<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_THIRTEEN" id="CHAPTER_THIRTEEN"></SPAN>CHAPTER THIRTEEN</h2>
<p>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."</p>
<p>"Shall I go, <i>rieko mori</i>?"</p>
<p>"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?"</p>
<p>Her chin went up, defiantly. "Yes. And why have you lied to us all these
years—all of you?"</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>"But why?"</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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?"</p>
<p>"Fine—but wondering what's going to happen."</p>
<p>"You won't be hurt," Vorongil said, quickly. Then: "You don't believe
me, do you?"</p>
<p>"I don't, sir. David Briscoe did what I did, and he's dead. So are three
other men."</p>
<p>"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 <i>Multiphase</i>,
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."</p>
<p>Bart lowered his eyes. He had no answer to that.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>Meta smiled at him, encouragingly, but Bart shivered. That was almost
worse than the thought of death.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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:</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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?</p>
<p>"All right," he muttered, "I won't fight."</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>Deftly, almost painlessly, a needle slid into his arm. <i>Giving in.</i> 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....</p>
<p>Consciousness slid away.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"Take a sip of this."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"When you feel able," the Mentorian said courteously, "the High Council
will see you."</p>
<p>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. <i>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></p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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 <i>Swiftwing</i>. Under their eyes he hesitated; then,
unexpectedly, pride stiffened his back.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><i>You're human! Act proud of it!</i></p>
<p>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?"</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"Well, Bart Steele, alias Bartol son of Berihun," said one old Lhari,
"what have you to say for yourself?"</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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?"</p>
<p>Bart nodded, gulping. Did the old Lhari read his mind?</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"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 <i>Swiftwing</i> 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?"</p>
<p><i>So I've lost</i>, Bart thought drearily. <i>I didn't even learn anything
important enough for them to suppress.</i> 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.</p>
<p>Vorongil touched his arm. "Come, Bartol," he said gently, "I'm taking
you back to the <i>Swiftwing</i>. I don't have to treat you like a prisoner,
do I?"</p>
<p>Numbly, Bart gave what the old Lhari asked, his word of honor not to
attempt escape (<i>Escape? Where to?</i>) or to attempt to enter the drive
chamber of the <i>Swiftwing</i> while they were still among the Lhari worlds.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>Later, in the small cabin (it had been Rugel's) which was to be his
prison during the return voyage of the <i>Swiftwing</i>, 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 <i>Swiftwing</i>, he realized that he had been
kept under sedation for nearly three weeks, while his face and hands
healed.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>Before the <i>Swiftwing</i> 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."</p>
<p>"You think you can trust me?" Bart asked bitterly.</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>Ringg surveyed him wonderingly, shaking his head. "Say something," he
implored, "so I'll know you're Bartol."</p>
<p>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."</p>
<p>Ringg laughed and gave him a rough, affectionate shove. "You're Bartol,
all right!"</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>"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!"</p>
<p>Meta laughed. "As far as I know, no one's named it. Sometimes we
Mentorians call it <i>catalyst color</i>. I think only Mentorians can see it
as separate color."</p>
<p>"So what?" Ringg said impatiently, "What are we going to do, chatter
about light waves or see the city?"</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><i>The eighth color!</i> There can't be too many suns of this color, or
they'd have named it and known it! And telescopes can find it.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><i>I'll study star-maps, and spectroscope reports....</i></p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>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 <i>Swiftwing</i> 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.</p>
<p>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, <i>The
Sun</i>: it was their first home.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>After the warp-drive shift, Vorongil came to his cabin, this time crisp
and businesslike.</p>
<p>"We're back in your galaxy," he said, "among the stars you know. We have
no passenger space on the <i>Swiftwing</i>; 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?"</p>
<p>Bart glanced at his human hands.</p>
<p>Vorongil shrugged. "We've carried Mentorians as full-ranking
Astrogators. There don't happen to be any on the <i>Swiftwing</i>. But
there's no law about it."</p>
<p>Bart looked the old Lhari in the eye. "I won't accept Mentorian terms,
Vorongil."</p>
<p>"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?"</p>
<p>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 <i>Swiftwing</i>. Literally he ached to be back with it
again. "I do, <i>rieko mori</i>."</p>
<p>"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.</p>
<p>Not now a prisoner, a passenger, a guest on the <i>Swiftwing</i>. He was part
of the crew again—and Vorongil was his captain.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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
<i>Swiftwing</i> retracing the path of her outward cruise star by star, Bart
said farewell to them.</p>
<p>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!</p>
<p>Behind him, Meta came into the lounge.</p>
<p>"Bart—"</p>
<p>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. <i>Conspiracy
unlawfully to board</i>—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."</p>
<p>"It doesn't have to be that way."</p>
<p>"What other choice is there?" he demanded.</p>
<p>"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!"</p>
<p>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—<i>home—when
would he go home? He had no home now.</i> Yet his father had left him Vega
Interplanet, as well as Eight Colors and a quest to the stars.</p>
<p>He searched for the topaz of Sol, where he had learned astrogation;
Procyon, where he had become a Lhari; the ruby of Aldebaran (<i>hail and
farewell, David Briscoe!</i>); 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....</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>"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."</p>
<p>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.</p>
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