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+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
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** 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 50c
+
+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 ***
+
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