over the ship inch
by inch, and when I finish, start all over again at the other end. Most
of what I do is just boss around the maintenance crews and snarl at them
about spots of rust on the paint."
They got into a small round elevator and Ringg punched buttons; it began
to rise, slowly and creakily, toward the top. "This, for instance,"
Ringg said. "I've been yelling for a new cable for six months." He
turned. "Take it easy, Bartol; don't let Vorongil scare you. He likes to
hear the sound of his own voice, but we'd all walk out the lock without
spacesuits for him."
The elevator slid to a stop. The sign in Lhari letters said _Level of
Administration--Officers' Deck_. Ringg pushed at a door and said,
"Captain Vorongil?"
"I thought you were on leave," said a Lhari voice, deeper and slower
than most. "What are you doing, back here more than ten milliseconds
before strap-in checks?"
Ringg stepped back for Bart to go inside. The small cabin, with an
elliptical bunk slung from the ceiling and a triangular table, was
dwarfed by a tall, thin Lhari, in a cloak with four of the black bands
that seemed to denote rank among them. He had a deeply lined face with a
lacework of tiny wrinkles around the slanted eyes. His crest was not the
high, fluffy white of a young Lhari, but broken short near the scalp,
grayish pink showing through, the little feathery ends yellowed with
age. He growled, "Come in then, don't stand there. I suppose Ringg's
told you what a tyrant I am? What do you want, feathertop?"
Bart remembered being told that this was the Lhari equivalent of "Kid"
or "Youngster." He fumbled in the capacious folds of his cloak for his
papers. His voice sounded shrill, even to himself.
"Bartol son of Berihun in respectful greeting, _rieko mori_."
("Honorable old-bald-one," the Lhari equivalent of "sir.") "Ringg told
me there is a vacancy among the Astrogators, and I want to sign out."
Unmistakably, Vorongil's snort was laughter.
"So you've been talking, Ringg?"
Ringg retorted, "Better that I tell one man than that you have to hunt
the planet over--or run the long haul with the drive-room watches short
by one man."
"Well, well, you're right," Vorongil growled. He glared at Bart. "On the
last planet, one of our men disappeared. Jumped ship!" The creases
around his eyes deepened, troubled. "Probably just gone on the drift,
sight-seeing, but I wish he'd told me. As it is, I wonder if he's been
hurt, killed, kidnaped."
Ringg said, "Who'd dare? It would be reported."
Bart knew, with a cold chill, that the missing Klanerol had not simply
gone "on the drift." No Lhari port would ever see Klanerol, Second Class
Astrogator, again.
"Bartol," mused the captain, riffling the forged papers. "Served on the
Polaris run. Hm--you _are_ a good long way off your orbit, aren't you?
Never been out that way myself. All right, I'll take you on. You can do
system programming? Good. Rating in Second Galaxy mathematics?"
He nodded, hauled out a sheet of thin, wax-coated fabric and his claws
made rapid imprints in the surface. He passed it to Bart, pointed. Bart
hesitated, and Vorongil said impatiently, "Standard agreement, no hidden
clauses. Put your mark on it, feathertop."
Bart realized it was something like a fingerprint they wanted. _You'll
pass anything but X-rays._ He pressed the top of one claw into the wax.
Vorongil nodded, shoved it on a shelf without looking at it.
"So much for that," said Ringg, laughing, as they came out. "The Bald
One was in a good temper. I'm going to the port and celebrate, not that
this dim place is very festive. You?"
"I--I think I'll stay aboard."
"Well, if you change your mind, I'll be down there somewhere," Ringg
said. "See you later, shipmate." He raised his closed fist in farewell,
and went.
Bart stood in the corridor, feeling astounded and strange. He _belonged_
here! He had a right to be on board the ship! He wasn't quite sure what
to do next.
A Lhari, as short and fat as a Lhari could possibly be and still be a
Lhari, came or rather waddled out of the captain's office. He saw Bartol
and called, "Are you the new First Class? I'm Rugel, coordinator."
Rugel had a huge cleft darkish scar across his lip, and there were two
bands on his cloak. He was completely bald, and he puffed when he
walked. "Vorongil asked me to show you around. You'll share quarters
with Ringg--no sense shifting another man. Come down and see the chart
rooms--or do you want to leave your kit in your cabin first?"
"I don't have much," Bart said.
Rugel's seamed lip widened. "That's the way--travel light when you're on
the drift," he confirmed.
Rugel took him down to the drive rooms, and here for a moment, in wonder
and awe, Bart almost forgot his disguise. The old Lhari led him to the
huge computer which filled one wall of the room, and Bart was smitten
with the universality of mathematics. Here was something he _knew_ he
could handle.
He could do this programming, easily enough. But as he stood before the
banks of complex, yet beautifully familiar levers, the sheer exquisite
complexity of it overcame him. To compute the movements of thousands of
stars, all moving at different speeds in different directions in the
vast swirling directionless chaos of the Universe--and yet to be sure
that every separate movement would come out to within a quarter of a
mile! It was something that no finite brain--man or Lhari--could ever
accomplish, yet their limited brains had built these computers that
_could_ do it.
Rugel watched him, laughing softly. "Well, you'll have enough time down
here. I like to have youngsters who are still in the middle of a love
affair with their work. Come along, and I'll show you your cabin."
Rugel left him in a cabin amidships; small and cramped, but tidy, two of
the oval bunks slung at opposite ends, a small table between them, and
drawers filled with pamphlets and manuals and maps. Furtively, ashamed
of himself, yet driven by necessity, Bart searched Ringg's belongings,
wanting to get some idea of what possessions he ought to own. He looked
around the shower and toilet facilities with extra care--this was
something he _couldn't_ slip up on and be considered even halfway
normal. He was afraid Ringg would come in, and see him staring curiously
at something as ordinary, to a Lhari, as a cake of soap.
He decided to go down to the port again and look around the shops. He
was not afraid of being unable to handle his work. What he feared was
something subtler--that the small items of everyday living, something as
simple as a nail file, would betray him.
On his way he looked into the Recreation Lounge, filled with comfortable
seats, vision-screens, and what looked like simple pinball machines and
mechanical games of skill. There were also stacks of tapereels and
headsets for listening, not unlike those humans used. Bart felt
fascinated, and wanted to explore, but decided he could do that later.
Somehow he took the wrong turn coming out of the Recreation Lounge, and
went through a door where the sudden dimming of lights told him he was
in Mentorian quarters. The sudden darkness made him stumble, thrust out
his hands to keep from falling, and an unmistakably human voice said,
"Ouch!"
"I'm sorry," Bart said in Universal, without thinking.
"I admit the lights are dim," said the voice tartly, and Bart found
himself looking down, as his eyes adjusted to the new light level, at a
girl.
She was small and slight, in a metallic blue cloak that swept out, like
wings, around her thin shoulders; the hood framed a small, kittenlike
face. She was a Mentorian, and she was human, and Bart's eyes rested
with comfort on her face; she, on the other hand, was looking up with
anxiety and uneasy distrust. _That's right--I'm a Lhari, a nonhuman
freak!_
"I seem to have missed my way."
"What are you looking for, sir? The medical quarters are through here."
"I'm looking for the elevator down to the crew exits."
"Through here," she said, reopening the door through which he had come,
and shading her large, lovely, long-lashed eyes with a slender hand.
"You took the wrong turn. Are you new on board? I thought all ships were
laid out exactly alike."
"I've only worked on passenger ships."
"I believe they are somewhat different," said the girl in good Lhari.
"Well, that is your way, sir."
He felt as if he had been snubbed and dismissed.
"What is your name?"
She stiffened as if about to salute. "Meta of the house of Marnay Three,
sir."
Bart realized he was doing something wholly out of character for a
Lhari--chatting casually with a Mentorian. With a wistful glance at the
pretty girl, he said a stiff "Thank you" and went down the ramp she had
indicated. He felt horribly lonely. Being a freak wasn't going to be
much fun.
CHAPTER EIGHT
He saw the girl again next day, when they checked in for blastoff. She
was seated at a small desk, triangular like so much of the Lhari
furniture, checking a register as they came out of the Decontam room,
making sure they downed their greenish solution of microorganisms.
"Papers, please?" She marked, and Bart noticed that she was using a red
pencil.
"Bartol," she said aloud. "Is that how you pronounce it?" She made small
scribbles in a sort of shorthand with the red pencil, then made other
marks with the black one in Lhari; he supposed the red marks were her
own private memoranda, unreadable by the Lhari.
"Next, please." She handed a cup of the greenish stuff to Ringg, behind
him. Bart went down toward the drive room, and to his own surprise,
found himself wishing the girl were a mathematician rather than a medic.
It would have been pleasant to watch her down there.
Old Rugel, on duty in the drive room, watched Bart strap himself in
before the computer. "Make sure you check all dials at null," he
reminded him, and Bart felt a last surge of panic.
This was his first cruise, except for practice runs at the Academy! Yet
his rating called him an experienced man on the Polaris run. He'd had
the Lhari training tape, which was supposed to condition his responses,
but would it? He tried to clench his fists, drove a claw into his palm,
winced, and commanded himself to stay calm and keep his mind on what he
was doing.
It calmed him to make the routine check of his dials.
"Strapdown check," said a Lhari with a yellowed crest and a rasping
voice. "New man, eh?" He gave Bart's straps perfunctory tugs at
shoulders and waist, tightened a buckle. "Karol son of Garin."
Bells rang in the ship, and Bart felt the odd, tonic touch of fear.
_This was it._
Vorongil strode through the door, his banded cloak sweeping behind him,
and took the control couch.
"Ready from fueling room, sir."
"Position," Vorongil snapped.
Bart heard himself reading off a string of figures in Lhari. His voice
sounded perfectly calm.
"Communication."
"Clear channels from Pylon Dispatch, sir." It was old Rugel's voice.
"Well," Vorongil said, slowly and almost reflectively, "let's take her
up then."
He touched some controls. The humming grew. Then, swift, hard and
crushing, weight mashed Bart against his couch.
"Position!" Vorongil's voice sounded harsh, and Bart fought the crushing
weight of it. Even his eyeballs ached as he struggled to turn the tiny
eye muscles from dial to dial, and his voice was a dim croak: "Fourteen
seven sidereal twelve point one one four nine...."
"Hold it to point one one four six," Vorongil said calmly.
"Point one one four six," Bart said, and his claws stabbed at dials.
Suddenly, in spite of the cold weight on his chest, the pain, the
struggle, he felt as if he were floating. He managed a long, luxurious
breath. He _could_ handle it. He knew what he was doing.
_He was an Astrogator...._
Later, when Acceleration One had reached its apex and the artificial
gravity made the ship a place of comfort again, he went down to the
dining hall with Ringg and met the crew of the _Swiftwing_. There were
twelve officers and twelve crewmen of various ratings like himself and
Ringg, but there seemed to be little social division between them, as
there would have been on a human ship; officers and crew joked and
argued without formality of any kind.
None of them gave him a second look. Later, in the Recreation Lounge,
Ringg challenged him to a game with one of the pinball machines. It
seemed fairly simple to Bart; he tried it, and to his own surprise, won.
Old Rugel touched a lever at the side of the room. With a tiny whishing
sound, shutters opened, the light of Procyon Alpha flooded them and he
looked out through a great viewport into bottomless space.
Procyon Alpha, Beta and Gamma hung at full, rings gently tilted. Beyond
them the stars burned, flaming through the shimmers of cosmic dust. The
colors, the never-ending colors of space!
And he stood here, in a room full of monsters--_he was one of the
monsters_--
"Which one of the planets was it we stopped on?" Rugel asked. "I can't
tell 'em apart from this distance."
Bartol swallowed; he had almost said _the blue one_. He pointed.
"The--the big one there, with the rings almost edge-on. I think they
call it Alpha."
"It's their planet," said Rugel. "I guess they can call it what they
want to. How about another game?"
Resolutely, Bart turned his back on the bewitching colors, and bent over
the pinball machine.
* * * * *
The first week in space was a nightmare of strain. He welcomed the hours
on watch in the drive room; there alone he was sure of what he was
doing. Everywhere else in the ship he was perpetually scared,
perpetually on tiptoe, perpetually afraid of making some small and
stupid mistake. Once he actually called Aldebaran a red star, but Rugel
either did not hear the slip or thought he was repeating what one of the
Mentorians--there were two aboard besides the girl--had said.
The absence of color from speech and life was the hardest thing to get
used to. Every star in the manual was listed by light-frequency waves,
to be checked against a photometer for a specific reading, and it almost
drove Bart mad to go through the ritual when the Mentorians were off
duty and could not call off the color and the equivalent frequency type
for him. Yet he did not dare skip a single step, or someone might have
guessed that he could _see_ the difference between a yellow and a green
star before checking them.
The Academy ships had had the traditional human signal system of
flashing red lights. Bart was stretched taut all the time, listening for
the small codelike buzzers and ticks that warned him of filled tanks,
leads in need of servicing, answers ready. Ringg's metal-fatigues
testing kit was a bewildering muddle of boxes, meters, rods and
earphones, each buzzing and clicking its characteristic warning.
At first he felt stretched to capacity every waking moment, his memory
aching with a million details, and lay awake nights thinking his mind
would crack under the strain. Then Alpha faded to a dim bluish shimmer,
Beta was eclipsed, Gamma was gone, Procyon dimmed to a failing spark;
and suddenly Bart's memory accustomed itself to the load, the new habits
were firmly in place, and he found himself eating, sleeping and working
in a settled routine.
He belonged to the _Swiftwing_ now.
Procyon was almost lost in the viewports when a sort of upswept tempo
began to run through the ship, an undercurrent of increased activity.
Cargo was checked, inventoried and strapped in. Ringg was given four
extra men to help him, made an extra tour of the ship, and came back
buzzing like a frantic cricket. Bart's computers told him they were
forging toward the sidereal location assigned for the first of the
warp-drive shifts, which would take them some fifteen light-years toward
Aldebaran.
On the final watch before the warp-drive shift, the medical officer came
around and relieved the Mentorians from duty. Bart watched them go, with
a curious, cold, crawling apprehension. Even the Mentorians, trusted by
the Lhari--even these were put into cold-sleep! Fear grabbed his
insides.
_No human had ever survived the shift into warp-drive_, the Lhari said.
Briscoe, his father, Raynor Three--they thought they had proved that the
Lhari lied. If they were right, if it was a Lhari trick to reinforce
their stranglehold on the human worlds and keep the warp-drive for
themselves, then Bart had nothing to fear. But he was afraid.
Why did the Mentorians endure this, never quite trusted, isolated among
aliens?
Raynor Three had said, _Because I belong in space, because I'm never
happy anywhere else_. Bart looked out the viewport at the swirl and burn
of the colors there. Now that he could never speak of the colors, it
seemed he had never been so wholly and wistfully aware of them. They
symbolized the thing he could never put into words.
_So that everyone can have this. Not just the Lhari._
Rugel watched the Mentorians go, scowling. "I wish medic would find a
way to keep them alive through warp," he said. "My Mentorian assistant
could watch that frequency-shift as we got near the bottom of the arc,
and I'll bet she could _see_ it. They can see the changes in intensity
faster than I can plot them on the photometer!"
Bart felt goosebumps break out on his skin. Rugel spoke as if the
certain death of humans, Mentorians, was a fact. Didn't the Lhari
themselves know it was a farce? _Or was it?_
Vorongil himself took the controls for the surge of Acceleration Two,
which would take them past the Light Barrier. Bart, watching his
instruments to exact position and time, saw the colors of each star
shift strangely, moment by moment. The red stars seemed hard to see. The
orange-yellow ones burned suddenly like flame; the green ones seemed
golden, the blue ones almost green. Dimly, he remembered the old story
of a "red shift" in the lights of approaching stars, but here he saw it
pure, a sight no human eyes had ever seen. A sight that _no_ eyes had
seen, human or otherwise, for the Lhari could not see it....
"Time," he said briefly to Vorongil, "Fifteen seconds...."
Rugel looked across from his couch. Bart felt that the old, scarred
Lhari could read his fear. Rugel said through a wheeze, "No matter how
old you get, Bartol, you're still scared when you make a warp-shift. But
relax, computers don't make mistakes."
"Catalyst," Vorongil snapped, "Ready--_shift!_"
At first there was no change; then Bart realized that the stars, through
the viewport, had altered abruptly in size and shade and color. They
were not sparks but strange streaks, like comets, crossing and
recrossing long tails that grew, longer and longer, moment by moment.
The dark night of space was filled with a crisscrossing blaze. They were
moving faster than light, they saw the light left by the moving Universe
as each star hurled in its own invisible orbit, while they tore
incredibly through it, faster than light itself....
Bart felt a curious, tingling discomfort, deep in his flesh; almost an
itching, a stinging in his very bones.
_Lhari flesh is no different from ours...._
Space, through the viewport, was no longer space as he had come to know
it, but a strange eerie limbo, the star-tracks lengthening, shifting
color until they filled the whole viewport with shimmering, gray,
recrossing light. The unbelievable reaction of warp-drive thrust them
through space faster than the lights of the surrounding stars, faster
than imagination could follow.
The lights in the drive chamber began to dim--or was he blacking out?
