The Colors of Space

M >> Marion Zimmer Bradley >> The Colors of Space

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There were small shops and what looked like bars, and a glass-fronted
place with a sign lettered largely, in black letters, a Lhari phrase
meaning roughly HOME AWAY FROM HOME: MEALS SERVED, SPACEMEN WELCOME,
REASONABLE.

Behind him a voice said in Lhari, "Tell me, does that sign mean what it
says? Or is this one of those traps for separating the unwary spaceman
from his hard-earned credits? How's the food?"

Bart carefully took hold of himself.

"I was just wondering that myself." He turned as he spoke, finding
himself face to face with a young Lhari in the unadorned cloak of a
spaceman without official rank. He knew the Lhari was young because his
crest was still white.

The young Lhari extended his claws in the closed-fist, hidden-claw
gesture of Lhari greeting. "Shall we take a chance? Ringg son of Rahan
greets you."

"Bartol son of Berihun."

"I don't remember seeing you in the port, Bartol."

"I've mostly worked on the Polaris run."

"Way off there?" Ringg son of Rahan sounded startled and impressed. "You
really get around, don't you? Shall we sit here?"

They sat on triangular chairs at a three-cornered table. Bart waited for
Ringg to order, and ordered what he did. When it came, it was a sort of
egg-and-fish casserole which Bart found extremely tasty, and he dug into
it with pleasure. Allowing for the claws, Lhari table manners were not
so much different from human--_and remember, their customs differ as
much as ours do. If you do something differently, they'll just think
you're from another planet with a different culture._

"Have you been here long?"

"A day or so. I'm off the _Swiftwing_."

Bart decided to hazard his luck. "I was told there's a vacancy on the
_Swiftwing_."

Ringg looked at him curiously. "There is," he said, "but I'd like to
know how you found it out. Captain Vorongil said that anyone who talked
about it would be sent to Kleeto for three cycles. But what happened to
you? Miss your ship?"

"No, I've just been laying off--traveling, sight-seeing, bumming
around," Bart said. "But I'm tired of it, and now I'd like to sign out
again."

"Well, we could use another man. This is the long run we're making, out
to Antares and then home, and if everybody has to work extra shifts,
it's no fun. But if old Vorongil knows that there's been talk in the
port about Klanerol jumping ship, or whatever happened to him, we'll all
have to walk wide of his temper."

Bart was beginning to relax a little; Ringg apparently accepted him
without scrutiny. At this close range Ringg did not seem a monster, but
just a young fellow like himself, hearty, good-natured--in fact, not
unlike Tommy.

Bart chased the thought away as soon as it sneaked into his brain--one
of those _things_, like _Tommy_? Then, rather grimly, he reminded
himself, _I'm one of those things_. He said irritably, "So how do I
account for asking your captain for the place?"

Ringg cocked his fluffy crest to one side. "I know," he said, "_I_ told
you. I'll say you're an old friend of mine. You don't know what
Vorongil's like when he gets mad. But what he doesn't know, he won't
shout about." He shoved back the triangular chair. "Who _did_ tell you,
anyway?"

This was the first real hurdle, and Bart's brain raced desperately, but
Ringg was not listening for an answer. "I suppose somebody gossiped, or
one of those fool Mentorians picked it up. Got your papers? What
rating?"

"Astrogator first class."

"Klanerol was second, but you can't have everything, I suppose." Ringg
led the way through the arcades, out across a guarded sector, passing
half a dozen of the huge ships lying in their pits. Finally Ringg
stopped and pointed. "This is the old hulk."

Bart had traveled only in Lhari passenger ships, which were new and
fresh and sleek. This ship was enormous, ovoid like the egg of some
space-monster, the sides dented and discolored, thin films of chemical
discoloration lying over the glassy metallic hull.

Bart followed Ringg. This was real, it was happening. He was signing out
for his first interstellar cruise on one of the Lhari ships. Not a
Mentorian assistant, half-trusted, half-tolerated, but one of the crew
themselves. _If I'm lucky_, he reminded himself grimly.

There was Lhari, in the black-banded officer's cloak, at the doorway. He
glanced at Ringg's papers.

"Friend of mine," Ringg said, and Bart proffered his folder. The Lhari
gave it a casual glance, handed it back.

