Bart slipped his hand toward his weapon. Montano saw the movement,
cocked his head in question; then, as understanding flashed over his
face, his hand darted to his own gun. But Bart had pressed the charge of
his, and Montano slumped over without a cry. He looked so limp that Bart
gasped. Was he dead? Hastily he fumbled the lax hand for a pulse. After
a long, endless moment he saw Montano's chest twitch and knew the man
was breathing.
Well, Montano would be safe here in the bunker. Hastily, Bart looked at
his timepiece. Half an hour before the radiation was lethal--_for the
Lhari_. Was it already, for him? Shakily, he unfastened the door. He ran
out into the glare, seeing as he ran that his badge was tinged with an
ever-darkening, gold, orange....
Montano had said there was a safety margin, but maybe he was wrong,
maybe all Bart would accomplish would be his own death! He ran back
along the line of bunkers, his heart pounding with his racing feet. Two
crewmen came along the line, young white-crested Lhari from the other
watch. He gasped, "Where is the captain?"
"Down that way--what's wrong, Bartol?" But Bart was gone, his muscles
aching with the unaccustomed effort inside gravity. Putting on speed, he
saw the tall, austere shape of Vorongil, his banded cloak dark against
the glaring light. Vorongil turned, startled, at the sound of his
running feet.
Suddenly, Bart realized that he was still holding his energon-ray. In
shock and revulsion, he dropped it at Vorongil's feet.
"Captain, go warn the men! They'll all be dead in half an hour! There
are lethal radiations--"
"_What?_ Are you sunstruck?"
Bart stopped cold. Never once had it crossed his mind what he would say
to Vorongil or how he would make the captain believe his story, without
revealing Montano. He started to hold up his badge, realized the Lhari
captain could not see color, and dropped it again, while Vorongil bent
over to pick up the fallen gun. "Are you sunstruck or mad, Bartol?
What's this babble?"
"Captain, everybody on the _Swiftwing_--"
"And speak Lhari!" Vorongil demanded, and Bart realized that in his
excitement he had been shouting in Universal. He drew a long, deep
breath.
"Captain, there are lethal radiations being released here," he said.
"You have just barely half an hour to gather all the men and get them
behind shielding."
"The radiation counter is out of order," Vorongil remarked, unruffled.
"How can you possibly know--"
Bart stood in despair. Could he say, _A ship has landed here?_ Could he
say, _Check that bunker?_ Even if Montano was a would-be murderer, he
was human, and Bart could not betray him to the Lhari. There had been
too much betrayal. His voice rose in sudden hysteria.
"Captain, there's no time! I tell you, you'll all be dead if you don't
believe me! Get the men into the ship! Get them behind shielding and
_then_ check my story! I'm not--" he had gone this far, he might as well
go the whole way--"_I'm not a Lhari!_"
_"What?"_
One of the crewmen came dashing up, his crest sweat-streaked. "Captain!
Rugel has collapsed! We don't know what's wrong with him."
"Radiation sickness," said Bart, and Vorongil reached out, catching his
shoulder in a cruel taloned grip. Bart said desperately "I'm not a
Lhari! I signed on in disguise--I knew they meant to take the ship, but
I can't let you all die.
"How can I make you believe me? Here--" In desperation, Bart reached up.
Pain stabbed his eyeballs, fierce, blinding, as he pulled out one of the
contact lenses. He could not see the captain's face through the light,
but suddenly two Lhari were holding his arms. The fear of death was on
Bart, but it no longer mattered. He saw through watering eyes the
ever-deepening orange of the badge disappearing.
"Here," he said, tearing at it, "radiation. You must be able to see how
dark it is. Even if it's just darkness...."
Suddenly Vorongil was shouting, but Bart could not hear. Two men were
dragging him along. They hustled him up the ramp of the ship. He could
see again, but his eyes were blurred, and he felt sick, colors spinning
before his eyes, a nauseated ringing in his head.
At first he thought it was his ears ringing; then he made out the
rising, shrieking wail and fall of the emergency siren, steps running,
shouting voices, the slow clang of the doors. Someone was pushing at
him, babbling words in Lhari, but he heard them through an
ever-increasing distance: Vorongil's face bent over his, only a blurred
crimson blob that flashed away like a vanishing star in the viewport. It
flamed out into green darkness, vanished, and Bart fell through what
seemed to be a bottomless chasm of starless night.
* * * * *
When he woke, acceleration had its crushing hand on his chest. He tried
to move, discovered that he was strapped hard into a bunk, and fainted
again.
Suddenly the pressure was gone and he was lying at ease on the smooth
sheets of a hospital bunk. His eyes were covered with a light bandage,
and there was a sharp pain in his left arm. He tried to move it and
found it was tied down.