The stinging in his flesh was a clawed pain.
Briscoe lived through it....
_They say._
The whirling star-tracks fogged, coiled, turned colorless worms of
light, went into a single vast blur. Dimly Bart saw old Rugel slump
forward, moaning softly; saw the old Lhari pillow his bald head on his
veined arms. Then darkness took him; and thinking it was death, Bart
felt only numb, regretful failure. _I've failed, we'll always fail. The
Lhari were right all long._
_But we tried! By God, we tried!_
"Bartol?" A gentle hand, cat claws retracted, came down on his shoulder.
Ringg bent over him. Good-natured rebuke was in his voice. "Why didn't
you tell us you got a bad reaction, and ask to sign out for this shift?"
he demanded. "Look, poor old Rugel's passed out again. He just won't
admit he can't take it--but one idiot on a watch is enough! Some people
just feel as if the bottom's dropped out of the ship, and that's all
there is to it."
Bart hauled his head upright, fighting a surge of stinging nausea. His
bones itched inside and he was damnably uncomfortable, but he was alive.
"I'm--fine."
"You look it," Ringg said in derision. "Think you can help me get Rugel
to his cabin?"
Bart struggled to his feet, and found that when he was upright he felt
better. "Wow!" he muttered, then clamped his mouth shut. He was supposed
to be an experienced man, a Lhari hardened to space. He said woozily,
"How long was I out?"
"The usual time," Ringg said briskly, "about three seconds--just while
we hit peak warp-drive. Feels longer, so they tell me, sometimes--time's
funny, beyond light-speeds. The medic says it's purely psychological.
I'm not so sure. I _itch_, blast it!"
He moved his shoulders in a squirming way, then bent over Rugel, who was
moaning, half insensible. "Catch hold of his feet, Bartol. Here--ease
him out of his chair. No sense bothering the medics this time. Think you
can manage to help me carry him down to the deck?"
"Sure," Bart said, finding his feet and his voice. He felt better as
they moved along the hallway, the limp, muttering form of the old Lhari
insensible in their arms. They reached the officer's deck, got Rugel
into his cabin and into his bunk, hauled off his cloak and boots. Ringg
stood shaking his head.
"And they say Captain Vorongil's so tough!"
Bart made a questioning noise.
"Why, just look," said Ringg. "He knows it would make poor old Rugel
feel as if he wasn't good for much--to order him into his bunk and make
him take dope like a Mentorian for every warp-shift. So we have this to
go through at every jump!" He sounded cross and disgusted, but there was
a rough, boyish gentleness as he hauled the blanket over the bald old
Lhari. He looked up, almost shyly.
"Thanks for helping me with Old Baldy. We usually try to get him out
before Vorongil officially takes notice. Of course, he sort of keeps his
back turned," Ringg said, and they laughed together as they turned back
to the drive room. Bart found himself thinking, _Ringg's a good kid_,
before he pulled himself up, in sudden shock.
He _had_ lived through warp-drive! Then, indeed, the Lhari had been
lying all along, the vicious lie that maintained their stranglehold
monopoly of star-travel. He was their enemy again, the spy within their
gates, like Briscoe, to be hunted down and killed, but to bring the
message, loud and clear, to everyone: _The Lhari lied! The stars can
belong to us all!_
When he got back to the drive room, he saw through the viewport that the
blur had vanished, the star-trails were clear, distinct again, their
comet-tails shortening by the moment, their colors more distinct.
The Lhari were waiting, a few poised over their instruments, a few more
standing at the quartz window watching the star-trails, some squirming
and scratching and grousing about "space fleas"--the characteristic
itching reaction that seemed to be deep down inside the bones.
Bart checked his panels, noted the time when they were due to snap back
into normal space, and went to stand by the viewport. The stars were
reappearing, seeming to steady and blaze out in cloudy splendor through
the bright dust. They burned in great streamers of flame, and for the
moment he forgot his mission again, lost in the beauty of the fiery
lights. He drew a deep, shaking gasp. It was worth it all, to see this!
He turned and saw Ringg, silent, at his shoulder.
"Me, too," Ringg said, almost in a whisper. "I think every man on board
feels that way, a little, only he won't admit it." His slanted gray eyes
looked quickly at Bart and away.
"I guess we're almost down to L-point. Better check the panel and report
nulls, so medic can wake up the Mentorians."
* * * * *
The _Swiftwing_ moved on between the stars. Aldebaran loomed, then faded
in the viewports; another shift jumped them to a star whose human name
Bart did not know. Shift followed shift, spaceport followed spaceport,
sun followed sun; men lived on most of these worlds, and on each of them
a Lhari spaceport rose, alien and arrogant. And on each world men looked
at Lhari with resentful eyes, cursing the race who kept the stars for
their own.
Cargo amassed in the holds of the _Swiftwing_, from worlds beyond all
dreams of strangeness. Bart grew, not bored, but hardened to the
incredible. For days at a time, no word of human speech crossed his
mind.
The blackout at peak of each warp-shift persisted. Vorongil had given
him permission to report off duty, but since the blackouts did not
impair his efficiency, Bart had refused. Rugel told him that this was
the moment of equilibrium, the peak of the faster-than-light motion.
"Perhaps a true limiting speed beyond which nothing will ever go,"
Vorongil said, touching the charts with a varnished claw. Rugel's
scarred old mouth spread in a thin smile.
"Maybe there's no such thing as a limiting speed. Someday we'll reach
true simultaneity--enter warp, and come out just where we want to be, at
the same time. Just a split-second interval. That will be real
transmission."
Ringg scoffed, "And suppose you get even better--and come out of warp
_before_ you go into it? What then, Honorable Bald One?"
Rugel chuckled, and did not answer. Bart turned away. It was not easy to
keep on hating the Lhari.
There came a day when he came on watch to see drawn, worried faces; and
when Ringg came into the drive room they threw their levers on
_automatic_ and crowded around him, their crests bobbing in question and
dismay. Vorongil seemed to emit sparks as he barked at Ringg, "You found
it?"
"I found it. Inside the hull lining."
Vorongil swore, and Ringg held up a hand in protest. "I only _locate_
metals fatigue, sir--I don't _make_ it!"
"No help for it then," Vorongil said. "We'll have to put down for
repairs. How much time do we have, Ringg?"
"I give it thirty hours," Ringg said briefly, and Vorongil gave a long
shrill whistle. "Bartol, what's the closest listed spaceport?"
Bart dived for handbooks, manuals, comparative tables of position, and
started programming information. The crew drifted toward him, and by the
time he finished feeding in the coded information, a row three-deep of
Lhari surrounded him, including all the officers. Vorongil was right at
his shoulder when Bart slipped on his earphones and started decoding the
punched strips that fed out the answers from the computer.
"Nearest port is Cottman Four. It's almost exactly thirty hours away."
"I don't like to run it that close." Vorongil's face was bitten deep
with lines. He turned to Ramillis, head of Maintenance. "Do we need
spare parts? Or just general repairs?"
"Just repairs, sir. We have plenty of shielding metal. It's a long job
to get through the hulls, but there's nothing we can't fix."
Vorongil flexed his clawed hands nervously, stretching and retracting
them. "Ringg, you're the fatigue expert. I'll take your word for it. Can
we make thirty hours?"
Ringg looked pale and there was none of his usual boyish nonsense when
he said, "Captain, I swear I wouldn't risk Cottman. You know what
crystallization's like, sir. We can't get through that hull lining to
repair it in space, if it _does_ go before we land. We wouldn't have the
chance of a hydrogen atom in a tank of halogens."
Vorongil's slanted eyebrows made a single unbroken line. "That's the
word then. Bartol, find us the closest star with a planet--spaceport or
not."
Bart's hands were shaking with sudden fear. He checked each digit of
their present position, fed it into the computer, waited, finally wet
his lips and plunged, taking the strip from a computer.
"This small star, called Meristem. It's a--" he bit his lip, hard; he
had almost said _green_--"type Q, two planets with atmosphere within
tolerable limits, not classified as inhabited."
"Who owns it?"
"I don't have that information on the banks, sir."
Vorongil beckoned the Mentorian assistant. So apart were Lhari and
Mentorian on these ships that Bart did not even know his name. He said,
"Look up a star called Meristem for us." The Mentorian hurried away,
came back after a moment with the information that it belonged to the
Second Galaxy Federation, but was listed as unexplored.
Vorongil scowled. "Well, we can claim necessity," he said. "It's only
eight hours away, and Cottman's thirty. Bartol, plot us a warp-drive
shift that will land us in that system, and on the inner of the two
planets, within nine hours. If it's a type Q star, that means dim
illumination, and no spaceport mercury-vapor installations. We'll need
as much sunlight as we can get."
It was the first time that Bart, unaided, had had the responsibility of
plotting a warp-drive shift. He checked the coordinates of the small
green star three times before passing them along to Vorongil. Even so,
when they went into Acceleration Two, he felt stinging fear. _If I
plotted wrong, we could shift into that crazy space and come out
billions of miles away...._
But when the stars steadied and took on their own colors, the blaze of a
small green sun was steady in the viewport.
"Meristem," Vorongil said, taking the controls himself. "Let's hope the
place is really uninhabited and that catalogue's up to date, lads. It
wouldn't be any fun to burn up some harmless village, or get shot at by
barbarians--and we're setting down with no control-tower signals and no
spaceport repair crews. So let's hope our luck holds out for a while
yet."
Bart, feeling the minute, unsteady trembling somewhere in the
ship--_Imagination_, he told himself, _you can't feel metal-fatigue
somewhere in the hull lining_--echoed the wish. He did not know that he
had already had the best luck of his unique voyage, or realize the
fantastic luck that had brought him to the small green star Meristem.
CHAPTER NINE
The crews of repairmen were working down in the hull, and the
_Swiftwing_ was a hell of clanging noise and shuddering heat.
Maintenance was working overtime, but the rest of the crew, with nothing
to do, stood around in the recreation rooms, tried to play games, cursed
the heat and the dreary dimness through the viewports, and twitched at
the boiler-factory racket from the holds.
Toward the end of the third day, the biologist reported air, water and
gravity well within tolerable limits, and Captain Vorongil issued
permission for anyone who liked, to go outside and have a look around.
Bart had a sort of ship-induced claustrophobia. It was good to feel
solid ground under his feet and the rays of a sun, even a green sun, on
his back. Even more, it was good to get away from the constant presence
of his shipmates. During this enforced idleness, their presence
oppressed him unendurably--so many tall forms, gray skins, feathery
crests. He was always alone; for a change, he felt that he'd like to be
alone without Lhari all around him.
But as he moved away from the ship, Ringg dropped out of the hatchway
and hailed him. "Where are you going?"
"Just for a walk."
Ringg drew a deep breath of weariness. "That sounds good. Mind if I come
along?"
Bart did, but all he could say was, "If you like."
"How about let's get some food from the rations clerk, and do some
exploring?"
The sun overhead was a clear greenish-gold, the sky strewn with soft
pale clouds that cast racing shadows on the soft grass underfoot,
fragrant pinkish-yellow stuff strewn with bright vermilion puff-balls.
Bart wished he were alone to enjoy it.
"How are the repairs coming?"
"Pretty well. But Karol got his hand half scorched off, poor fellow.
Just luck the same thing didn't happen to me." Ringg added. "You know
that Mentorian--the young one, the medic's assistant?"
"I've seen her. Her name's Meta, I think." Suddenly, Bart wished the
Mentorian girl were with him here. It would be nice to hear a human
voice.
"Oh, is it a female? Mentorians all look alike to me," Ringg said, while
Bart controlled his face with an effort. "Be that as it may, she saved
me from having the same thing happen. I was just going to lean against a
strip of sheet metal when she _screamed_ at me. Do you think they can
really _see_ heat vibrations? She called it _red_-hot."
They had reached a line of tall cliffs, where a steep rock-fall divided
off the plain from the edge of the mountains. A few slender, drooping,
gold-leaved trees bent graceful branches over a pool. Bart stood
fascinated by the play of green sunlight on the emerald ripples, but
Ringg flung himself down full length on the soft grass and sighed
comfortably. "Feels good."
"Too comfortable to eat?"
They munched in companionable silence. "Look," said Ringg at last,
pointing toward the cliffs, "Holes in the rocks. Caves. I'd like to
explore them, wouldn't you?"
"They look pretty gloomy to me. Probably full of monsters."
Ringg patted the hilt of his energon-ray. "This will handle anything
short of an armor-plated saurian."
Bart shuddered. As part of uniform, he, too, had been issued one of the
energon-rays; but he had never used it and didn't intend to. "Just the
same, I'd rather stay out here in the sun."
"It's better than vitamin lamps," Ringg admitted, "even if it's not very
bright."
Bart wondered, suddenly and worriedly, about the effects of green
sunburn on his chemically altered skin tone.
"Well, let's enjoy it while we can," Ringg said, "because it seems to be
clouding over. I wouldn't be surprised if it rained." He yawned. "I'm
getting bored with this voyage. And yet I don't want it to end, because
then I'll have to fight it out all over again with my family. My father
owns a hotel, and he wants me in the family business, not five hundred
light-years away. None of our family have ever been spacemen before," he
explained, "and they don't understand that living on one planet would
drive me out of my mind." He sighed. "How did you explain it to your
people--that you couldn't be happy in the mud? Or are you a career man?"
"I guess so. I never thought about doing anything else," Bart said
slowly, Ringg's story had touched him; he had never realized quite so
fully how much alike the two races were, how human the Lhari problems
and dreams could seem. _Why, of course, the Lhari aren't all spacemen.
They have hotel keepers and garbage men and dentists just as we do.
Funny, you never think of them except in space._
"My mother died when I was very young," Bart said, choosing his words
very carefully. "My father owned a fleet of interplanetary ships."
"But you wanted the real thing, deep space, the stars," Ringg said. "How
did he feel about that?"
"He would have understood," Bart said, unable to keep emotion out of his
voice, "but he's dead now. He died, not long ago."
Ringg's eyes were bright with sympathy. "While you were off on the
drift? Bad luck," he said gently. He was silent, and when he spoke again
it was in a very different tone.
"But some of the older generation--I had a professor in training school,
funny old chap, bald as the hull of the _Swiftwing_. Taught us
cosmic-ray analysis, and what he didn't know about spiral nebulae could
be engraved on my fifth toe-claw, and he'd never been off the face of
the planet. Not even to one of the moons! He was the supervisor of my
student lodge, and oh, was he a--" The phrase Ringg used meant,
literally, _a soft piece of cake_.
"His feet may have been buried in mud, but his head was off in the Great
Nebula. We had some wild times," Ringg reminisced. "We'd slip away to
the city--strictly against rules, it was an old-style school--and draw
lots for one of us to stay home and sign in for all twelve. You see,
he'd sit there reading, and when one of us came in, just shove the wax
at us, with his nose in a text on cosmic dust, never looking up. So the
one who stayed home would scrawl a name on it, walk out the back door,
come around and sign in again. When there were twelve signed in, of
course, the old chap would go up to bed, and late that night the one who
stayed in would sneak down and let us in."
Ringg sat up suddenly, touching his cheek. "Was that a drop of rain? And
the sun's gone. I suppose we ought to start back, though I hate to leave
those caves unexplored."
Bart bent to gather up the debris of their meal. He flinched as
something hard struck his arm. "Ouch! What was that?"
Ringg cried out in pain. "It's hail!"
Sharp pieces of ice were suddenly pelting, raining down all around them,
splattering the ground with a harsh, bouncing clatter. Ringg yelled,
"Come on--it's big enough to _flatten_ you!"
It looked to Bart as if it were at least golf-ball size, and seemed to
be getting bigger by the moment. Lightning flashed around them in sudden
glare. They ducked their heads and ran.
"Get in under the lee of the cliffs. We couldn't possibly make it back
to the _Swift_--" Ringg's voice broke off in a cry of pain; he slumped
forward, pitched to his knees, then slid down and lay still.
"What's the matter?" Bart, arm curved to protect his skull, bent over
the fallen Lhari, but Ringg, his forehead bleeding, lay insensible. Bart
felt sharp pain in his arm, felt the hail hard as thrown stones raining
on his head. Ringg was out cold. _If they stayed in this_, Bart thought
despairingly, _they'd both be dead!_
Crouching, trying to duck his head between his shoulders, Bart got his
arms under Ringg's armpits and half-carried, half-dragged him under the
lee of the cliffs. He slipped and slid on the thickening layer of ice
underfoot, lost his footing, and came down, hard, one arm twisted
between himself and the cliff. He cried out in pain, uncontrollably, and
let Ringg slip from his grasp. The Lhari boy lay like the dead.
Bart bent over him, breathing hard, trying to get his breath back. The
hail was still pelting down, showing no signs of lessening. About five
feet away, one of the dark gaps in the cliff showed wide and menacing,
but at least, Bart thought, the hail couldn't come in there. He stooped
and got hold of Ringg again. A pain like fire went through the wrist he
had smashed against the rock. He set his teeth, wondering if it had
broken. The effort made him see stars, but he managed somehow to hoist
Ringg up again and haul him through the pelting hail toward the yawning
gap. It darkened around them, and, blessedly, the battering, bruising
hail could not reach them. Only an occasional light splinter of ice blew
with the bitter wind into the mouth of the cave.
