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.