"I think he's coming round," said Vorongil's voice.
"Yes, and a lot too soon for me," said a bitter voice which Bart
recognized as that of the ship's medic. "Freak!"
"Listen, Baldy," said Vorongil, "whoever he is, he could have been
blinded or killed. You wouldn't be alive now if it wasn't for that
_freak_, as you call him. Bartol, can you hear me? How much light can
your eyes stand?"
"As much as any Mentorian." Bart found he could move his right arm, and
twitched the bandage away. Vorongil and the medic stood over him; in the
other infirmary bunk a form was lying, covered with a white sheet.
Sickly, Bart wondered if they had found Montano. Vorongil followed the
direction of his eyes.
"Yes," he said, and his voice held deep bitterness, "poor old Rugel is
dead. He didn't get much of the radiation, but his heart wouldn't stand
it, and gave out." He bowed his head. "He was bald in the service of the
ships when my crest was new-sprouted," he said in deep grief.
Bart felt the shock of that, even through his own fear. He looked down
at his left arm. It was strapped to a splint, and fluid was dripping
slowly into the vein there.
Vorongil nodded. "I expect you feel pretty sick. You got a good dose of
radiation yourself, but we've given you a couple of transfusions--one of
the Mentorians matched your blood type, fortunately. It was a close
call."
The medic was looking down in ill-disguised curiosity. "Fantastic," he
said. "I don't suppose you'd tell me who changed your looks. I admit I
wouldn't believe it until I had a look at your foot bones under the
fluoroscope."
Vorongil said quietly, "Bartol--I don't suppose that's your real
name--why did you do it?"
"I couldn't see you all die, sir," Bart said, not expecting them to
believe him. "No more than that."
The medic said roughly in Lhari, "It's a trick, sir, no more. A trick to
make us trust him!"
"Why would he risk his own life then?" Vorongil asked. "No, it's more
than that." He hesitated. "We checked the bunkers--in radiation
suits--before we took off. We found a man in one of them."
"Was he dead?" Bart whispered.
"No," Vorongil said quietly.
"Thank God!" It was a heartfelt explosion. Then, apprehensively, "Or did
you kill him?"
"What do you think we are?" Vorongil said incredulously. "Indeed no. His
own men have probably found him by now. I don't imagine he got half as
much radiation as you did."
Bart surveyed the needle in his arm. "Why are you taking all this
trouble if I'm going to be put out of the way?"
"You must have some funny ideas about us," Vorongil said shaking his
head. "That would be a fine way to reward you for saving all of our
lives. No, you're not going to be killed."
"If I had my way--" the old medic began, and suddenly Vorongil flew into
a rage. "Get out!"
The medic went stiffly through the door, and Vorongil stood gazing down
at Bart, shaking his yellowed crest. "I don't know what to say to you.
It was a brave thing you did, but perhaps no braver than you've done all
along. Are you a Mentorian?"
"Only half."
"Strange," Vorongil said, looking into space, "that I could talk to you
as I did by the monument, and you knew what I meant. But, yes, you would
understand." Abruptly, he recalled himself, and his voice was thin and
cold.
"I haven't quite decided what to do. I haven't spoken of this to the
crew yet; the fewer who know about this, the better. I told them you got
a heavy dose of radiation, and you're too sick to see visitors." He
sounded kinder when he said, "It's true, you know. It won't hurt you to
get your strength back."
He went out, and Bart wondered, _Get my strength back for what?_ He lay
back, feeling weaker than he realized. It was a relief to know he wasn't
going to be killed out of hand. And somehow he didn't believe he was
going to be killed at all.
It wasn't like being a prisoner. The medic brought him plenty of food,
urging him to eat--"You need plenty of protein after radiation
burns"--and if he stayed in the bunk, it was only because he felt too
weak to get up. Actually he was suffering from delayed emotional shock,
as well as from radiation. He was content to let things drift.
Inevitably, the time came when he had to think about what he had done.
He had betrayed Montano, he had been false to the men who sent him.
"But they don't know the Lhari," his conscience replied, justifying what
he had done.
_You sided with the Lhari against your own people. You spoilt our
chances of learning about the Lhari fuel catalyst._
"I've done something better than stealing a secret by stealth. I've
proved that humans and Lhari can communicate, that they can trust each
other. It's only their looks that are strange. A kind, generous man is a
kind generous man, whether his name is Raynor Three or Vorongil."
_But who's going to know it?_
"I know it. And truth comes out, sooner or later. Somehow, a better
understanding between man and Lhari will come from this."
Secure in the knowledge, he turned over and went peacefully to sleep.
When he woke again, he felt better. The Mentorian girl, Meta, was
sitting quietly between the bunks, watching him. He started to turn
over, flinched at the pain in his arm.