Bart laid Ringg down on the floor, under the shelter of the rock
ceiling. He knelt beside him, and spoke his name, but Ringg just moaned.
His forehead was covered with blood.
Bart took one of the paper napkins from the lunch sack and carefully
wiped some of it away. His stomach turned at the deep, ugly cut, which
immediately started oozing fresh blood. He pressed the edges of the cut
together with the napkin, wondering helplessly how much blood Ringg
could lose without danger, and if he had concussion. If he tried to go
back to the ship and fetch the medic for Ringg, he'd be struck by hail
himself. From where he stood, it seemed that the hailstones were getting
bigger by the minute.
Ringg moaned, but when Bart knelt beside him again he did not answer.
Bart could hear only the rushing of wind, the noise of the splattering
hail and a sound of water somewhere--_or was that a rustle of scales, a
dragging of strange feet?_ He looked through the darkness into the
depths of the cave, his hand on his shock-beam. He was afraid to turn
his back on it.
_This is nonsense,_ he told himself firmly, _I'll just walk back there
and see what there is._
At his belt he had the small flashlamp, excessively bright, that was,
like the energon-beam shocker, a part of regulation equipment. He took
it out, shining it on the back wall of the cave; then drew a long breath
of startlement and for a moment forgot Ringg and his own pain.
For the back wall of the cave was an exquisite fall of crystal! Minerals
glowed there, giant crystals, like jewels, crusted with strange
lichen-like growths and colors. There were pale blues and greens and,
shimmering among them, a strangely colored crystalline mineral that he
had never seen before. It was blue--_No_, Bart thought, _that's just the
light, it's more like red--no, it can't be like_ both _of them at once,
and it isn't really like either. In this light--_
Ringg moaned, and Bart, glancing round, saw that he was struggling to
sit up. He ran back to him, dropping to his knees at Ringg's side. "It's
all right, Ringg, lie still. We're under cover now."
"Wha' happened?" Ringg said blurrily. "Head hurts--all sparks--all the
pretty lights--can't _see_ you!" He fumbled with loose, uncoordinated
fingers at his head and Bart grabbed at him before he poked a claw in
his eye. "Don't _do_ that," Ringg complained, "can't _see_--"
_He must have a bad concussion then. That's a nasty cut._ Gently, he
restrained the Lhari boy's hands.
"Bartol, what happened?"
Bart explained. Ringg tried to move, but fell limply back.
"Weren't you hurt? I thought I heard you cry out."
"A cut or two, but nothing serious," Bart said. "I think the hail's
stopped. Lie still, I'd better go back to the ship and get help."
"Give me a hand and I can walk," Ringg said, but when he tried to sit
up, he flinched, and Bart said, "You'd better lie still." He knew that
head injuries should be kept very quiet; he was almost afraid to leave
Ringg for fear the Lhari boy would have another delirious fit and hurt
himself, but there was no help for it.
The hail had stopped, and the piled heaps were already melting, but it
was bitterly cold. Bart wrapped himself in the silvery cloak, glad of
its warmth, and struggled back across the slushy, ice-strewn meadow that
had been so pink and flowery in the sunshine. The _Swiftwing_, a
monstrous dark egg looming in the twilight, seemed like home. Bart felt
the heavenly warmth close around him with a sigh of pure relief, but the
Second Officer, coming up the hatchway, stopped in consternation:
"You're covered with blood! The hailstorm--"
"I'm all right," Bart said, "but Ringg's been hurt. You'll need a
stretcher." Quickly, he explained. "I'll come with you and show you--"
"You'll do no such thing," the officer said. "You look as if you'd been
caught out in a meteor shower, feathertop! We can find the place. You go
and have those cuts attended to, and--what's wrong with your wrist?
Broken?"
Bart heard, like an echo, the frightening words: _Don't break any bones.
You won't pass an X-ray._
"It's all right, sir. When I get washed up--"
"That's an _order_," snapped the officer, "do you think, on this
pestilential unlucky planet, we can afford any _more_ bad luck? Metals
fatigue, Karol burned so badly the medic thinks he may never use his
hand again, and now you and Ringg getting yourselves laid up and out of
action? The medic will help me with Ringg; that Mentorian girl can look
after you. Get moving!"
He hurried away, and Bart, his head beginning to hurt, walked slowly up
the ramp. His whole arm felt numb, and he supported it with his good
hand.
In the small infirmary, Karol lay groaning in a bunk, his arm bound in
bandages, his head moving from side to side. The Mentorian girl Meta
turned, charging a hypo. She looked pale and drawn. She went to Karol,
uncovering his other arm, and made the injection; almost immediately the
moaning stopped and Karol lay still. Meta sighed and drew a hand over
her brow, brushing away feathery wisps that escaped from the cap tied
over her hair.
"Bartol? You're hurt? Not more burns, I hope?"
_She looks just like a fluffy little kitten_, Bart thought
incongruously. Fatigue was beginning to blur his reactions.
"Only a few cuts," he said, in Universal, though Meta had spoken Lhari.
In his weariness and pain he was homesick for the sound of a familiar
word. "Ringg and I were both caught in the hailstorm. He's badly hurt."
"Sit down here."
Bart sat. Meta's hands were skillful and cool as she sponged the blood
away from his forehead and sprayed it with some pleasantly cold,
mint-smelling antiseptic. Bart leaned back, tireder than he knew,
half-closing his eyes.
"That hail must have been enormous; we heard it through the hull.
Whatever possessed you to go out into it?"
"It wasn't hailing when we left," Bart said wearily. "The sun was as
nice and green as it could be." He bit the words off, realizing he had
made a slip, but the girl seemed not to hear, fastening a strip of
plastic over a cut. She picked up his wrist. Bart flinched in spite of
himself, and Meta nodded. "I was afraid of that; it may be broken.
Better let me X-ray it."
"No!" Bart said harshly. "It's all right, I just twisted it. Nothing's
broken. Just strap it up."
"It's pretty badly swollen," the girl said, moving it gently. "Does that
hurt? I thought so."
Bart set his teeth against a cry. "It's all right, I tell you. Just
because it's black and blue--"
He heard her breath jolt out, her fingers clenched painfully on his
wounded wrist. She did not hear his cry this time. "And the sun was nice
and _green_," she whispered. _"What are you?"_
Bart felt himself slip sidewise; he thought for a moment that he would
faint where he sat. Terrified, he looked up at Meta. Their eyes met, and
she said, hardly moving her pale lips, "Your eyes--they're like mine.
Your eyelashes--dark, not white. _You're not a Lhari!_"
The pain in his wrist suddenly blurred everything else, but Meta
suddenly realized she was gripping it; she gave a little, gentle cry,
and cradled the abused wrist in her palm.
"No wonder you didn't want it X-rayed," she whispered. Biting her lip,
she glanced, terrified, at Karol, unconscious in the bunk. "No, he can't
hear us; I gave him a heavy shot of hypnin, poor fellow."
"Go ahead," Bart said bitterly, "yell for your keepers."
Her gray eyes blazed at him for a moment; then, gently, she laid his
wrist on the table, went to the infirmary door and locked it on the
inside. She turned around, her face white; even her lips had lost their
color. "Who are you?" she whispered.
"Does it matter now?"
Shocked comprehension swept over her face. "You don't think I'd _tell_
them," she whispered. "I heard talk, in the Procyon port, of a spy that
had managed to get through on a Lhari ship." Her face twisted. "You--you
must know about the man on the _Multiphase_, you know they'll--make sure
I can't--hide anything dangerous to the Lhari at the end of the voyage."
"Meta--" concern for her swept over him--"what will they do to you when
they find out that you know and--didn't tell?"
Her gray eyes were wide as a kitten's. "Why, nothing. The Lhari would
never _hurt_ anyone, would they?"
Brainwashed? He set his mouth grimly. "I hope you never find out
different."
"Why would they need to?" she asked, reasonably. "They could just erase
the memory. I never heard of a Lhari actually hurting anyone. But
something like this--" She wavered, looking at him. "You look so _much_
like a Lhari! How was it done? How could they do it? Poor fellow, you
must be the--the loneliest man in the Universe!"
Her voice was compassionate. Bart felt his throat tighten, and had the
awful feeling that he was going to cry. He reached with his good hand
for hers, seeking the comfort of a human touch, but she flinched
instinctively away.
_He was a monster to this pretty girl...._
"It looks so real," she said helplessly. "Yes, now I can see, you have
tiny moons at the base of the nail, and the Lhari don't." Her face
worked. "It's--it's horrifying! How could you--"
There was a noise in the corridor. Meta gasped and ran to unlock the
door, stood back as the medic and the Second Officer came in, staggering
under Ringg's weight. Carefully, they put him into a bunk. The medic
straightened, shaking his crest.
"Did you get that wrist taken care of, Bartol?"
Meta stepped between Bart and the officer, reaching for a roll of
bandage. "I'm working on it now, _rieko mori_," she said. "It only wants
strapping up." But her fingers trembled as she wound the gauze, pulling
each fold tight.
"How's--Ringg?"
"Needs quiet," grunted the medic, "and a few sutures. Lucky you got him
under cover when you did."
Ringg said weakly from his bunk, "Bartol saved my life. I can think of
plenty who'd have run for cover, instead of staying out in that stuff
long enough to drag me inside. Thanks, shipmate."
Meta's hand, with a swift hard pressure, lingered on Bart's shoulder as
she cut the bandage and fastened the end. "I don't think that will
bother you much now," she whispered, fleetingly. "I didn't dare say it
was broken or they'd insist on X-rays. If it hurts I'll get you
something later for the pain. If you keep it strapped up tight--"
"It will do," Bart said aloud. The tight bandage made it feel a little
better, but he felt sick and dizzy, and when the medic turned and saw
him, the officer said brusquely "Watch off for you, Bartol. I'll fix the
sign-out sheet, but you go to your cabin and get yourself at least four
hours of sleep. _That's an order._"
Bart stumbled out of the cabin with relief. Safe in his own quarters, he
flung himself down on his bunk, shaking all over. He'd come safely
through one more nightmare, one more terror--for the moment! Had he put
Meta in danger, too? Was there no end to this ceaseless fear? Not only
for himself, but for others, the innocent bystanders who stumbled into
plots they did not understand?
_You're doing this for the stars. It's bigger than your fear. It's
bigger than you are, or any of the others...._
He was beginning to think it was a lot too big for him.
CHAPTER TEN
The green-sun Meristem lay far behind them. Karol's burns had healed;
only a faint pattern on Ringg's forehead showed where six stitches had
closed the ugly wound in his skull. Bart's wrist, after a few days of
nightmarish pain when he tried to pick up anything heavy, had healed.
Two more warp-drive shifts through space had taken the _Swiftwing_ far,
far out to the rim of the known galaxy, and now the great crimson coal
of Antares burned in their viewports.
Antares had twelve planets, the outermost of which--far away now, at the
furthest point in its orbit from the point of the _Swiftwing_'s entry
into the system--was a small captive sun. No larger than the planet
Earth, it revolved every ninety years around its huge primary.
Small as it was, it was blazingly blue-white brilliant, and had a tiny
planet of its own. After their stop on Antares Seven--the largest of the
inhabited planets in this system, where the Lhari spaceport was
located--they would make a careful orbit around the great red primary,
and land on the tiny worldlet of the blue-white secondary before leaving
the Antares system.
As Bart watched Antares growing in the viewports, he felt a variety of
emotions. On the one hand, he was relieved that as his voyage in secrecy
neared its official destination, he had as yet not incurred unmasking.
But he felt uncertain about his father's co-conspirators. Would they
return him to human form and send him back to Vega, his part ended? Or
would they, unthinkably, demand that he go on into the Lhari Galaxy?
What would he do, if they did?
At one moment he entertained fantasies of going on into the Lhari
worlds, returning victorious with the secret of their fueling location,
or of the star-drive itself. At another, he could not wait to be free of
it all. He longed for the society of his own people, yet ached to think
that this voyage between the stars must end so soon.
They made planetfall at the largest Lhari spaceport Bart had seen; as
always, the Second Officer was the first to go through Decontam and
ashore, returning with exchanged mail and messages for the _Swiftwing_'s
crew. He laughed when he gave Bartol a sealed packet. "So you're not
quite the orphan we've always thought!"
Bart took it, his heart suddenly pounding, and walked away through the
groups of officers and crew eagerly debating how they would spend their
port leave. He knew what it would be.
It was on the letterhead of Eight Colors, and it contained no message.
Only an address--and a time.
He slipped away unobserved to the Mentorian part of the ship to borrow a
cloak from Meta. She did not ask why he wanted it, and stopped him when
he would have told her. "I'd--rather not know."
She looked very small and very scared, and Bart wished he could comfort
her, but he knew she would shrink from him, repelled and horrified by
his Lhari skin, hair, claws.
Yet she reached for his hand, gripping it hard in her own dainty one.
"Bartol, be careful," she whispered, then stopped. "Bartol--that's a
Lhari name. What's your real one?"
"Bart. Bart Steele."
"Good luck, Bart." There were tears in her gray eyes.
With the blue cloak folded around his face, hands tucked in the slits at
the side, he felt almost like himself. And as the strange crimson
twilight folded down across the streets, laden with spicy smells and
little, fragrant gusts of wind, he almost savored the sense of being a
conspirator, of playing for high stakes in a network of intrigue between
the stars. He was off on an adventure, and meant to enjoy it.
The address he had been given was a lavish estate, not far from the
spaceport, across a little gleaming lake that shimmered red, indigo,
violet in the crimson sunset, surrounded by a low wall of what looked
like purple glass. Bart, moving slowly through the gate, felt that eyes
were watching him, and forced himself to walk with slow dignity.
Up the path. Up a low flight of black-marble stairs. A door swung open
and shut again, closing out the red sunset, letting him into a room that
seemed dim after the months of Lhari lights. There were three men in the
room, but his eyes were drawn instantly to one, standing against an
old-fashioned fireplace.
He was very tall and quite thin, and his hair was snow-white, though he
did not look old. Bart's first incongruous thought was, _He'd make a
better Lhari than I would._ His firm, commanding voice told Bart at once
that this was the man in charge. "You are Bartol?" He extended his hand.
Bart took it--and found himself gripped in a judo hold. The other two
men, leaping to place behind him, felt all over his body, not gently.
"No weapons, Montano."
"Look here--"
"Save it," Montano said. "If you're the right person, you'll understand.
If not, you won't have much time to resent it. A very simple test. What
color is that divan?"
"Green."
"And those curtains?"
"Darker green, with gold and red figures."
The men released him, and the white-haired man smiled.
"So you actually did it, Steele! I thought for sure the code message was
a fake." He stepped back and looked Bart over from head to foot,
whistling. "Raynor Three is a genius! Claws and everything! What a deuce
of a risk to take though!"
"You know my name," Bart said, "but who are you?"
Suspicion came back into the dark eyes. "Does that Mentorian cloak
mean--you've lost your memories, too?"
"No," said Bart, "it's simpler than that. I'm not Rupert Steele.
I'm--" his voice caught--"I'm his son."
The man looked startled and shocked. "I suppose that means Rupert is
dead. Dead! It came a little before he expected it, then. So you're
Bart." He sighed. "My name's Montano. This is Hedrick, and I suppose you
recognize Raynor Two."
Bart blinked. It was the same face, but it was not grim like Raynor
One's, nor expressive and kindly like that of Raynor Three. This one
just looked dangerous.
"But sit down," Montano said with a wave of his hand, "make yourself
comfortable."
Hedrick relieved Bart of his cloak; Raynor Two put a cup of some
steaming drink in his hand, passed him a tray of small hot fried things
that tasted crisp and delicious. Bart relaxed, answering questions. _How
old? Only seventeen? And you came all alone on a Lhari ship, working
your way as Astrogator? I must say you've got guts, kid!_ It was
dangerously like the fantasy he had invented. But Montano interrupted at
last.
"All right, this isn't a party and we haven't all night. I don't suppose
Bart has either. Enough time wasted. Since you walked into this, young
Steele, I take it you know what our plans are, after this?"
Bart shook his head. "No. Raynor Three sent me to call off your plans,
because of my father--"
"That sounds like Three," interrupted Raynor Two. "Entirely too
squeamish!"
Montano said irritably, "We couldn't have done anything without a man on
the _Swiftwing_, and you know it. We still can't. Bart, I suppose you
know about Lharillis."
"Not by that name."
"Your next stop. The planetoid of the captive sun. That little hunk of
bare rock out there is the first spot the Lhari visited in this
galaxy--even before Mentor. It's an inferno of light from that little
blue-white sun, so of course they love it--it's just like home to them.
When they found that the inner planets of Antares were inhabited, they
built their spaceport here, so they'd have a better chance at trade."
Montano scowled fiercely.
"But they wanted that little worldlet. So we went all over it to be sure
there were no rare minerals there, and finally leased it to them, a
century at a time. They mine the place for some kind of powdered
lubricant that's better than graphite--it's all done by robot machinery,
no one's stationed there. Every time a Lhari ship comes through this
system they stop there, even though there's nothing on Lharillis except
a landing field and some concrete bunkers filled with robot mining
machinery. They'll stop there on the way out of this system--and that's
where you come in. We need you on board, to put the radiation counter
out of commission."