"Old Baldy on board?" Ringg asked.

"Where else?" The officer laughed. "You don't think _he'd_ relax with
cargo not loaded, do you?"

They seemed casual and normal, and Bart's confidence was growing. They
had accepted him as one of themselves. But the great ordeal still lay
before him--an interview with the Lhari captain. And the idea had Bart
sweating scared.

The corridors and decks seemed larger, wider, more spacious, but
shabbier than on the clean, bright, commercial passenger decks Bart had
seen. Dark-lensed men were rolling bales of cargo along on wheeled
dollies. The corridors seemed endless. More to hear the sound of his own
voice, and reassure himself of his ability to speak and be understood,
than because he cared, he asked Ringg, "What's your rating?"

"Well, according to the logbooks, I'm an Expert Class Two,
Metals-Fatigue," said Ringg. "That sounds very technical and
interesting. But what it means is just that I go all over the ship inch
by inch, and when I finish, start all over again at the other end. Most
of what I do is just boss around the maintenance crews and snarl at them
about spots of rust on the paint."

They got into a small round elevator and Ringg punched buttons; it began
to rise, slowly and creakily, toward the top. "This, for instance,"
Ringg said. "I've been yelling for a new cable for six months." He
turned. "Take it easy, Bartol; don't let Vorongil scare you. He likes to
hear the sound of his own voice, but we'd all walk out the lock without
spacesuits for him."

The elevator slid to a stop. The sign in Lhari letters said _Level of
Administration--Officers' Deck_. Ringg pushed at a door and said,
"Captain Vorongil?"

"I thought you were on leave," said a Lhari voice, deeper and slower
than most. "What are you doing, back here more than ten milliseconds
before strap-in checks?"

Ringg stepped back for Bart to go inside. The small cabin, with an
elliptical bunk slung from the ceiling and a triangular table, was
dwarfed by a tall, thin Lhari, in a cloak with four of the black bands
that seemed to denote rank among them. He had a deeply lined face with a
lacework of tiny wrinkles around the slanted eyes. His crest was not the
high, fluffy white of a young Lhari, but broken short near the scalp,
grayish pink showing through, the little feathery ends yellowed with
age. He growled, "Come in then, don't stand there. I suppose Ringg's
told you what a tyrant I am? What do you want, feathertop?"

Bart remembered being told that this was the Lhari equivalent of "Kid"
or "Youngster." He fumbled in the capacious folds of his cloak for his
papers. His voice sounded shrill, even to himself.

"Bartol son of Berihun in respectful greeting, _rieko mori_."
("Honorable old-bald-one," the Lhari equivalent of "sir.") "Ringg told
me there is a vacancy among the Astrogators, and I want to sign out."

Unmistakably, Vorongil's snort was laughter.

"So you've been talking, Ringg?"

Ringg retorted, "Better that I tell one man than that you have to hunt
the planet over--or run the long haul with the drive-room watches short
by one man."

"Well, well, you're right," Vorongil growled. He glared at Bart. "On the
last planet, one of our men disappeared. Jumped ship!" The creases
around his eyes deepened, troubled. "Probably just gone on the drift,
sight-seeing, but I wish he'd told me. As it is, I wonder if he's been
hurt, killed, kidnaped."

Ringg said, "Who'd dare? It would be reported."

Bart knew, with a cold chill, that the missing Klanerol had not simply
gone "on the drift." No Lhari port would ever see Klanerol, Second Class
Astrogator, again.

"Bartol," mused the captain, riffling the forged papers. "Served on the
Polaris run. Hm--you _are_ a good long way off your orbit, aren't you?
Never been out that way myself. All right, I'll take you on. You can do
system programming? Good. Rating in Second Galaxy mathematics?"

He nodded, hauled out a sheet of thin, wax-coated fabric and his claws
made rapid imprints in the surface. He passed it to Bart, pointed. Bart
hesitated, and Vorongil said impatiently, "Standard agreement, no hidden
clauses. Put your mark on it, feathertop."

Bart realized it was something like a fingerprint they wanted. _You'll
pass anything but X-rays._ He pressed the top of one claw into the wax.
Vorongil nodded, shoved it on a shelf without looking at it.

"So much for that," said Ringg, laughing, as they came out. "The Bald
One was in a good temper. I'm going to the port and celebrate, not that
this dim place is very festive. You?"