"Yes," she said, "we're giving you one last transfusion. Plasma, this
time. It's Lhari, but if you know that much, you know it won't hurt
you." She came and inspected the needle in his wrist, and Bart caught
her hand with his free one. "Meta, does anyone else know?"
She looked down with a troubled smile. "I don't think so. I was off
watch, waiting for cold-sleep--we're just about to make the long
jump--when Vorongil came to my quarters. I was startled almost out of my
wits. He asked if I could keep a secret; then he told me about you. Oh,
Bart!" Her small soft hand closed convulsively on his, "I was so afraid!
I knew they wouldn't kill you, but I was afraid!"
_Yet they had killed David Briscoe_, Bart thought, and hunted down two
of his friends. It was the only thing he couldn't square with his
perception of the Lhari. It didn't fit. He could understand that they
had shot down the robotcab with Edmund Briscoe in it, in pure
self-defense; and that knowledge had taken off the edge of the horror.
But the death of young Briscoe and everyone he had talked to could not
be explained away.
"You seem very sure they wouldn't have killed me, Meta," he said,
carefully clasping his hand around hers.
"They wouldn't," she affirmed. "But they could--make you forget--"
A small chill went over Bart. He let go of her hand and lay staring
bleakly at the wall. He supposed that was his probable fate: remembering
the tragic tone of Raynor Three when he said _I won't remember you_, he
gritted his teeth, feeling his face twist convulsively. Meta, watching,
misunderstood.
"Arm hurting? I'll have that needle out of your vein in a few minutes
now."
When she had freed his arm and put away the apparatus, she came to his
side. "Bart, how did it happen? How did they find you out?"
Suddenly, the longing for human contact was too much for Bart, and the
knowledge of his secret intolerable. The Lhari could find out what he
knew, if they wanted to know, very simply; he was in their power. It
didn't matter any more.
The telling of the story took a long time, and when he finished, Meta's
soft small kitten-face was compassionate.
"I'm glad you--decided what you did," she whispered. "It's what a
Mentorian would have done. I know that other races call us _slaves of
the Lhari_. We aren't. We're working in our own way to show the Lhari
that human beings can be trusted. The other peoples--they hold away from
the Lhari, fighting them with words even though they're afraid to fight
them with weapons, carrying on the war that they're afraid to fight!
"Did it ever occur to you--all the peoples of all the planets keep
saying, _We're as good as the Lhari_, but only the Mentorians are
willing to prove it? Bart, a Lhari ship can't get along in our galaxy
without Mentorians any more! It may be slower than trying to take the
warp-drive by force, or stealing it by spying, but when we learn to
endure it, I have faith that we'll get it!"
Bart, although moved by Meta's philosophy, couldn't quite share it. It
still seemed to him that the Mentorians were lacking in
something--independence, maybe, or drive.
"I wasn't thinking about anything like that," he said honestly. "It was
simply that I couldn't let them die. After all--" he was speaking more
to himself than to the girl--"it's _their_ star-drive. _They_ found it.
And they've given us star-trade, and star-travel, cheaply and with
profit to both sides. I hope we'll get the star-drive someday. But if we
got it by mass murder, it would sow the seeds of a hatred between men
and Lhari that would never end. It wouldn't be worth it, Meta. Nothing
would be worth that. We've got enough hate already."
* * * * *
Bart was still in his bunk, but beginning to fret at staying there, when
the familiar trembling of Acceleration Two started to run through the
ship. It was, by now, so familiar to him that he hardly gave it a second
thought, but Meta panicked.
"What's happening? Bart, what is it? Why are we under acceleration
again?"
"Shift to warp," he said without thinking, and her face went deathly
white. "So that's it," she whispered. "Vorongil--no wonder he wasn't
worried about what I would find out from you or what you knew." She drew
herself together in her chair, a miserable, shrunken, terrified little
figure, bravely trying to control her terror.
Then she held out her hands to Bart. "I'm--I'm ashamed," she whispered.
"When you've been so brave, I shouldn't be afraid to die."
"Meta, what's the matter? What are you afraid of?" It suddenly swept
over Bart what she meant and what she feared. "But don't you understand,
Meta?" he exclaimed, "Humans _can_ live through the warp-drive! No
drugs, no cold-sleep--Meta, I've done it dozens of times!"
_"But you're a Lhari!"_ It burst from her, uncontrollable. She stopped,
looked at him in consternation. He smiled, bitterly.
"No, Meta, they didn't do a thing to my internal organs, to my brain, to
the tissues of my body. Just a little plastic surgery on my hands, my
feet and my face. Meta, there's nothing to be afraid of--nothing," he
repeated.