He took a chart from a drawer, spread it out on a table top. "The
simplest way would be to cut these two wires. When the Lhari land, we'll
be there, waiting for them. On board the Lhari ship, there must be full
records--coordinates of their home world, of where they go for their
catalyst fuel--all that."
Bart whistled. "But won't the crew defend the ship? You can't fight
energon-ray guns!"
Montano's face was perfectly calm. "No. We won't even try." He handed
Bart a small strip of pale-yellow plastic.
"Keep this out of sight of the Mentorians," he said. "The Lhari won't be
able to see the color, of course. But when it turns orange, take cover."
"What is it?"
"Radiation-exposure film. It's exactly as sensitive to radiation as you
are. When it starts to turn orange, it's picking up radiation. If you're
aboard the ship, get into the drive chambers--they're lead-lined--and
you'll be safe. If you're out on the surface, you'll be all right inside
one of the concrete bunkers. But get under cover before it turns red,
because by that time every Lhari of them will be stone-cold dead."
Bart let the strip of plastic drop, staring in disbelief at Montano's
cold, cruel face. "Kill them? Kill a whole _shipload_ of them? That's
_murder_!"
"Not murder. War."
"We're not at war with the Lhari! We have a treaty with them!"
"The Federation has, because they don't dare do anything else," Montano
said, his face taking on the fanatic's light, "but some of us dare do
something, some of us aren't going to sit forever and let them strangle
all humanity, hold us down, let us _die_! It's war, Bart, war for
economic survival. Do you suppose the Lhari would hesitate to kill
anyone if we did anything to hurt their monopoly of the stars? Or didn't
they tell you about David Briscoe, how they hunted him down like an
animal--"
"But how do we know that was Lhari policy, and not just--some fanatic?"
Bart asked suddenly. He thought of the death of the elder Briscoe, and
as always he shivered with the horror of it, but for the first time it
came to him: _Briscoe had provoked his own death. He had physically
attacked the Lhari--threatened them, goaded them to shoot him down in
self-defense!_ "I've been on shipboard with them for months. They're not
wanton murderers."
Raynor Two made a derisive sound. "Sounds like it might be Three
talking!"
Hedrick growled, "Why waste time talking? Listen, young Steele, you'll
do as you're told, or else! Who gave you the right to argue?"
"Quiet, both of you." Montano came and laid his arm around Bart's
shoulders, persuasively. "Bart, I know how you feel. But can't you trust
me? You're Rupert Steele's son, and you're here to carry on what your
father left undone, aren't you? If you fail now, there may not be
another chance for years--maybe not in our lifetimes."
Bart dropped his head in his hands. _Kill a whole shipload of
Lhari--innocent traders? Bald, funny old Rugel, stern Vorongil, Ringg--_
"I don't know what to do!" It was a cry of despair. Bart looked
helplessly around at the men.
Montano said, almost tenderly, "You couldn't side with the Lhari against
men, could you? Could a son of Rupert Steele do that?"
Bart shut his eyes, and something seemed to snap within him. His father
had died for this. He might not understand Montano's reasons, but he had
to believe that Montano had them.
"All right," he said, thickly, "you can count on me."
When he left Montano's house, he had the details of the plan, had
memorized the location of the device he was to sabotage, and accepted,
from Montano, a pair of dark contact lenses. "The light's hellish out
there," Montano warned. "I know you're half Mentorian, but they don't
even take their Mentorians out there. They're proud of saying no human
foot has ever touched Lharillis."
When he got back to the Lhari spaceport, Ringg hailed him. "Where have
you been? I hunted the whole port for you! I wouldn't join the party
till you came. What's a pal for?"
Bart brushed by him without speaking, disregarding Ringg's surprised
stare, and went up the ramp. He reached his own cabin and threw himself
down in his bunk, torn in two.
Ringg was his friend! Ringg liked him! And if he did what Montano
wanted, Ringg would die.
Ringg had followed him, and was standing in the cabin door, watching him
in surprise. "Bartol, is something the matter? Is there anything I can
do? Have you had more bad news?"
Bart's torn nerves snapped. He raised his head and yelled at Ringg,
"Yes, there is something! You can quit following me around and just let
me alone for a change!"
Ringg took a step backward. Then he said, very softly, "Suit yourself,
Bartol. Sorry." And noiselessly, his white crest held high, he glided
away.
Bart's resolve hardened. Loneliness had done odd things to him--thinking
of Ringg, a Lhari, one of the freaks who had killed his father, as a
friend! If they knew who he was, they would turn on him, hunt him down
as they'd hunted Briscoe, as they'd hunted his father, as they'd hounded
him from Earth to Procyon. He put his scruples aside. He'd made up his
mind.
They could all die. What did he care? He was human and he was going to
be loyal to his own kind.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
But although he thought he had settled all the conflict, he found that
it returned when he was lying in his bunk, or when he stood in the dome
and watched the stars, while they moved through the Antares system
toward the captive sun and the tiny planet Lharillis.
_It's in my power to give this to all men...._
Should a few Lhari stand in his way?
He lay in his bunk brooding, thinking of death, staring at the yellow
radiation badge. _If you fail, it won't be in our lifetime._ He'd have
to go back to little things, to the little ships that hauled piddling
cargo between little planets, while all the grandeur of the stars
belonged to the Lhari. And if he succeeded, Vega Interplanet could
spread from star to star, a mighty memorial to Rupert Steele.
One day Vorongil sent for him. "Bartol," he said, and his voice was not
unkind, "you and Ringg have always been good friends, so don't be angry
about this. He's worried about you--says you spend all your spare time
in your bunk growling at him. Is there anything the matter, feathertop?"
He sounded so concerned, so--the word struck Bart with hysterical
humor--so _fatherly_, that Bart wanted insanely to laugh and to cry.
Instead he muttered, "Ringg should mind his own business."
"But it's not like that," Vorongil said. "Look, the _Swiftwing_'s a
world, young fellow, and a small one. If one being in that world is
unhappy, it affects everyone."
Bart had an absurd, painful impulse--to blurt out the incredible truth
to Vorongil, and try to get the old Lhari to understand what he was
doing.
But fear held him silent. He was alone, one small human in a ship of
Lhari. Vorongil was frowning at him, and Bart mumbled, "It's nothing,
_rieko mori_."
"I suppose you're pining for home," Vorongil said kindly. "Well, it
won't be long now."
The glare of the captive sun grew and grew in the ports, and Bart's
dread mounted. He had, as yet, had no opportunity to put the radiation
counter out of order. It was behind a panel in the drive room, and try
as he might, he could think of no way to get to it unobserved.
Sometimes, in sleepless nights, it seemed that would be the best way.
Just let it go. But then the Lhari would detect Montano's ship, and kill
Montano and his men.
Did he believe that? He had to believe it. It was the only way he could
possibly justify what he was doing.
And then his chance came, as so many chances do when one no longer wants
them. The Second Officer met him at the beginning of one watch, saying
worriedly, "Bartol, old Rugel's sick--not fit to be on his feet. Do you
think you can hold down this shift alone, if I drop in and give you a
hand from time to time?"
"I think so," Bart said, carefully not overemphasizing it. The Second
Officer, by routine, spent half of his time in the drive room, and half
his time down below in Maintenance. When he left, Bart knew he would
have at least half an hour, uninterrupted, in the drive room. He ripped
open the panel, located the wires and hesitated; he didn't quite dare to
cut them outright.
He jerked one wire loose, frayed the other with a sharp claw until it
was almost in shreds and would break with the first surge of current,
pulled two more connections loose so that they were not making full
contact. He closed the panel and brushed dust over it, and when the
Second Officer came back, Bart was at his own station.
As Antares fell toward them in the viewport, he found himself worrying
about Mentorians. They would be in cold sleep, presumably in a safe part
of the ship, behind shielding, or Montano would have made provisions for
them. Still, he wished there were a way to warn Meta.
He was not on watch when they came into the planetary field of
Lharillis, but when he came on shift, he knew at once that the trouble
had been located. The panel was pulled open, the exposed wires hanging,
and Ringg was facing old Rugel, shouting, "Listen, Baldy, I won't have
you accusing me of going light on my work! I checked those panels eight
days ago! Tell me who's going to be opening the panels in here anyhow?"
"No, no," Rugel said patiently, "I'm not accusing you of anything, only
being careless, young Ringg. You poke with those buzzing instruments and
things, maybe once you tear loose some wires."
Bart remembered he wasn't supposed to know what was going on. "What's
this all about?"
It was Rugel who answered. "The radiation counter--the planetary one,
not the one we use in space--is out of order. We don't even need it this
landing--there's no radiation on Lharillis. If it were the landing gear,
now, that would be serious. I'm just trying to tell Ringg--"
"He's trying to say I didn't check it." Ringg was not to be calmed.
"It's my professional competence--"
"Forget it," Bart said. "If Rugel isn't sore about it, and if we don't
need it for landing, why worry?" He felt like Judas.
"Just take a look at my daybook," Ringg insisted, "I checked and marked
it _service fit_! I tell you, somebody was blundering around, opening
panels where they had no business, tore it out by accident, then was too
much of a filthy sneak to report it and get it fixed!"
"Bartol was on watch alone one night," said the Second Officer, "but you
wouldn't meddle with panels, would you, Bartol?"
Bart set his teeth, steadying his breathing, as Ringg turned hopefully
to him. "Bartol, did you--by mistake, maybe? Because if you did, it
won't count against your rating, but it means a black mark against
mine!"
Bart hid his self-contempt in sudden, tense fury. "No, I didn't! You're
going to accuse everybody on the _Swiftwing_, all the way from me to
Vorongil, before _you_ can admit a mistake, aren't you? If you want
somebody to blame, look in a mirror!"
"Listen, you!" Ringg's pent-up rage exploded. He seized Bart by the
shoulder and Bart moved to throw him off, so that Ringg's outthrust
claws raked only his forearm. In pure reflex he felt his own claws flick
out; they clinched, closed, scuffled, and he felt his claws rake flesh;
half incredulous, saw the thin red line of blood welling from Ringg's
cheek.
Then Rugel's arms were flung restrainingly around him, and the Second
Officer was wrestling with a furious, struggling Ringg. Bart looked at
his red-tipped claws in ill-concealed horror, but it was lost in a
general gasp of consternation, for Vorongil had flung the drive room
door open, taking in the scene in one blistering glance.
_"What's going on down here?"_
For the first time, Bart understood Vorongil's reputation as a tyrant.
One glance at Ringg's bleeding face and Bart's ripped forearm, and he
did not pause for breath for a good fifteen minutes. By the time he
finished, Bart felt he would rather Ringg's claws had laid him bleeding
to the bone than stand there in the naked contempt of the old Lhari's
freezing eyes.
"Half-fledged nestlings trying to do a man's work! So someone forgot the
panel, or damaged the panel by mistake--no, not another word," he
commanded, as Ringg's crest came proudly up. "I don't care who did what!
Any more of this, and the one who does it can try his claws on the
captain of the _Swiftwing_!" He looked ugly and dangerous. "I thought
better of you both. Get below, you squalling kittens! Let me not see
your faces again before we land!"
As they went along the corridor, Ringg turned to Bart, apology and
chagrin in his eyes. "Look--I never meant to get the Bald One down on
us," he said, but Bart kept his face resolutely averted. It was easier
this way, without pretense of friendship.
* * * * *
The light from the small captive sun grew more intense. Bart had never
known anything like it, and was glad to slip away and put the dark
contact lenses into his eyes. They made his eyes appear all enormous,
dilated pupil; fearfully, he hoped no one would notice. His arm smarted,
and he did not speak to Ringg all through the long, slow deceleration.
When the intercom ordered all crew members to the hatchway, Bart
lingered a minute, pinning the yellow radiation badge in a fold of his
cloak. A spasm of fear threatened to overwhelm him again, and
nightmarish loneliness. He felt agonizingly homesick for his own
familiar face. It seemed almost more than he could manage, to step out
into the corridor full of Lhari.
_It won't be long now._
The hatch opened. Even accustomed, as he was, to Lhari lights, Bart
squeezed his eyes shut at the blue-white brilliance that assaulted him
now. Then, opening slitted lids cautiously, he found that he could see.
A weirdly desolate scene stretched away before them. Bare, burning sand,
strewn with curiously colored rocks, lay piled in strange chaos; then he
realized there was an odd, but perceptible geometry to their
arrangement. They showed alternate crystal and opaque faces. Old Rugel
noted his look of surprise.
"Never been here before? That's right, you've always worked on the
Polaris run. Well, those aren't true rocks, but living creatures of a
sort. The crystals are alive; the opaque faces are lichens that have
something like chlorophyll and can make their food from air and
sunlight. The rocks and lichens live in symbiosis. They have
intelligence of a sort, but fortunately they don't mind us, or our
automatic mining machinery. Every time, though, we find some new lichen
that's trying to set up a symbiote cycle with the concrete of our
bunkers."
"And every time," Ringg said cheerfully, "somebody--usually me--has to
see about having them scraped down and repainted. Maybe someday I'll
find a paint the lichens don't like the taste of."
"Going to explore with Ringg?" Rugel asked, and Ringg, always ready to
let bygones be bygones, grinned and said, "Sure!" Bart could not face
him.
Vorongil stopped and said, "This your first time here, young Bartol? How
would you like to visit the monument with me? You can see the machinery
on the way back."
Relieved at not having to go with Ringg, he followed the captain,
falling into step beside him. They moved in silence, along the smooth
stone path.
"The crystal creatures made this road," Vorongil said at last. "I think
they read minds a little. There used to be a very messy, rocky desert
here, and we used to have to scrabble and scratch our way to the
monument. Then one day a ship--not mine--touched down and discovered
that there was a beautiful smooth road leading up to the monument. And
the lichens never touch that stone--but you probably had all this in
school. Excited, Bartol?"
"No--no, sir. Why?"
"Eyes look a bit odd. But who could blame you for being excited? I never
come here without remembering Rhazon and his crew on that long jump. The
longest any Lhari captain ever made. A blind leap in the dark, remember,
Bartol. Through the dark, through the void, with his own crew cursing
him for taking the chance! No one had ever crossed between galaxies--and
remember, they were using the Ancient Math!"
He paused, and Bart said through a catch of breath. "Quite an
achievement." His badge still looked reassuringly yellow.
"You young people have no sense of wonder," Vorongil said. "Not that I
blame you. You can't realize what it was like in those days. Oh, we'd
had star-travel for centuries, we were beginning to stagnate. And now
look at us! Oh, they derided Rhazon--said that even if he did find
anyone, any other race, they'd be monsters with whom we could never
communicate. But here we have a whole new galaxy for peaceful trade, a
new mathematics that takes all the hazard out of space travel, our
Mentorian friends and allies." He smiled. "Don't tell the High Council
on me, but I think they deserve a lot more credit than most Lhari care
to give them. Between ourselves, I think the next Panarch may see it
that way."
Vorongil paused. "Here's the monument."
It lay between the crystal columns, tall, of pale blue sandstone, with
letters in deep shadow of such contrast that the Lhari could read them:
a high, sheer, imposing stele. Vorongil read the words slowly aloud in
the musical Lhari language:
"'Here, with thanks to Those who Watch the Great Night, I, Rhazon of
Nedrun, raise a stone of memory. Here we first do touch the new worlds.
Let us never again fear to face the unknown, trusting that the Mind of
All Knowledge still has many surprises in store for all the living.'
"I think I admire courage more than anything there is, Bartol. Who else
could have dared it? Doesn't it make you proud to be a Lhari?"
Bart had felt profoundly moved; now he snapped back to awareness of who
he was and what he was doing. So only the Lhari had courage? _Life has
surprises, all right, Captain_, he thought grimly.
He glanced down at the badge strip of plastic on his arm. It began to
tinge faint orange as he looked, and a chill of fear went over him. He
had to get away somehow--get to cover!
He looked round and his fear was almost driven from his mind. "Captain,
the rocks! They're moving!"
Vorongil said, unruffled, "Why, so they are. They do, you know; they
have intelligence of a sort. Though I've never actually _seen_ them move
before, I know they shift places overnight. I wonder what's going on?"
They were edging back, the path widening and changing. "Oh, well, maybe
they're going to do some more landscaping for us. I once knew a captain
who swore they could read his mind."
Bart saw the slow, inexorable deepening of his badge--he _had_ to get
away. He tensed, impatient; gripped by fists of panic. Somewhere on this
world, Montano and his men were setting up their lethal radiations....
_Think of this: a Lhari ship of our own to study, to know how it works,
to see the catalyst and find out where it comes from, to read their
records and star routes. Now we know we can use it without dying in the
warp-drive...._
_Think of this: to be human again, yet to travel the stars with men of
my own race!_
_It's worth a few deaths!_
Even Vorongil? Standing here, talking to him, he might--_say it! You
talked to him as if he'd been your father! Oh, Dad, Dad, what would you
do?_
His voice was steady, as he said, "It's very good of you to show me all
this, sir, but the other men will call me a slacker. Hadn't I better get
to a work detail?"
