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.