She twisted her small hands together. "I'm--trying to--to believe that,"
she whispered, "but all my life I've known--"
The screaming whine in the ship gripped them with the strange, clawing
lassitude and discomfort. Bart, gasping under it, heard the girl moan,
saw her slump lax in her chair, half fainting. Her face was so deathly
white that he began seriously to be afraid she would die of her fear.
Fighting his own agonizing weakness, he pulled himself upright. He
reached the girl, dug his claws cruelly into her.
"Girl, get hold of yourself! Fight it! _Fight_ it! The more scared you
are, the worse it's going to be!"
She was rigid, trembling, in a trance of terror.
"You rotten little coward," he yelled at her, "snap out of it! Or are
all you Mentorians so gutless that you believe any half-baked folk tale
the Lhari pass off on you? You and your fine talk about earning the
star-drive! What would you do with it after you got it--if you die of
fear when you try?"
"Oh! You--!" She flung her head back, her eyes blazing with rage.
"Anything you can do, I can do, too!" He saw life flowing back into her
face, and the trembling now was with fury, not fear; she was fighting
the pain, the crawling itch in her nerve ends, the terrible sense of
draining disorganization.
Bart felt his hold on himself breaking. He whispered hoarsely, "That's
the girl--don't be scared if I--black out for a minute." He held on to
consciousness with his last courage, afraid if he fainted, the girl
would collapse again.
She reached for him, and Bart, starved for some human touch, drew her
into his arms. They clung together, and he felt her wet face against his
own, the softness of her trembling hands. She was still crying a little.
Then the blackness closed on him, as if endless, and the gray blur of
warp-drive peak blotted his brain into nothingness.
He came out of it to feel her cheek soft against his, her head
trustfully on his shoulder. He said huskily, "All right, Meta?"
"I'm fine," she murmured, shakily. He tightened his hands a little,
realizing that for the first time in months he had physically forgotten
his Lhari disguise, that Meta had given him this priceless reassurance
that he was human. But, as if suddenly aware of it again, she looked up
at him and drew hesitantly away.
"Don't--Meta, am I so horrible to you then? So--repulsive?"
"No, it's only--" she bit her lip--"it's just that the Lhari are--I
can't quite explain it."
"Different," Bart finished for her. "At first I was repelled--physically
repelled by myself, and by them. It was like living among weird animals,
and being one of the animals. And then, one day, Ringg was just another
kid. He had gray skin and long claws and white hair, just the way I once
had pinkish skin and short fingernails and reddish hair, but the
difference wasn't that I was human inside and he wasn't. If you skinned
Ringg, and skinned me, we'd be almost identical. And all of a sudden
then, Ringg and Vorongil and all the rest were men to me. Just people. I
thought you Mentorians, after living with the Lhari all these years,
would feel that."
She said in slow wonder, "We've lived and worked side by side with them
all these years, yet kept so apart! I've defended the Lhari to you, yet
it took you to explain them to me!"
His arm was still round her, her head still lying on his shoulder. Bart
was just beginning to wonder if he might kiss her when the infirmary
door opened and Ringg stood in the doorway, staring at them with
surprise, shock and revulsion. Bart realized, suddenly, how it must look
to Ringg--who certainly shared Meta's prejudice--but even as he
comprehended it, Ringg's face altered. Meta slipped from Bart's arms and
rose, but Ringg came slowly a step into the room.
"I--remembered you had a bad reaction, to warp-drive," he said. "I came
to see if you were all right. I would never have believed--but I'm
beginning to guess. There was always something about you, Bartol." He
shut the door behind him and stood against it. His voice lowered almost
to a whisper, he said, "You're not Lhari, are you?"
"Vorongil knows," Bart said.
Ringg nodded. "That day on Lharillis. The crew was talking, but only one
or two of them really _know_ what happened. There are a dozen rumors. I
wanted to see you. They said you were sick with radiation burns--"
"I was."
Ringg raised his hand, absently, to the still-puckered mark on his
cheek, saw Bart watching him and smiled.
"You're not worrying about that fight? Forget it, friend. If anything, I
admire someone who can use his claws--especially if, as I begin to
suspect, they're not his." He leaned over, his hand lightly on Bart's
shoulder. "I don't forget so easily. You saved my life, remember? And
you're a hero on the ship for warning us all. Are you really human? Why
not get rid of the disguise?"
Bart laughed wryly. "It won't come off," he said, and explained.
Ringg raised his hands to his own face curiously. "I wonder what sort of
human I'd make?" He looked at Meta's small fingers. "Not that I'd ever
have the nerve. But then, it's no surprise to anyone that you have
courage, Bartol."
"You seem to accept it--"
"It's a shock," said Ringg honestly, "it scares me a little. But I'm
remembering the friendship. That was real. As far as I'm concerned, it
still is real."