"Hm, maybe so, feathertop," Vorongil said. "Let me see--well, down this
way is the last row of bunkers. See the humps? You can check inside to
see if they're full or empty and save us the trouble of exploring if
they're all empty. Have a look round inside if you care to--the robot
machinery's interesting."
Bart tensed; he had wondered how he'd get hidden inside, but he asked,
"Not locked?"
"Locked?" The old Lhari's short, yellowed crest bobbed in surprise.
"Why? Who ever comes here but our ships? And what could we do with the
stuff but take it back with us? Why locked? You've been on the drift too
long--among those thieving humans! It's time you got back to live among
decent folk again. Well, go along."
The sting of the words stiffened Bart as he took his leave. The color of
the badge seemed deeper orange....
_When it's red, you're dead._
_It's true. The Lhari don't steal. They don't even seem to understand
dishonesty._
_But they lied--lied to us all...._
_Knowing what we were like, maybe! That we'd steal their ships, their
secrets, their lives!_
The deepening color of the badge seemed the one visible thing in a
strange glaring world. He walked along the row of bunkers, realizing he
need not check if they were full or empty--the Lhari wouldn't live long
enough to harvest their better-than-graphite lubricant. They'd be dead.
The last bunker was empty. He looked at his orange badge and stepped
inside, heart pounding so loudly he thought it was an external sound--it
_was_ an external sound, a step.
"Don't move one inch," said a voice in Universal, and Bart froze,
trembling. He looked cautiously round.
Montano stood there, spacesuited, his head bare, dark contact lenses
blurring his eyes. And in his hand a drawn blaster was held
level--trained straight at Bart's heart.
CHAPTER TWELVE
After the first moment of panic, Bart realized Montano could not tell
him from a Lhari. He remained motionless. "It's me, Montano--Bart
Steele."
The man lowered the weapon and put it away. "You nearly got yourself cut
down," he said. "Did you make it all right?" He crossed behind Bart,
inspecting the fastenings of the bunker.
"It's just luck I didn't shoot you first and ask questions afterward."
Montano drew a deep breath and sat down on the concrete floor. "Anyway,
we're safe in here. We've got about half an hour before the radiation
will reach lethal intensity. It has a very short half-life, though; only
about twelve minutes. If we spend an hour in here, we'll be safe enough.
Did you have any trouble putting the radiation counter out of
commission?"
So in half an hour they would all be dead. Ringg, Rugel, Captain
Vorongil. Two dozen Lhari, all dead so that Montano could have a Lhari
ship to play with.
And what then? More killing, more murder? Would Montano start killing
everyone who tried to get the secret of the drive from him? The Lhari
had the star-drive; maybe it belonged to them, maybe not. Maybe humans
had a right to have it, too. But this wasn't the right way. Maybe they
didn't deserve it.
He turned to look at Montano. The man was leaning back, whistling softly
through his teeth. He felt like telling Montano that he couldn't go
through with it. He started to speak, then stopped, his blood icing
over.
_If I try to argue with him, I'll never get out of here alive. It means
too much to him._
_Do I just salve my conscience with that then? Sit here and let them
die?_
With a shock of remembrance, it came to Bart that he had a weapon. He
was armed, this time, with the energon-beam that was part of his
uniform. Montano had evidently forgotten it. _Could_ he kill Montano?
Even to save two dozen Lhari?
He reached hesitantly toward the beam-gun, quickly thumbed the catch
down to the lowest point, which was simple shock. He froze as Montano
looked in his direction, hand out of sight under his cloak.
"How many Lhari on board?"
"Twenty-three, and three Mentorians."
"Anyone apt to be behind shielding--say, in the drive chamber?"
"No, I think they're all outside."
Montano nodded, idly. "Then we won't have to worry."
Bart slipped his hand toward his weapon. Montano saw the movement,
cocked his head in question; then, as understanding flashed over his
face, his hand darted to his own gun. But Bart had pressed the charge of
his, and Montano slumped over without a cry. He looked so limp that Bart
gasped. Was he dead? Hastily he fumbled the lax hand for a pulse. After
a long, endless moment he saw Montano's chest twitch and knew the man
was breathing.
Well, Montano would be safe here in the bunker. Hastily, Bart looked at
his timepiece. Half an hour before the radiation was lethal--_for the
Lhari_. Was it already, for him? Shakily, he unfastened the door. He ran
out into the glare, seeing as he ran that his badge was tinged with an
ever-darkening, gold, orange....
Montano had said there was a safety margin, but maybe he was wrong,
maybe all Bart would accomplish would be his own death! He ran back
along the line of bunkers, his heart pounding with his racing feet. Two
crewmen came along the line, young white-crested Lhari from the other
watch. He gasped, "Where is the captain?"
"Down that way--what's wrong, Bartol?" But Bart was gone, his muscles
aching with the unaccustomed effort inside gravity. Putting on speed, he
saw the tall, austere shape of Vorongil, his banded cloak dark against
the glaring light. Vorongil turned, startled, at the sound of his
running feet.
Suddenly, Bart realized that he was still holding his energon-ray. In
shock and revulsion, he dropped it at Vorongil's feet.
"Captain, go warn the men! They'll all be dead in half an hour! There
are lethal radiations--"
"_What?_ Are you sunstruck?"
Bart stopped cold. Never once had it crossed his mind what he would say
to Vorongil or how he would make the captain believe his story, without
revealing Montano. He started to hold up his badge, realized the Lhari
captain could not see color, and dropped it again, while Vorongil bent
over to pick up the fallen gun. "Are you sunstruck or mad, Bartol?
What's this babble?"
"Captain, everybody on the _Swiftwing_--"
"And speak Lhari!" Vorongil demanded, and Bart realized that in his
excitement he had been shouting in Universal. He drew a long, deep
breath.
"Captain, there are lethal radiations being released here," he said.
"You have just barely half an hour to gather all the men and get them
behind shielding."
"The radiation counter is out of order," Vorongil remarked, unruffled.
"How can you possibly know--"
Bart stood in despair. Could he say, _A ship has landed here?_ Could he
say, _Check that bunker?_ Even if Montano was a would-be murderer, he
was human, and Bart could not betray him to the Lhari. There had been
too much betrayal. His voice rose in sudden hysteria.
"Captain, there's no time! I tell you, you'll all be dead if you don't
believe me! Get the men into the ship! Get them behind shielding and
_then_ check my story! I'm not--" he had gone this far, he might as well
go the whole way--"_I'm not a Lhari!_"
_"What?"_
One of the crewmen came dashing up, his crest sweat-streaked. "Captain!
Rugel has collapsed! We don't know what's wrong with him."
"Radiation sickness," said Bart, and Vorongil reached out, catching his
shoulder in a cruel taloned grip. Bart said desperately "I'm not a
Lhari! I signed on in disguise--I knew they meant to take the ship, but
I can't let you all die.
"How can I make you believe me? Here--" In desperation, Bart reached up.
Pain stabbed his eyeballs, fierce, blinding, as he pulled out one of the
contact lenses. He could not see the captain's face through the light,
but suddenly two Lhari were holding his arms. The fear of death was on
Bart, but it no longer mattered. He saw through watering eyes the
ever-deepening orange of the badge disappearing.
"Here," he said, tearing at it, "radiation. You must be able to see how
dark it is. Even if it's just darkness...."
Suddenly Vorongil was shouting, but Bart could not hear. Two men were
dragging him along. They hustled him up the ramp of the ship. He could
see again, but his eyes were blurred, and he felt sick, colors spinning
before his eyes, a nauseated ringing in his head.
At first he thought it was his ears ringing; then he made out the
rising, shrieking wail and fall of the emergency siren, steps running,
shouting voices, the slow clang of the doors. Someone was pushing at
him, babbling words in Lhari, but he heard them through an
ever-increasing distance: Vorongil's face bent over his, only a blurred
crimson blob that flashed away like a vanishing star in the viewport. It
flamed out into green darkness, vanished, and Bart fell through what
seemed to be a bottomless chasm of starless night.
* * * * *
When he woke, acceleration had its crushing hand on his chest. He tried
to move, discovered that he was strapped hard into a bunk, and fainted
again.
Suddenly the pressure was gone and he was lying at ease on the smooth
sheets of a hospital bunk. His eyes were covered with a light bandage,
and there was a sharp pain in his left arm. He tried to move it and
found it was tied down.
"I think he's coming round," said Vorongil's voice.
"Yes, and a lot too soon for me," said a bitter voice which Bart
recognized as that of the ship's medic. "Freak!"
"Listen, Baldy," said Vorongil, "whoever he is, he could have been
blinded or killed. You wouldn't be alive now if it wasn't for that
_freak_, as you call him. Bartol, can you hear me? How much light can
your eyes stand?"
"As much as any Mentorian." Bart found he could move his right arm, and
twitched the bandage away. Vorongil and the medic stood over him; in the
other infirmary bunk a form was lying, covered with a white sheet.
Sickly, Bart wondered if they had found Montano. Vorongil followed the
direction of his eyes.
"Yes," he said, and his voice held deep bitterness, "poor old Rugel is
dead. He didn't get much of the radiation, but his heart wouldn't stand
it, and gave out." He bowed his head. "He was bald in the service of the
ships when my crest was new-sprouted," he said in deep grief.
Bart felt the shock of that, even through his own fear. He looked down
at his left arm. It was strapped to a splint, and fluid was dripping
slowly into the vein there.
Vorongil nodded. "I expect you feel pretty sick. You got a good dose of
radiation yourself, but we've given you a couple of transfusions--one of
the Mentorians matched your blood type, fortunately. It was a close
call."
The medic was looking down in ill-disguised curiosity. "Fantastic," he
said. "I don't suppose you'd tell me who changed your looks. I admit I
wouldn't believe it until I had a look at your foot bones under the
fluoroscope."
Vorongil said quietly, "Bartol--I don't suppose that's your real
name--why did you do it?"
"I couldn't see you all die, sir," Bart said, not expecting them to
believe him. "No more than that."
The medic said roughly in Lhari, "It's a trick, sir, no more. A trick to
make us trust him!"
"Why would he risk his own life then?" Vorongil asked. "No, it's more
than that." He hesitated. "We checked the bunkers--in radiation
suits--before we took off. We found a man in one of them."
"Was he dead?" Bart whispered.
"No," Vorongil said quietly.
"Thank God!" It was a heartfelt explosion. Then, apprehensively, "Or did
you kill him?"
"What do you think we are?" Vorongil said incredulously. "Indeed no. His
own men have probably found him by now. I don't imagine he got half as
much radiation as you did."
Bart surveyed the needle in his arm. "Why are you taking all this
trouble if I'm going to be put out of the way?"
"You must have some funny ideas about us," Vorongil said shaking his
head. "That would be a fine way to reward you for saving all of our
lives. No, you're not going to be killed."
"If I had my way--" the old medic began, and suddenly Vorongil flew into
a rage. "Get out!"
The medic went stiffly through the door, and Vorongil stood gazing down
at Bart, shaking his yellowed crest. "I don't know what to say to you.
It was a brave thing you did, but perhaps no braver than you've done all
along. Are you a Mentorian?"
"Only half."
"Strange," Vorongil said, looking into space, "that I could talk to you
as I did by the monument, and you knew what I meant. But, yes, you would
understand." Abruptly, he recalled himself, and his voice was thin and
cold.
"I haven't quite decided what to do. I haven't spoken of this to the
crew yet; the fewer who know about this, the better. I told them you got
a heavy dose of radiation, and you're too sick to see visitors." He
sounded kinder when he said, "It's true, you know. It won't hurt you to
get your strength back."
He went out, and Bart wondered, _Get my strength back for what?_ He lay
back, feeling weaker than he realized. It was a relief to know he wasn't
going to be killed out of hand. And somehow he didn't believe he was
going to be killed at all.
It wasn't like being a prisoner. The medic brought him plenty of food,
urging him to eat--"You need plenty of protein after radiation
burns"--and if he stayed in the bunk, it was only because he felt too
weak to get up. Actually he was suffering from delayed emotional shock,
as well as from radiation. He was content to let things drift.
Inevitably, the time came when he had to think about what he had done.
He had betrayed Montano, he had been false to the men who sent him.
"But they don't know the Lhari," his conscience replied, justifying what
he had done.
_You sided with the Lhari against your own people. You spoilt our
chances of learning about the Lhari fuel catalyst._
"I've done something better than stealing a secret by stealth. I've
proved that humans and Lhari can communicate, that they can trust each
other. It's only their looks that are strange. A kind, generous man is a
kind generous man, whether his name is Raynor Three or Vorongil."
_But who's going to know it?_
"I know it. And truth comes out, sooner or later. Somehow, a better
understanding between man and Lhari will come from this."
Secure in the knowledge, he turned over and went peacefully to sleep.
When he woke again, he felt better. The Mentorian girl, Meta, was
sitting quietly between the bunks, watching him. He started to turn
over, flinched at the pain in his arm.
"Yes," she said, "we're giving you one last transfusion. Plasma, this
time. It's Lhari, but if you know that much, you know it won't hurt
you." She came and inspected the needle in his wrist, and Bart caught
her hand with his free one. "Meta, does anyone else know?"
She looked down with a troubled smile. "I don't think so. I was off
watch, waiting for cold-sleep--we're just about to make the long
jump--when Vorongil came to my quarters. I was startled almost out of my
wits. He asked if I could keep a secret; then he told me about you. Oh,
Bart!" Her small soft hand closed convulsively on his, "I was so afraid!
I knew they wouldn't kill you, but I was afraid!"
_Yet they had killed David Briscoe_, Bart thought, and hunted down two
of his friends. It was the only thing he couldn't square with his
perception of the Lhari. It didn't fit. He could understand that they
had shot down the robotcab with Edmund Briscoe in it, in pure
self-defense; and that knowledge had taken off the edge of the horror.
But the death of young Briscoe and everyone he had talked to could not
be explained away.
"You seem very sure they wouldn't have killed me, Meta," he said,
carefully clasping his hand around hers.
"They wouldn't," she affirmed. "But they could--make you forget--"
A small chill went over Bart. He let go of her hand and lay staring
bleakly at the wall. He supposed that was his probable fate: remembering
the tragic tone of Raynor Three when he said _I won't remember you_, he
gritted his teeth, feeling his face twist convulsively. Meta, watching,
misunderstood.
"Arm hurting? I'll have that needle out of your vein in a few minutes
now."
When she had freed his arm and put away the apparatus, she came to his
side. "Bart, how did it happen? How did they find you out?"
Suddenly, the longing for human contact was too much for Bart, and the
knowledge of his secret intolerable. The Lhari could find out what he
knew, if they wanted to know, very simply; he was in their power. It
didn't matter any more.
The telling of the story took a long time, and when he finished, Meta's
soft small kitten-face was compassionate.
"I'm glad you--decided what you did," she whispered. "It's what a
Mentorian would have done. I know that other races call us _slaves of
the Lhari_. We aren't. We're working in our own way to show the Lhari
that human beings can be trusted. The other peoples--they hold away from
the Lhari, fighting them with words even though they're afraid to fight
them with weapons, carrying on the war that they're afraid to fight!
"Did it ever occur to you--all the peoples of all the planets keep
saying, _We're as good as the Lhari_, but only the Mentorians are
willing to prove it? Bart, a Lhari ship can't get along in our galaxy
without Mentorians any more! It may be slower than trying to take the
warp-drive by force, or stealing it by spying, but when we learn to
endure it, I have faith that we'll get it!"
Bart, although moved by Meta's philosophy, couldn't quite share it. It
still seemed to him that the Mentorians were lacking in
something--independence, maybe, or drive.
"I wasn't thinking about anything like that," he said honestly. "It was
simply that I couldn't let them die. After all--" he was speaking more
to himself than to the girl--"it's _their_ star-drive. _They_ found it.
And they've given us star-trade, and star-travel, cheaply and with
profit to both sides. I hope we'll get the star-drive someday. But if we
got it by mass murder, it would sow the seeds of a hatred between men
and Lhari that would never end. It wouldn't be worth it, Meta. Nothing
would be worth that. We've got enough hate already."
* * * * *
Bart was still in his bunk, but beginning to fret at staying there, when
the familiar trembling of Acceleration Two started to run through the
ship. It was, by now, so familiar to him that he hardly gave it a second
thought, but Meta panicked.
"What's happening? Bart, what is it? Why are we under acceleration
again?"
"Shift to warp," he said without thinking, and her face went deathly
white. "So that's it," she whispered. "Vorongil--no wonder he wasn't
worried about what I would find out from you or what you knew." She drew
herself together in her chair, a miserable, shrunken, terrified little
figure, bravely trying to control her terror.
Then she held out her hands to Bart. "I'm--I'm ashamed," she whispered.
"When you've been so brave, I shouldn't be afraid to die."
"Meta, what's the matter? What are you afraid of?" It suddenly swept
over Bart what she meant and what she feared. "But don't you understand,
Meta?" he exclaimed, "Humans _can_ live through the warp-drive! No
drugs, no cold-sleep--Meta, I've done it dozens of times!"
_"But you're a Lhari!"_ It burst from her, uncontrollable. She stopped,
looked at him in consternation. He smiled, bitterly.