"I--I think I'll stay aboard."

"Well, if you change your mind, I'll be down there somewhere," Ringg
said. "See you later, shipmate." He raised his closed fist in farewell,
and went.

Bart stood in the corridor, feeling astounded and strange. He _belonged_
here! He had a right to be on board the ship! He wasn't quite sure what
to do next.

A Lhari, as short and fat as a Lhari could possibly be and still be a
Lhari, came or rather waddled out of the captain's office. He saw Bartol
and called, "Are you the new First Class? I'm Rugel, coordinator."

Rugel had a huge cleft darkish scar across his lip, and there were two
bands on his cloak. He was completely bald, and he puffed when he
walked. "Vorongil asked me to show you around. You'll share quarters
with Ringg--no sense shifting another man. Come down and see the chart
rooms--or do you want to leave your kit in your cabin first?"

"I don't have much," Bart said.

Rugel's seamed lip widened. "That's the way--travel light when you're on
the drift," he confirmed.

Rugel took him down to the drive rooms, and here for a moment, in wonder
and awe, Bart almost forgot his disguise. The old Lhari led him to the
huge computer which filled one wall of the room, and Bart was smitten
with the universality of mathematics. Here was something he _knew_ he
could handle.

He could do this programming, easily enough. But as he stood before the
banks of complex, yet beautifully familiar levers, the sheer exquisite
complexity of it overcame him. To compute the movements of thousands of
stars, all moving at different speeds in different directions in the
vast swirling directionless chaos of the Universe--and yet to be sure
that every separate movement would come out to within a quarter of a
mile! It was something that no finite brain--man or Lhari--could ever
accomplish, yet their limited brains had built these computers that
_could_ do it.

Rugel watched him, laughing softly. "Well, you'll have enough time down
here. I like to have youngsters who are still in the middle of a love
affair with their work. Come along, and I'll show you your cabin."

Rugel left him in a cabin amidships; small and cramped, but tidy, two of
the oval bunks slung at opposite ends, a small table between them, and
drawers filled with pamphlets and manuals and maps. Furtively, ashamed
of himself, yet driven by necessity, Bart searched Ringg's belongings,
wanting to get some idea of what possessions he ought to own. He looked
around the shower and toilet facilities with extra care--this was
something he _couldn't_ slip up on and be considered even halfway
normal. He was afraid Ringg would come in, and see him staring curiously
at something as ordinary, to a Lhari, as a cake of soap.

He decided to go down to the port again and look around the shops. He
was not afraid of being unable to handle his work. What he feared was
something subtler--that the small items of everyday living, something as
simple as a nail file, would betray him.

On his way he looked into the Recreation Lounge, filled with comfortable
seats, vision-screens, and what looked like simple pinball machines and
mechanical games of skill. There were also stacks of tapereels and
headsets for listening, not unlike those humans used. Bart felt
fascinated, and wanted to explore, but decided he could do that later.

Somehow he took the wrong turn coming out of the Recreation Lounge, and
went through a door where the sudden dimming of lights told him he was
in Mentorian quarters. The sudden darkness made him stumble, thrust out
his hands to keep from falling, and an unmistakably human voice said,
"Ouch!"

"I'm sorry," Bart said in Universal, without thinking.

"I admit the lights are dim," said the voice tartly, and Bart found
himself looking down, as his eyes adjusted to the new light level, at a
girl.

She was small and slight, in a metallic blue cloak that swept out, like
wings, around her thin shoulders; the hood framed a small, kittenlike
face. She was a Mentorian, and she was human, and Bart's eyes rested
with comfort on her face; she, on the other hand, was looking up with
anxiety and uneasy distrust. _That's right--I'm a Lhari, a nonhuman
freak!_

"I seem to have missed my way."

"What are you looking for, sir? The medical quarters are through here."

"I'm looking for the elevator down to the crew exits."

"Through here," she said, reopening the door through which he had come,
and shading her large, lovely, long-lashed eyes with a slender hand.
"You took the wrong turn. Are you new on board? I thought all ships were
laid out exactly alike."

"I've only worked on passenger ships."

"I believe they are somewhat different," said the girl in good Lhari.
"Well, that is your way, sir."

He felt as if he had been snubbed and dismissed.

