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._"