"No, Meta, they didn't do a thing to my internal organs, to my brain, to
the tissues of my body. Just a little plastic surgery on my hands, my
feet and my face. Meta, there's nothing to be afraid of--nothing," he
repeated.
She twisted her small hands together. "I'm--trying to--to believe that,"
she whispered, "but all my life I've known--"
The screaming whine in the ship gripped them with the strange, clawing
lassitude and discomfort. Bart, gasping under it, heard the girl moan,
saw her slump lax in her chair, half fainting. Her face was so deathly
white that he began seriously to be afraid she would die of her fear.
Fighting his own agonizing weakness, he pulled himself upright. He
reached the girl, dug his claws cruelly into her.
"Girl, get hold of yourself! Fight it! _Fight_ it! The more scared you
are, the worse it's going to be!"
She was rigid, trembling, in a trance of terror.
"You rotten little coward," he yelled at her, "snap out of it! Or are
all you Mentorians so gutless that you believe any half-baked folk tale
the Lhari pass off on you? You and your fine talk about earning the
star-drive! What would you do with it after you got it--if you die of
fear when you try?"
"Oh! You--!" She flung her head back, her eyes blazing with rage.
"Anything you can do, I can do, too!" He saw life flowing back into her
face, and the trembling now was with fury, not fear; she was fighting
the pain, the crawling itch in her nerve ends, the terrible sense of
draining disorganization.
Bart felt his hold on himself breaking. He whispered hoarsely, "That's
the girl--don't be scared if I--black out for a minute." He held on to
consciousness with his last courage, afraid if he fainted, the girl
would collapse again.
She reached for him, and Bart, starved for some human touch, drew her
into his arms. They clung together, and he felt her wet face against his
own, the softness of her trembling hands. She was still crying a little.
Then the blackness closed on him, as if endless, and the gray blur of
warp-drive peak blotted his brain into nothingness.
He came out of it to feel her cheek soft against his, her head
trustfully on his shoulder. He said huskily, "All right, Meta?"
"I'm fine," she murmured, shakily. He tightened his hands a little,
realizing that for the first time in months he had physically forgotten
his Lhari disguise, that Meta had given him this priceless reassurance
that he was human. But, as if suddenly aware of it again, she looked up
at him and drew hesitantly away.
"Don't--Meta, am I so horrible to you then? So--repulsive?"
"No, it's only--" she bit her lip--"it's just that the Lhari are--I
can't quite explain it."
"Different," Bart finished for her. "At first I was repelled--physically
repelled by myself, and by them. It was like living among weird animals,
and being one of the animals. And then, one day, Ringg was just another
kid. He had gray skin and long claws and white hair, just the way I once
had pinkish skin and short fingernails and reddish hair, but the
difference wasn't that I was human inside and he wasn't. If you skinned
Ringg, and skinned me, we'd be almost identical. And all of a sudden
then, Ringg and Vorongil and all the rest were men to me. Just people. I
thought you Mentorians, after living with the Lhari all these years,
would feel that."
She said in slow wonder, "We've lived and worked side by side with them
all these years, yet kept so apart! I've defended the Lhari to you, yet
it took you to explain them to me!"
His arm was still round her, her head still lying on his shoulder. Bart
was just beginning to wonder if he might kiss her when the infirmary
door opened and Ringg stood in the doorway, staring at them with
surprise, shock and revulsion. Bart realized, suddenly, how it must look
to Ringg--who certainly shared Meta's prejudice--but even as he
comprehended it, Ringg's face altered. Meta slipped from Bart's arms and
rose, but Ringg came slowly a step into the room.
"I--remembered you had a bad reaction, to warp-drive," he said. "I came
to see if you were all right. I would never have believed--but I'm
beginning to guess. There was always something about you, Bartol." He
shut the door behind him and stood against it. His voice lowered almost
to a whisper, he said, "You're not Lhari, are you?"
"Vorongil knows," Bart said.
Ringg nodded. "That day on Lharillis. The crew was talking, but only one
or two of them really _know_ what happened. There are a dozen rumors. I
wanted to see you. They said you were sick with radiation burns--"
"I was."
Ringg raised his hand, absently, to the still-puckered mark on his
cheek, saw Bart watching him and smiled.
"You're not worrying about that fight? Forget it, friend. If anything, I
admire someone who can use his claws--especially if, as I begin to
suspect, they're not his." He leaned over, his hand lightly on Bart's
shoulder. "I don't forget so easily. You saved my life, remember? And
you're a hero on the ship for warning us all. Are you really human? Why
not get rid of the disguise?"
Bart laughed wryly. "It won't come off," he said, and explained.
Ringg raised his hands to his own face curiously. "I wonder what sort of
human I'd make?" He looked at Meta's small fingers. "Not that I'd ever
have the nerve. But then, it's no surprise to anyone that you have
courage, Bartol."
"You seem to accept it--"
"It's a shock," said Ringg honestly, "it scares me a little. But I'm
remembering the friendship. That was real. As far as I'm concerned, it
still is real."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ringg was still bending over Meta's hand when Vorongil came into the
cabin. He started to speak, then noticed Ringg. "I might have known," he
growled, "if there was anything to find out, you'd find it."
"Shall I go, _rieko mori_?"
"No, stay. You'll find it out some way or other, you might as well get
it right the first time. But first of all--are you all right, Meta?"
Her chin went up, defiantly. "Yes. And why have you lied to us all these
years--all of you?"
Vorongil looked mildly startled. "It wasn't exactly a lie. Nine out of
ten Lhari captains believe it with all their heart--that humans die in
warp-drive. I wasn't sure myself until I heard the debates in Council
City, last year."
"But why?"
Vorongil sighed. His eyes rested disconcertingly on Bart. "I presume you
know human history," he said, "better than I do. The Lhari have never
had a war, in all written history. Quite frankly, you terrified us. It
was decided, on the highest summit levels, that we wouldn't give humans
too many chances to find out things we preferred to keep to ourselves.
The first few ships to carry Mentorians had carried them without
cold-sleep, but people forget easily. The truth is buried in the records
of those early voyages.
"As the Mentorians grew more important to us, we began to regret the
policy, but by that time the Mentorians themselves believed it so firmly
that when we tried the experiment of carrying them through the shift
into warp-drive, they died of fear--pure suggestion. I tried it with
you, Meta, because I knew Bart's presence would reassure you. The others
were given an inert sedative they believed to be the cold-sleep drug.
How are you feeling, Bart?"
"Fine--but wondering what's going to happen."
"You won't be hurt," Vorongil said, quickly. Then: "You don't believe
me, do you?"
"I don't, sir. David Briscoe did what I did, and he's dead. So are three
other men."
"Men do strange things from fear--men and Lhari. Your people, as I said
before, have a strange history. It scares us. Can you guarantee that
some, at least, of your people wouldn't try to come and take the
star-drive by force? We left a man on Lharillis who thought nothing of
killing twenty-four of us. I suppose the captain of the _Multiphase_,
knowing he had gravely violated Lhari laws, knowing that Briscoe's
report might touch off an intergalactic war between men and Lhari--well,
I suppose he felt that half a dozen deaths were better than half a
million. I'm not defending him. Just explaining, maybe, why he did what
he did."
Bart lowered his eyes. He had no answer to that.
"No, you won't be killed. But that's all I can guarantee. My personal
feelings have nothing to do with it. You'll have to go to Council Planet
with us, and you'll have to be psych-checked there. That is Lhari
law--and by treaty with your Federation, it is human law, too. If you
know anything dangerous to us, we have a legal right to eliminate those
memories before you can be released."
Meta smiled at him, encouragingly, but Bart shivered. That was almost
worse than the thought of death.
And the fear grew more oppressive as the ship forged onward toward the
home world of the Lhari. And it did not lessen when, after they touched
down, he was taken from the ship under guard.
He had only a glimpse, through dark glasses, of the terrible brilliance
of the Lhari sun dazzling on crystal towers, before he was hustled into
a closed surface car. It whisked him away to a building he did not see
from the outside; he was taken up by private elevator to a suite of
rooms which might--for all he could tell--have been a suite in a luxury
hotel or a lunatic asylum. The walls were translucent, the furniture
oddly colored, and so carefully padded that even a homicidal or suicidal
person could not have hurt himself or anyone else on it or with it.
Food reached him often enough so that he never got hungry, but not often
enough to keep him from being bored between meals, or from brooding. Two
enormous Lhari came in to look at him every hour or so, but either they
were deaf and dumb, did not understand his dialect of Lhari, or were
under orders not to speak to him. It was the most frustrating time of
his entire voyage.
One day it ended. A Lhari and a Mentorian came for him and took him down
elevators and up stairs, and into a quiet, neutral room where four Lhari
were gathered. They sat him in a comfortable chair, and the Mentorian
interpreter said gently, with apology:
"Bart Steele, I have been asked to say to you that you will not be
physically harmed in any way. This will be much simpler, and will have
much less injurious effect on your mind if you cooperate with us. At the
same time, I have been asked to remind you that resistance is absolutely
useless, and if you attempt it, you will only be treated with force
rather than with courtesy."
Bart sat facing them, shaking with humiliation. The thought of
resistance flashed through his mind. Maybe he should make them fight for
what they got! At least they'd see that all humans weren't like the
Mentorians, to sit quietly and let themselves be brainwashed without a
word of protest.
He started to spring up, and the hands of his guards tightened, swift
and strong, even before his muscles had fully tightened. Bart's head
dropped. Cold common sense doused over his brave thoughts. He was
uncountable millions of light-years from his own people. He was
absolutely alone. Bravery would mean nothing; submission would mean
nothing. Would he be more of a man, somehow, if he let his mind be
wrecked?
"All right," he muttered, "I won't fight."
"You show your good sense," the Mentorian said quietly. "Give me your
left arm, please--or, if you are left-handed, your right. As you
prefer."
Deftly, almost painlessly, a needle slid into his arm. _Giving in._ A
dizzying welter of thoughts spun suddenly in his mind. Briscoe. Raynor
One and Raynor Three. The net between the stars. Ringg, Vorongil, Meta,
his father....
Consciousness slid away.
Years later--he never knew whether it was memory or imagination--it
seemed to him that he could reach into that patch of gray and dreamless
time and fish out questions and answers whole, the faces of Lhari
swelling up suddenly in his eyes and shrinking back into interstellar
distance, the sting-smell of drugs, the sound of unexpected voices, odd
reflex pains, cobwebs of patchy memories that fitted nowhere else into
his life so that he supposed they must go here.
He only knew that there was a time he did not remember and then a time
when he began to think there was such a thing as memory, and then a time
when he floated without a body, and then another time when the path of
every separate nerve in his body seemed to be outlined, a shimmering web
in the gray murk. There was a mirror and a face. There were blotchy
worms of light like the star-trails of peaking warp-drive through the
viewport, colors shifting and receding, a green star, the red eye of
Antares.
Then the peak-point faded, his mind began to decelerate and angle slowly
down and down into the field of awareness, and he became fuzzily aware
that he was lying full length on a sort of couch. He shook his head
groggily. It hurt. He sat up. That hurt, too. A hand closed gently
around his elbow and he felt the cold edge of a cup against his sore
mouth.
"Take a sip of this."
The liquid felt cool on his tongue, evaporating almost before he could
swallow; the fumes seemed to mount inside the root of his nose,
expanding tremendously inside his head and brain. Abruptly his head was
clear, the last traces of gray fuzz gone.
"When you feel able," the Mentorian said courteously, "the High Council
will see you."
Bart blinked. As if exploring a sore tooth with his tongue, his mind
sought for memories, but they all seemed clear, marshaled in line. The
details, clear and unblurred, of his voyage here. His humiliation and
resentment against the Lhari. _They could have changed my thinking, my
attitudes. They could have made me admire or be loyal to the Lhari. They
didn't. I'm still me._
"I'm ready now." He got up, reeled and had to lean on the Mentorian; his
feet did not seem to touch the ground in quite the right way. After a
minute he could walk steadily, and followed the Mentorian along a
corridor. The Mentorian said into a small grille, "The Vegan Bartol,
alias Bart Steele," and after a moment a doorway opened.
Inside a room rose, high, domed, vaulted above his head, whitish
opalescent, washed with green. For a moment, while his eyes adjusted to
the light, he wondered how the Lhari saw it.
Beyond an expanse of black, glassy floor, he saw a low semicircular
table, behind which sat eight Lhari. All wore pale robes with high
collars that rose stiffly behind their domed heads; all were old, their
faces lined with many wrinkles, and seven of the eight were as bald as
the hull of the _Swiftwing_. Under their eyes he hesitated; then,
unexpectedly, pride stiffened his back.
They should have done a better job of brainwashing, if they expected him
to skulk in like a scared rabbit! He held his head high and moved across
the floor step by steady step, trying not to limp or display that he
felt tired or sore.
_You're human! Act proud of it!_
No one moved until he stood before the semicircle of ancients. Then the
youngest, the only one of the eight with some trace of feathery crest on
his high gray head, said "Captain Vorongil, you identify this person?"
"I do," Vorongil said, and Bart saw him seated before the high Council.
To Bart, the Lhari captain seemed a familiar, almost a friendly face.
"Well, Bart Steele, alias Bartol son of Berihun," said one old Lhari,
"what have you to say for yourself?"
Bart stood silent, not moving. What could he say that would not reveal
how desperately alone, how young and foolish and frightened he felt? All
his brave resolutions seemed to drain away before their old, gnomish
faces. Here he'd been thinking of himself as a brave spy, a gallant
fighter in humanity's cause and what not. Now he saw himself for what he
was; a reckless boy, meddling in affairs too big for him. He lowered his
eyes.
"We have read the transcript of your knowledge," said the old Lhari.
"There is little in it that we do not know. We are not, of course,
concerned with human conspiracies unless they endanger Lhari lives. The
Antares authorities will deal with the man Montano for an unauthorized
landing on Lharillis, in violation of Federation treaty."
He smiled, his gnome's face breaking into a million tiny cracks like a
piece of gray-glazed pottery. "Bartol, or whatever you call yourself,
you are a brave young man. I suppose you are afraid we will block your
memories, or your ability to speak of them?"
Bart nodded, gulping. Did the old Lhari read his mind?
"A year ago we might have done so. Captain Vorongil, you will be
interested to know that we have discussed this in Council, and your
recommendations have been taken. The secret that humans can endure
star-drive has outlived its usefulness. For good or ill, it is secret no
longer. We cannot possibly eliminate all the old records, or the
enterprising people who hunt them out.
"The captain who had David Briscoe killed, under the mistaken notion
that this would excuse his own negligence in letting Briscoe stow away
on his ship, is undergoing psychotherapy and may eventually recover.
"As for the rest--Bart Steele, you know nothing that is a danger to us.
You do not know the coordinates of our world, or even in which galaxy it
is located. You do not know where we secure the catalyst your people
seek. In fact, you know nothing that is not soon to become common
knowledge. In view of that, we have decided not to interfere with your
memories."
"Talk as much as you like," added another of the ancients, "and may your
memories of this voyage help in understanding between the Lhari and
other human races. Good fortune to you." And he was smiling.
"There is another side to this," said a third, more sternly and gravely.
"You have broken a treaty between Lhari and man. We have dealt with you
as the laws required; now your own people must do so. You must return
with the _Swiftwing_ to the planet where the violation originated--" he
consulted a memorandum--"Procyon Alpha. There you and the man Raynor
Three will face charges of unlawful conspiracy to board a Lhari ship, in
violation of Intergalactic Trade treaties. Captain Vorongil, will you be
responsible for him?"
_So I've lost_, Bart thought drearily. _I didn't even learn anything
important enough for them to suppress._ There was a strange wounded
pride in this; after all his trouble, he was being treated like a little
boy who has used a great deal of enterprise and intelligence to rob a
cookie cupboard, and for his pains is sent home with the stolen cookie
in his hand.
Vorongil touched his arm. "Come, Bartol," he said gently, "I'm taking
you back to the _Swiftwing_. I don't have to treat you like a prisoner,
do I?"
Numbly, Bart gave what the old Lhari asked, his word of honor not to
attempt escape (_Escape? Where to?_) or to attempt to enter the drive
chamber of the _Swiftwing_ while they were still among the Lhari worlds.
As they left the council hall, Bart, in a gesture of despair, covered
his face with his hands. As he brought them down, he found himself
staring at them, transfixed.
The fingers looked longer and thinner than he remembered them, but they
were his own hands again. The nails seemed faintly thick and ridged, and
there was still a faint grayish tinge through the pale flesh color, but
they were human hands. Unmistakably. He felt of his nose and ears, with
fumbling fingers; raised his hand and touched the very short, crisp hair
growing on his newly shaven skull.
"You fool," said Vorongil to the Mentorian, in disgust, "why didn't you
tell him what the medics had done for him? Easy, Bartol!" The old
Lhari's arm tightened around his shoulder. "I thought they'd told you.
Somebody come here and give the youngster a hand."
Later, in the small cabin (it had been Rugel's) which was to be his
prison during the return voyage of the _Swiftwing_, he had a chance to
study his familiar-strange face. He had thought that only a short
time--an hour or so--had elapsed between the time he was drugged and the
time they took him before the Council. Later, from what he learned about
the dispatch schedules of the _Swiftwing_, he realized that he had been
kept under sedation for nearly three weeks, while his face and hands
healed.