"What is your name?"

She stiffened as if about to salute. "Meta of the house of Marnay Three,
sir."

Bart realized he was doing something wholly out of character for a
Lhari--chatting casually with a Mentorian. With a wistful glance at the
pretty girl, he said a stiff "Thank you" and went down the ramp she had
indicated. He felt horribly lonely. Being a freak wasn't going to be
much fun.

CHAPTER EIGHT

He saw the girl again next day, when they checked in for blastoff. She
was seated at a small desk, triangular like so much of the Lhari
furniture, checking a register as they came out of the Decontam room,
making sure they downed their greenish solution of microorganisms.

"Papers, please?" She marked, and Bart noticed that she was using a red
pencil.

"Bartol," she said aloud. "Is that how you pronounce it?" She made small
scribbles in a sort of shorthand with the red pencil, then made other
marks with the black one in Lhari; he supposed the red marks were her
own private memoranda, unreadable by the Lhari.

"Next, please." She handed a cup of the greenish stuff to Ringg, behind
him. Bart went down toward the drive room, and to his own surprise,
found himself wishing the girl were a mathematician rather than a medic.
It would have been pleasant to watch her down there.

Old Rugel, on duty in the drive room, watched Bart strap himself in
before the computer. "Make sure you check all dials at null," he
reminded him, and Bart felt a last surge of panic.

This was his first cruise, except for practice runs at the Academy! Yet
his rating called him an experienced man on the Polaris run. He'd had
the Lhari training tape, which was supposed to condition his responses,
but would it? He tried to clench his fists, drove a claw into his palm,
winced, and commanded himself to stay calm and keep his mind on what he
was doing.

It calmed him to make the routine check of his dials.

"Strapdown check," said a Lhari with a yellowed crest and a rasping
voice. "New man, eh?" He gave Bart's straps perfunctory tugs at
shoulders and waist, tightened a buckle. "Karol son of Garin."

Bells rang in the ship, and Bart felt the odd, tonic touch of fear.
_This was it._

Vorongil strode through the door, his banded cloak sweeping behind him,
and took the control couch.

"Ready from fueling room, sir."

"Position," Vorongil snapped.

Bart heard himself reading off a string of figures in Lhari. His voice
sounded perfectly calm.

"Communication."

"Clear channels from Pylon Dispatch, sir." It was old Rugel's voice.

"Well," Vorongil said, slowly and almost reflectively, "let's take her
up then."

He touched some controls. The humming grew. Then, swift, hard and
crushing, weight mashed Bart against his couch.

"Position!" Vorongil's voice sounded harsh, and Bart fought the crushing
weight of it. Even his eyeballs ached as he struggled to turn the tiny
eye muscles from dial to dial, and his voice was a dim croak: "Fourteen
seven sidereal twelve point one one four nine...."

"Hold it to point one one four six," Vorongil said calmly.

"Point one one four six," Bart said, and his claws stabbed at dials.
Suddenly, in spite of the cold weight on his chest, the pain, the
struggle, he felt as if he were floating. He managed a long, luxurious
breath. He _could_ handle it. He knew what he was doing.

_He was an Astrogator...._

Later, when Acceleration One had reached its apex and the artificial
gravity made the ship a place of comfort again, he went down to the
dining hall with Ringg and met the crew of the _Swiftwing_. There were
twelve officers and twelve crewmen of various ratings like himself and
Ringg, but there seemed to be little social division between them, as
there would have been on a human ship; officers and crew joked and
argued without formality of any kind.

None of them gave him a second look. Later, in the Recreation Lounge,
Ringg challenged him to a game with one of the pinball machines. It
seemed fairly simple to Bart; he tried it, and to his own surprise, won.

Old Rugel touched a lever at the side of the room. With a tiny whishing
sound, shutters opened, the light of Procyon Alpha flooded them and he
looked out through a great viewport into bottomless space.

Procyon Alpha, Beta and Gamma hung at full, rings gently tilted. Beyond
them the stars burned, flaming through the shimmers of cosmic dust. The
colors, the never-ending colors of space!

And he stood here, in a room full of monsters--_he was one of the
monsters_--

"Which one of the planets was it we stopped on?" Rugel asked. "I can't
tell 'em apart from this distance."

