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.