As Raynor Three had warned, the change was not altogether reversible.
Studying his face in the mirror, he could still see a hint of something
thin, strange, alien in the set of his features; the nose and chin
somewhat too pointed, elfin, to be human. His hands would always be too
long, too narrow, too supple. For the rest, he looked grim, older. He
could never go back to what he had been before he became a Lhari; it had
left its mark on him forever.
Before the _Swiftwing_ lifted, outbound, Vorongil came to his cabin.
"You've seen very little of our world," he said diffidently. "I have
permission for you to visit the city before we leave Council Spaceport."
"You think you can trust me?" Bart asked bitterly.
Vorongil said gravely, without humor, "The question does not arise. You
do not know the coordinates of this world, and have no way of finding
them. Within those limitations, you are an honored guest here, and if it
would give you any pleasure, you are welcome to see as much of Council
Planet as time permits."
It seemed, through Vorongil's kindness, that the old Lhari sensed his
bitter defeat. Nothing was to be gained by sulking in his cabin, a
prisoner. He had an opportunity which no human, except the Mentorians,
had ever had; which perhaps no human would ever have again. He might as
well take advantage of it.
Ringg and Meta both seemed startled at his new appearance, but Meta
instantly held out her hands, clasping his quickly and warmly. "Bart! I
wondered what your real face looked like. But I think I'd have known you
anyhow."
Ringg surveyed him wonderingly, shaking his head. "Say something," he
implored, "so I'll know you're Bartol."
Bart held out his arm, less gray by the day as the drug wore out of his
system. The thin line of the scar was still on it. He raised his
forefinger lightly to the fine line on Ringg's cheek. "I couldn't return
that now. So let's not get into any more fights."
Ringg laughed and gave him a rough, affectionate shove. "You're Bartol,
all right!"
Even his sense of defeat vanished in wonder as they came out into the
great spaceport. He saw, now, that the Lhari spaceports in human worlds
were built to create, for the spacemen so far from their native worlds,
some feeling of home. But everything here was so vast as to stagger the
imagination. There were miles and miles of the great ships, lying strewn
like pebbles on this monster beachhead into space, bearing the
strangeness of a million far-flung stars. He gaped like a child.
Above them, the burning brilliance of a star gave strange glow and color
to the crystal pylons. What color was the star? He turned to Meta,
irritated at his inability to be sure.
"Meta, what color is this sun? I've been all around the spectrum, and
it's not red, blue, green, orange, violet--" He broke off, realizing
what he had said and what he had seen. "An eighth color," he finished,
anticlimatically.
"You and your talk of colors," Ringg grumbled, "I wish I knew what you
Mentorians see! It's like trying to imagine seeing a smell or hearing
light!"
Meta laughed. "As far as I know, no one's named it. Sometimes we
Mentorians call it _catalyst color_. I think only Mentorians can see it
as separate color."
"So what?" Ringg said impatiently, "What are we going to do, chatter
about light waves or see the city?"
Bart acquiesced, trying to sound eager, but a wild excitement was
gusting up in him. He dutifully pretended fascination with the towers,
the many-leveled roads, the giant dams and pylons, but his thoughts were
racing.
_The eighth color!_ There can't be too many suns of this color, or
they'd have named it and known it! And telescopes can find it.
Could success be salvaged, then, at the very edge of failure? Maybe he
need not go empty-handed, empty-eyed, from the Lhari worlds! They had
dismissed him, scornfully, stolen cookie in hand--but maybe it would be
a bigger cookie than they dreamed!
The exhilaration lasted through the tour of the port, through the heavy
surge of acceleration which brought them up, out and way from Council
Planet. Bart, confined in Rugel's cabin, hardly felt like a prisoner,
his mind busy with schemes.
_I'll study star-maps, and spectroscope reports...._
It lasted almost two days of shiptime, and they were readying for
Acceleration Two, before he came, figuratively, down to earth. To pick
one star out of trillions--and not even in his own galaxy? It would take
a lifetime and he didn't even know which of the four or five spiral
nebulae in the skies of the human worlds was the Lhari Galaxy. A
lifetime? A hundred lifetimes wouldn't do it!
He might have known. If there had been one chance in the odd billion of
his making any such discovery, the Lhari would never have given Vorongil
permission for the intruder to visit the planet at all. He would have
been returned to the _Swiftwing_ as he had been taken from it, by closed
car, and imprisoned, maybe even drugged, until he was safely back in the
human worlds again.
He was under parole not to enter the drive chamber (and sure he would be
stopped if he attempted it anyhow), but when Acceleration One was
completed, he went to the viewport in the Recreation Lounge, and nobody
threw him out. He stood long, looking at the unfamiliar galaxy of the
Lhari stars; the unknown, forever unknowable constellations with their
strange shapes. Stars green, gold, topaz, burning blue, sullen red, and
the great strangely colored receding sun of the Lhari people, known to
them by the melodious name of the Ke Lhiro--which meant, simply, _The
Sun_: it was their first home.
Where had he seen that color? In that stolen glimpse of the Lhari ship
landing, long ago? Of all the colors of space, this one he would never
know.
He turned away from the unsolvable riddle of the strange constellations;
and went to his cabin, to dream of the green star Meristem where he had
first plotted known coordinates for a previously unknown world, and to
wander in baffling nightmares where he fed jagged, star-colored pieces
of hail into the ship's computer and watched them come out as tiny
paperdoll spaceships with the letterhead of Eight Colors printed neatly
across their sides.
After the warp-drive shift, Vorongil came to his cabin, this time crisp
and businesslike.
"We're back in your galaxy," he said, "among the stars you know. We have
no passenger space on the _Swiftwing_; we had to ship out without
replacing Rugel, which means we're short two men. I've no authority to
ask this of you, but--would you like your old job back for the rest of
the voyage?"
Bart glanced at his human hands.
Vorongil shrugged. "We've carried Mentorians as full-ranking
Astrogators. There don't happen to be any on the _Swiftwing_. But
there's no law about it."
Bart looked the old Lhari in the eye. "I won't accept Mentorian terms,
Vorongil."
"I wouldn't ask it. You worked your way outward on this run, and the
High Council didn't see fit to erase those memories or inhibit them. Why
should I? Do you want it or not?"
Did he want it? Until this moment Bart had not identified the worst of
his pain and defeat--to travel as a passenger, a supercargo, when he had
once been part of the _Swiftwing_. Literally he ached to be back with it
again. "I do, _rieko mori_."
"Very well," Vorongil rapped, "see that you turn out next watch!" He
spun round and walked out. His tone was no longer gently indulgent, but
sharp and distant. Bart, at first surprised, suddenly understood.
Not now a prisoner, a passenger, a guest on the _Swiftwing_. He was part
of the crew again--and Vorongil was his captain.
The Lhari crew were oddly constrained at first. But Ringg was the same
as always, and before long they were almost on the old terms. With every
watch, it seemed, he was building a bridge between man and Lhari. They
accepted him.
But for what? Something might come, in the far future, of his
acceptance, but he wouldn't get the benefit of it. This would be his
only voyage; after this he'd be chained again, crawling from planet to
planet of a single sun. And as warp-shift followed warp-shift, the
_Swiftwing_ retracing the path of her outward cruise star by star, Bart
said farewell to them.
One day, at last, he stood at the viewport, watching Procyon Alpha
nearing. A year ago, frightened, terribly alone, still unsteady on his
new Lhari muscles and terrified by the monsters that were his shipmates,
he had watched these planets spinning away. Poor old Rugel, poor old
Baldy!
Behind him, Meta came into the lounge.
"Bart--"
He turned to face her. "It won't be much longer, Meta. Tomorrow I'll
find out what the Federation is going to do to me. _Conspiracy
unlawfully to board_--and all the rest of it. Even if I don't go to a
prison planet, I'll spend the rest of my life chained down to Vega."
"It doesn't have to be that way."
"What other choice is there?" he demanded.
"You're half Mentorian," she said, raising her eager face. "Oh, Bart,
you love it so, you know you can't bear to give it up. Stay with
us--please stay!"
Before answering, he looked out the viewport a last time. The clouds of
cosmic dust swirled and foamed around the familiar jewels of his own
sky. Blue, beloved Vega, burning in the heart of the Lyre--_home--when
would he go home? He had no home now._ Yet his father had left him Vega
Interplanet, as well as Eight Colors and a quest to the stars.
He searched for the topaz of Sol, where he had learned astrogation;
Procyon, where he had become a Lhari; the ruby of Aldebaran (_hail and
farewell, David Briscoe!_); the bloodstone of Antares, where he had
learned fear and the shape of integrity. The colors, the unknowable
colors of space. And others. Nameless stars where he and his Lhari
shipmates had worked and played. And stars he had never seen and would
never see, all the endless worlds beyond worlds and stars beyond
stars....
He took a last, longing look at the colors of space, then turned his
back on them, deliberately giving them up. He could not pay the price
the Mentorians paid.
"No, Meta," he said huskily. "The Mentorian way is one way, but--I've
had a taste of being one of the masters of space. It's more than most
men ever have, maybe it's more than I deserve. But I can't settle for
anything less. Not even if it means losing you."
He shut his eyes and stood, head bowed. When he looked up again, he was
alone with the stars beyond the viewport, and the lounge was empty.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The low rainbow building of Eight Colors, near the spaceport of Procyon
Alpha, had not changed; and when Bart went in, as he had done a year
ago, it seemed that the same varnished girl was sitting before the same
glass desk, neon-edged and brittle, with the same chrome-tinged hair and
blue fingernails. She looked at Bart in his Lhari clothing, at Meta in
her Mentorian robe and cloak, at Ringg, and her unruffled dignity did
not turn a hair.
"May I help you?" she inquired, still not caring.
"I want to see Raynor One."
"On what business, please?"
"Tell him," said Bart, with immense satisfaction, "that his boss is
here--Bart Steele--and wants to see him right away."
It had a sort of disrupting effect. She seemed to go blurred at the
edges. After a minute, blinking carefully, she spoke into the
vision-screen, and reported, numbly, "Go on up, Mr. Steele."
He wasn't expecting a welcome. He said so as the elevator rose. "After
all, if I'd never come back, he'd doubtless have inherited the whole
Eight Colors line, unencumbered. I don't expect he'll be happy to see
me. But he's the only one I can turn to."
The elevator stopped, opened. They stepped out, and a man stepped
nervously toward them. For a moment, expecting Raynor One, Bart was
deceived; then as the man's face spread in a smile of welcome, he
stopped in incredulous delight.
"Raynor Three!"
In overflowing gladness, Bart hugged him. It was like a meeting with the
dead. He felt as if he had really come home. "But--but you remember me!"
he exclaimed, backing away, in amazement.
Slowly, the man nodded. His eyes were grave. "Yes. I decided it wasn't
worth it, Bart, to go on losing everything that meant anything to me.
Even if it meant I had to give up the stars, never travel again except
as a passenger, I couldn't go on being afraid to remember, never knowing
the consequences or responsibilities of what I'd done." His sad smile
was strangely beautiful. "The _Multiphase_ sailed without me. I've been
here, hoping against hope that someday I'd know the rest."
Associations clicked into place in Bart's mind. The _Multiphase_. So
Raynor Three was the Mentorian who had smuggled David Briscoe off the
ship, and whose memories, wrung out by the Lhari captain of that ship,
had touched off so many deaths. But he had paid for that--paid many
times over. And now must he pay for this, too?
Raynor One strode toward them. "So it's really you. I thought it might
be a trap, but Three wouldn't listen. Word came from Antares that
Montano had been arrested and his ship confiscated for illegal landing
on Lharillis. I thought you were probably dead."
"We sent a boy to do a man's job," Raynor Three said, "and he came back
a man. But tell me--" He looked curiously at Ringg and Meta.
Bart introduced them, adding, "I came for help, really. I'm facing
charges, and I'm afraid you are, too."
Raynor One said harshly, "A trap, after all, Three! He trapped you, and
he's led the Lhari to you!"
"No," Raynor Three said, "or he wouldn't be walking around free and
unguarded and with all his memories intact. Tell me about it, Bart." And
when Bart had given a quick narration of the Lhari judgment, he nodded,
slowly.
"That's all we ever wanted. Don't think you failed, Bart. The horrible
part was only the way they were trying to keep it secret."
Ringg interrupted, "Do not judge the Lhari by them, Raynor Three," and
Raynor Three said in good Lhari, "I don't, feathertop. Raynors have been
working with Lhari since the days of Rhazon of Nedrus. But I wanted an
open, official statement of Lhari policy--not secret murders by
fanatics. I had confidence in the Lhari as a people, but not in
individuals. What good did it do to know that the Lhari council in
another galaxy would have condemned the murders and manhunts, when they
were going on in this one, day after day?
"Don't you see, Bart?" he continued, "you didn't fail--not if we're
going to have the publicity of a test case, publicly heard. That means
the Lhari are prepared to admit, before our whole galaxy, that humans
_can_ survive warp-drive without cold-sleep. That's all David Briscoe
was trying to prove, or your father either--may they rest in peace. So,
whatever happens, we've won."
"If you two idealists will give me a minute for cold realities," Raynor
One said, "there's this. Among other things. Bart's not yet of legal
age. You may not know this, Bart, but your father appointed me your
legal guardian. When I turned you over to Three, I'm afraid, I assumed
legal responsibility for all the consequences. I ought to have kept you
under my own supervision."
Bart smiled at Raynor One's stern face. "I crossed two galaxies, and
faced the Lhari High Council, without you to hold my hand. I can face
the Trade Federation."
"Naturally I will be responsible for your defense," Raynor One said
stiffly.
"But I don't need a defense," Bart said, turning to Raynor Three and
meeting his eyes. "I'm going to tell the truth, and let it stand. Don't
worry, I'll make sure they don't hold you responsible for my actions."
"Another thing. Some lunatic from Capella arrived here and all but
accused me of having you murdered. Do you know a Tommy Kendron?"
"Do I _know_ him!" Bart interrupted with a joyful yell. "Tommy's _here_?
Quick--where do I get in touch with him?"
An hour later they were all gathered at Raynor Three's country house.
The talk went on far into the night. Tommy wanted to know everything,
and both Raynors wanted to know every detail of Bart's year among the
Lhari, while Meta and Ringg were both curious about how it had begun.
Bart tried to forget that the next day might bring trouble, even
imprisonment. The Lhari Council had told him to talk as much as he liked
about his voyage, and this might be his only chance. When he had
finished, Tommy leaned forward and gripped Bart's hand tightly.
"You make them sound like pretty decent people," he said, looking at
Ringg. "A year ago, if you'd told me I'd be here with a Lhari spaceman
and a bunch of Mentorians, I'd never have believed it."
"Nor I, that I would be as friend under a human roof," Ringg replied.
"But a friend to Bart is my friend also." He touched the faint
discolored scars on his brow, saying softly, "But for Bart, I would not
be here to greet anyone, man or Lhari, as friend."
"So," said Tommy triumphantly, "you haven't failed, even if you didn't
discover the secret of the Eighth Color--"
But a sudden, blinding light burst over Bart as Ringg moved his hand to
the scars. Once again he searched a cave beneath a green star, where
Ringg lay unconscious and bleeding, and played his Lhari light fearfully
over a waterfall of colored minerals. _And there was one whose color he
could not identify--red, blue, violet, green, none of these_--the color
of an unknown star in an unknown galaxy, the shimmer of a landing Lhari
ship, the color of an unknown element in an unknown fuel--
"The secret of the Eighth Color," he said, and stood up, his hands
literally shaking in excitement. "I'm an _idiot_! No, don't ask me any
questions! I could still be wrong. But even if I go to a prison planet,
the Eighth Color isn't a secret any more!"
When the others had gone back to the city, he sat with Raynor Three in
the room where the latter had told him of his father's death, where he
had first seen his terrifying Lhari face. They spoke little, but Raynor
Three finally asked, "Were you serious about not wanting a defense,
Bart?"
"I was. All I want is a chance to tell my own story in my own way. Where
everyone will hear me."
Raynor Three looked at him curiously. "There's something you're not
telling, Bart. Want to tell me?"
Bart hesitated, then held out his hand and clasped his kinsman's.
"Thanks--but no."
Raynor Three saw his hesitation and chuckled. "All right, son. Forget I
asked. You've grown up."
It was good to sleep in a soft human-type bed again, to eat breakfast
and shave and dress in ordinary human clothing again. But Bart folded
his Lhari tights and the cloak tenderly, with regret. They were the
memory of an experience no one else would ever have.
Raynor Three let him take the controls as they flew back to the
spaceport city; and a little before noon they entered the great crystal
pylon that was the headquarters of the Federation Trade Bureau on
Procyon Alpha. Men and Lhari were moving in the lobby; among them Bart
saw Vorongil, Meta at his side. He smiled at her, received a wan smile
in return.
Would Vorongil feel that Bart had deceived him, betrayed him, when he
heard Bart today?
In the hearing room, four white-crested Lhari sat across from four
dignified, well-dressed men, representatives of the Federation of
Intergalactic Trade. The space beyond was wholly filled with people,
crowded together, and carrying stereo cameras, intercom equipment, the
creepie-peepie of the on-the-spot space commentator.
"Mr. Steele, we had hoped to make this a quiet hearing, without undue
publicity. But we cannot deny the news media the privilege of covering
it, unless you wish to claim the right to privacy."
"No, indeed," Bart said clearly. "I want them all to hear what I'm going
to say."
Raynor One came up to the bench. "Bart, as your guardian, I advise
against it. Some people will call this a publicity stunt. It won't do
Eight Colors any good to admit that men have been spying on the Lhari--"
"I want press coverage," Bart repeated stubbornly, "and as many
star-systems on the relay as possible."
"All right. But I wash my hands of it," Raynor One said angrily.
Bart told his story simply: his meeting with the elder Briscoe, his
meeting with Raynor One--carefully not implicating Raynor One in the
plot--Raynor Three's work in altering his appearance to that of a Lhari,
and the major events of his cruise on the _Swiftwing_. When he came to
the account of the shift into warp-drive, he saw the faces of the press
reporters, and realized that for them this was the story of the year--or
century: _humans can endure star-drive!_ But he went on, not
soft-pedaling Montano's attempted murder, his own choice, the trip to
the Lhari world--
One of the board representatives interrupted testily, "What is the point
of this lengthy narrative? You can give the story to the newsmen without
our official sanction, if you want to make it a heroic epic, young
Steele. We have heard sufficient to prove your guilt, and that of
Raynor, in the violation of treaty--"
"Nevertheless, I want this official," Bart said. "I don't want to be
mobbed when they hear that I have the secret of the star-drive."
The effect was electric. The four Lhari sat up; their white crests
twitched. Vorongil stared, his gray eyes darkening with fear. One of the
Lhari leaned forward, shooting the question at him harshly.
"You did _not_ discover the coordinates of the Council Planet of Ke
Lhiro! You did not discover--"
"I did not," Bart said quietly. "I don't know them and I have no
intention of trying to find them. We don't need to go to the Lhari
Galaxy to find the mineral that generates the warp-frequencies, that
they call 'Catalyst A' and that the Mentorians call the 'Eighth Color.'
There is a green star called Meristem, and a spectroscopic analysis of
that star, I'm sure, will reveal what unknown elements it contains, and
perhaps locate other stars with that element. There must be others in
our galaxy, but the coordinates of the star Meristem are known to me."
Vorongil was staring at him, his mouth open. He leaped up and cried out,
shaking, "But they assured us that among your memories--there was
nothing of danger to us--"
Compassionately, gently, Bart said, "There wasn't--not that they knew
about, Vorongil. I didn't realize it myself. I might never have
remembered seeing a mineral that was of a color not found in the
spectrum. Certainly, a memory like that meant nothing to the Lhari
medics who emptied out my mind and turned over all my thoughts. You
Lhari can't see color at all.
"So no one but I saw the color of the mineral in the cave; you Lhari
yourselves don't _know_ that your fuel looks unlike anything else in the
universe. You never cared to find out how your world looked to your
Mentorians. So your medics never questioned my memories of an eighth
color. To you, it's just another shade of gray, but under a light strong
enough to blind any but Mentorian eyes, it takes on a special color--"
The conference broke up in disorder, the four Lhari clustering together
in a furious babble, then hastily leaving the room. Bart stood waiting,
feeling empty and cold. Vorongil's stare baffled him with unreadable
emotion.
"You fool, you unspeakable young idiot!" Raynor One groaned. "Why did
you blurt it out like that before every news media in the galaxy? Why,
we could have had a monopoly on the star-drive--Eight Colors and Vega
Interplanet!" As he saw the men of the press approaching with their
microphones, lights, cameras and TV equipment, he gripped Bart urgently
by the arm.
"We can still salvage something! Don't talk any more! Refer them to
me--say I'm your guardian and your business manager--you can still make
something of this--"
"That's just what I don't want to do," Bart replied, and broke away from
him to approach the newsmen.
"Yes, certainly, I'll answer all your questions, gentlemen."
Raynor One flung up his hands in despair, but over their shoulder he saw
the glowing face of Meta, and smiled. She, at least, would understand.
So would Raynor Three.
A page boy touched Bart on the arm. "Mr. Steele," he said, "you are to
appear immediately before the World Council!"
He was to be asked one question again and again in the days that
followed, but his real answer was to Meta and Raynor Three, looking
quietly past Raynor One and speaking to the news cameras that would
carry his words all over the galaxy to men and Lhari:
"Why didn't I keep it for myself? Because there are always men like
Montano, who in their mistaken pride will murder and steal for such
things. I want this knowledge to be open to all men, to be used for
their benefit. There has been too much secrecy already. I want all men
to have the stars."
He had to tell his story again and again to the hastily summoned
representatives of the Galactic Federation. At one point the delegate
from his home star of Vega actually rose and shouted to him, "This is
treason! You betrayed your home world--and the whole human race! Don't
you know the Lhari may fight a war over this?"
Bart remembered Vorongil's silent, sad confession of the Lhari fears.
"No," he said gently. "No. There won't be any war unless we start one.
The Lhari won't start any war. Believe me."
But inwardly, he sweated. What _would_ the Lhari do?
They had to wait for representatives of the Lhari Council to make the
journey from their home galaxy; meanwhile they kept Bart in protective
custody. There was, of course, no question of sending him to a "prison
planet"; public opinion would have crucified any government that
suggested punishment for the man who had discovered a human world with
deposits of Catalyst A. Bart could claim an "explorer's share," and
Raynor One had lost no time in filing that claim on his behalf.
But he was lonely and anxious. They had confined him to a set of rooms
high in the building overlooking the spaceport; from the balcony he
could see the ships landing and departing. Life went on, ships came and
went, and out there in the vast night of space, the suns and colors
flamed and rolled, heedless of the little atoms that traveled and
intrigued between them.
A night came when the buzzer sounded and he opened the door to Raynor
One and Raynor Three.
"Better turn on your vision-screen, Bart. The Elder of the Lhari Council
has arrived with their official decision, and he's going to announce
it."
Bart waited, anxiously, pacing the room, while on the TV screen various
dignitaries presented the Elder.
"We are the first race to travel the stars." A bald head, an ancient
Lhari face seamed like glazed pottery, looked at Bart from the screen,
and Bart remembered when he had stood before that face, sick with
defeat. But now he need not pretend to hold his head erect.
"We have had a long and triumphant time as masters of the stars," the
Lhari said. "But triumph and power will sicken and stagnate the race
which holds them too long unchallenged. We reached this point once
before. Then a Lhari captain, Rhazon of Nedrun, abandoned the safe ways
of caution, and out of his blind leap in the blind dark came many good
things. Trade with the human race. Our Mentorian allies. A system of
mathematics to take the hazards from our star-travel.
"Yet once again the Lhari had grown cautious and fearful. And a young
man named Bartol took a blind leap into unknown darkness, all alone--"
"Not alone," Bart said as if to himself, "it took two men called
Briscoe. And my father. And a couple of Raynors. And even a man called
Montano, because without that, I'd never have decided--"
"Like Rhazon of Nedrun, like all pioneers, this young man has been
cursed by his own people, the very ones who will one day benefit from
his daring. He has found his people a firm footing among the stars. It
is too late for the Lhari to regret that we did not sooner extend you
the hand of welcome there. You have climbed, unaided, to join us. For
good or ill, we must make room for you.
"But there is room for all. Competition is the lifeblood of trade, and
we face the future without fear, knowing that life still holds many
surprises for the living. I say to you: welcome to the stars."
Even while Bart stood speechless with the knowledge of success, the door
opened again, and Bart, turning, cried out in amazement.
"Tommy! Ringg! Meta!"
"Sure," Tommy exclaimed, "we've got to celebrate," but Bart stopped,
looking past them.
"Captain Vorongil!" he said, and went to greet the old Lhari. "I thought
you'd hate me, _rieko mori_." The term of respect fell naturally from
his lips.
"I did, for a time," Vorongil said quietly. "But I remembered the day we
stood on Lharillis, by the monument. And that you risked--perhaps your
life, certainly your eyesight--to save us from death. So when the Elder
asked for my estimate of your people, I gave it."
"I thought it sounded like you." Bart felt that his happiness was
complete.
"And now," Ringg cried, "let's celebrate! Meta, you haven't even told
him that he's free!"
But while the party got rolling, Bart wondered--free for what? And
after a little while he went out on the balcony and stood looking
down at the spaceport, where the _Swiftwing_ lay in shadow, huge,
beloved--renounced.
"What now, Bartol?" Vorongil's quiet voice asked from his elbow. "You're
famous--notorious. You're going to be rich, and a celebrity."
"I was wishing I could get away until the excitement dies down."
"Well," said Vorongil, "why don't you? The _Swiftwing_ ships out
tonight, Bartol--for Antares and beyond. It will be a couple of years
before your Eight Colors can be made over into an Interstellar line--and
as Raynor One has said to me several times, he'll have to handle all
those details, for you're not of age yet.
"I've been thinking. Now that we Lhari must share space with your
people, you'll need experienced men for your ships. Unless we all want
the disasters born of trial and error, we Lhari had better help you
train your men quickly and well. I want you to go back on the
_Swiftwing_ with me. Not an apprentice, but representative of Eight
Colors, to act as liaison between men and Lhari--at least until your own
affairs claim your attention."
Behind them on the balcony, Tommy appeared, making signals to Bart: "Say
yes! Say yes, Bart! _I_ did!"
Bart's eyes suddenly filled. Out of defeat he had won success beyond his
greatest hopes. But he did not feel all glad; he felt only a heavy
responsibility. Whether good or bad came of the gift he had snatched
from the stars, would rest in large measure on his own shoulders. He was
going back to space--to learn the responsibility that went with it.
"I accept," he said gravely.
"Oh, boy!" Tommy dragged Ringg into a sort of war dance of exuberant
celebration, pointing at the flaring glow of the spaceport gates. "Here,
by grace of the Lhari, stands the doorway to all the stars," he quoted.
"Well, maybe you were here first. But look out--we're coming!"
A doorway to the stars. Bart had crossed that doorway once, frightened
and alone. _Dad, if you could only know!_ The first interstellar ship of
Eight Colors was to bear the name _Rupert Steele_, but that was years in
the future.
Now, looking at the _Swiftwing_, at Ringg and Tommy, at Raynor Three and
Vorongil, who would all be his shipmates in the new world they were
building, he felt suddenly very lonely again.
"Come in, Bart. It's your party," Meta said softly, and he felt her hand
lying in his. He looked down at the pretty Mentorian girl. She would be
with him, too. And suddenly he knew he would never be lonely again.
His arm around Meta, his friends--man and Lhari--at his shoulder, he
went back to the celebration, to plan for the first intergalactic voyage
to the stars.
The End
* * * * *
AUTHOR'S PROFILE
Marion Zimmer Bradley was born in Albany, New York and before she
started her writing career she was a file clerk, music teacher and a
carnival performer. Her hobbies are reading science fiction novels,
going to the opera and listening to folk music.
In addition to having written a number of other books, she has written
more than 30 magazine stories and articles and has been writing
professionally for the past ten years.
* * * * *
_A Terrifying Tale Of Horror In The Skies_
THE FLYING EYES
By J. Hunter Holly
Author of ENCOUNTER and THE GREEN PLANET
Linc Hosler was sitting in a packed football stadium when the Flying
Eyes appeared and cast their hypnotic power over half the crowd.
Thousands of people suddenly began marching zombie-like into the woods
where they vanished into a black pit.
Linc used every resource of the Space Research Lab and the National
Guard to destroy the Eyes. But nothing could stop them, for they proved
immune to bullets and bombs.
In desperation, Linc captured an Eye and found a way to communicate with
it through his mind. He learned that radiation was fuel for the
creatures' lives. And then they issued their terrible ultimatum: Explode
a series of atom bombs to supply them with radiation or they would turn
the world's population into mindless robots.
It gave the world two harrowing choices--self-destruction via fallout
from the bombs or annihilation via the sinister Flying Eyes....
* * * * *
_The Dramatic Life Story Of The Second Most Powerful Man In Washington_
ROBERT F. KENNEDY
Assistant President
By Gary Gordon
Author of THE RISE AND FALL OF THE JAPANESE EMPIRE
Whatever accomplishments can be attributed to John F. Kennedy, some of
the credit must go to his brother Bobby, for, as campaign manager in the
last election, the younger Kennedy had a great deal to do with getting
his brother nominated and then elected.
Coming into prominence via his work as Chief Counsel to the McClellan
Committee, he has proven to be a tough fighter and the possessor of an
overwhelming will to win. Now, in his dual role as Attorney General and
adviser to the President, he is a power to be reckoned with.
Here is the life story of Robert F. Kennedy, the President's "chief
trouble-shooter, crisis smoother and selfless rooter" (_Look_); the man
who is "second only to the President in power and influence" (_U.S. News
and World Report_): the man who may be eyeing the White House for his
own future occupancy.
* * * * *
_Dramatic True Tales Of Courageous Marines, Army, Air Force And Navy Men
Whose Exploits Won Them The Congressional Medal Of Honor_
America's War Heroes
By Jay Scott
No specific class, rank or service has a monopoly on bravery. Every
milieu, every nationality seems to spawn, on occasion, a man capable of
action above and beyond the call of duty.
THE HONOR ROLL
Lt. Col. James Doolittle U.S. Air Corps
T/Sgt. Charles (Commando) Kelly U.S. Army
Chaplain Joseph O'Callahan U.S. Navy
Major Gregory (Pappy) Boyington U.S. Marines
1st Lt. Audie Murphy U.S. Army
Capt. Joseph Foss U.S. Marines
Commander Samuel Dealey U.S. Navy
Sergeant John Basilone U.S. Marines
Private Rodger Young U.S. Army
Here are their stories, told with a wealth of dramatic and unforgettable
detail, showing the caliber of the men who served our country in time of
national peril.
* * * * *
_Compelling Stories Of The Exploits Of Marine Winners Of The
Congressional Medal Of Honor_
MARINE WAR HEROES
By Jay Scott
Author of AMERICA'S WAR HEROES
No group of fighting men has shown more bravery and resourcefulness than
the U.S. Marines. Rushed to the hot spots of the world in time of war,
they hare consistently shown a disdain for personal safety, always
playing a vital role in our country's victories.
Standing even taller, were the men among them who somehow managed to be
heroes among heroes, men whose exploits were extraordinary--the
Congressional Medal of Honor winners.
A total of 234 Marines have been awarded The Congressional Medal of
Honor. Here in this dramatic book are exciting, personalized accounts of
some of the most courageous exploits of the heroes of the greatest
fighting force the world has ever known.
* * * * *
OTHER SIGNIFICANT MONARCH BOOKS
MS18 WHAT'S WRONG WITH U.S. FOREIGN POLICY? by Frank L. Kluckholm
MS17 SKIN AND SCUBA DIVING by Richard Hardwick
MS16 THE CRISIS IN CUBA by Thomas Freeman
MS15 THERMONUCLEAR WARFARE by Poul Anderson
MS14 THE REAL STORY ON CUBA by James Bayard
MS13 HOW TO STAY YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL by Jan Michael
MS11 THE RED CARPET by Ezra Taft Benson A grim warning against
socialism--the royal road to communism.
MS10 THE HISTORY OF SURGERY by L. T. Woodward, M.D.
MS9 A GALLERY OF THE SAINTS by Randall Garrett
MS8 THE COLD WAR by Deane and David Heller
MS7 FORGET ABOUT CALORIES by Leland H. O'Brian
MS6 THE NAKED RISE OF COMMUNISM by Frank L. Kluckholm
MS5 PLANNED PARENTHOOD by Henry De Forrest, M.D.
MS4 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE JAPANESE EMPIRE by Gary Gordon
MS3B AMERICA: LISTEN! by Frank Kluckholm (Second new enlarged edition.
Completely updated.) An honest report to the nation on the current chaos
in Washington.
MS2 THE BERLIN CRISIS by Deane and David Heller
K69 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE WORLD'S GREAT EVENTS: 1936 by D. S. Halacy, Jr.
K68 THE FABULOUS ROCKEFELLERS by Robert Silverberg
K65 S O S: THE WORLD'S GREAT SEA DISASTERS by Keith Jameson
K59 POPE JOHN XXIII: PASTORAL PRINCE by Randall Garrett
K56 SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL by Edgar Black
MA350 U. S. NAVY IN ACTION by John Clagett
MA329 MARINE WAR HEROES by Jay Scott
MA321 TARAWA by Tom Bailey 50¢
MA319 U.S. MARINES IN ACTION by T. R. Fehrenbach
End of Project Gutenberg's The Colors of Space, by Marion Zimmer Bradley
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLORS OF SPACE ***
***** This file should be named 20796-8.txt or 20796-8.zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
https://www.gutenberg.org/2/0/7/9/20796/
Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
https://gutenberg.org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
https://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at
809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
[email protected]. Email contact links and up to date contact
information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
page at https://pglaf.org
For additional contact information:
Dr. Gregory B. Newby
Chief Executive and Director
[email protected]
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To
SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
particular state visit https://pglaf.org
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
donations. To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works.
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily
keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
https://www.gutenberg.org
This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