Bartol swallowed; he had almost said _the blue one_. He pointed.
"The--the big one there, with the rings almost edge-on. I think they
call it Alpha."

"It's their planet," said Rugel. "I guess they can call it what they
want to. How about another game?"

Resolutely, Bart turned his back on the bewitching colors, and bent over
the pinball machine.

* * * * *

The first week in space was a nightmare of strain. He welcomed the hours
on watch in the drive room; there alone he was sure of what he was
doing. Everywhere else in the ship he was perpetually scared,
perpetually on tiptoe, perpetually afraid of making some small and
stupid mistake. Once he actually called Aldebaran a red star, but Rugel
either did not hear the slip or thought he was repeating what one of the
Mentorians--there were two aboard besides the girl--had said.

The absence of color from speech and life was the hardest thing to get
used to. Every star in the manual was listed by light-frequency waves,
to be checked against a photometer for a specific reading, and it almost
drove Bart mad to go through the ritual when the Mentorians were off
duty and could not call off the color and the equivalent frequency type
for him. Yet he did not dare skip a single step, or someone might have
guessed that he could _see_ the difference between a yellow and a green
star before checking them.

The Academy ships had had the traditional human signal system of
flashing red lights. Bart was stretched taut all the time, listening for
the small codelike buzzers and ticks that warned him of filled tanks,
leads in need of servicing, answers ready. Ringg's metal-fatigues
testing kit was a bewildering muddle of boxes, meters, rods and
earphones, each buzzing and clicking its characteristic warning.

At first he felt stretched to capacity every waking moment, his memory
aching with a million details, and lay awake nights thinking his mind
would crack under the strain. Then Alpha faded to a dim bluish shimmer,
Beta was eclipsed, Gamma was gone, Procyon dimmed to a failing spark;
and suddenly Bart's memory accustomed itself to the load, the new habits
were firmly in place, and he found himself eating, sleeping and working
in a settled routine.

He belonged to the _Swiftwing_ now.

Procyon was almost lost in the viewports when a sort of upswept tempo
began to run through the ship, an undercurrent of increased activity.
Cargo was checked, inventoried and strapped in. Ringg was given four
extra men to help him, made an extra tour of the ship, and came back
buzzing like a frantic cricket. Bart's computers told him they were
forging toward the sidereal location assigned for the first of the
warp-drive shifts, which would take them some fifteen light-years toward
Aldebaran.

On the final watch before the warp-drive shift, the medical officer came
around and relieved the Mentorians from duty. Bart watched them go, with
a curious, cold, crawling apprehension. Even the Mentorians, trusted by
the Lhari--even these were put into cold-sleep! Fear grabbed his
insides.

_No human had ever survived the shift into warp-drive_, the Lhari said.
Briscoe, his father, Raynor Three--they thought they had proved that the
Lhari lied. If they were right, if it was a Lhari trick to reinforce
their stranglehold on the human worlds and keep the warp-drive for
themselves, then Bart had nothing to fear. But he was afraid.

Why did the Mentorians endure this, never quite trusted, isolated among
aliens?

Raynor Three had said, _Because I belong in space, because I'm never
happy anywhere else_. Bart looked out the viewport at the swirl and burn
of the colors there. Now that he could never speak of the colors, it
seemed he had never been so wholly and wistfully aware of them. They
symbolized the thing he could never put into words.

_So that everyone can have this. Not just the Lhari._

Rugel watched the Mentorians go, scowling. "I wish medic would find a
way to keep them alive through warp," he said. "My Mentorian assistant
could watch that frequency-shift as we got near the bottom of the arc,
and I'll bet she could _see_ it. They can see the changes in intensity
faster than I can plot them on the photometer!"

Bart felt goosebumps break out on his skin. Rugel spoke as if the
certain death of humans, Mentorians, was a fact. Didn't the Lhari
themselves know it was a farce? _Or was it?_

Vorongil himself took the controls for the surge of Acceleration Two,
which would take them past the Light Barrier. Bart, watching his
instruments to exact position and time, saw the colors of each star
shift strangely, moment by moment. The red stars seemed hard to see. The
orange-yellow ones burned suddenly like flame; the green ones seemed
golden, the blue ones almost green. Dimly, he remembered the old story
of a "red shift" in the lights of approaching stars, but here he saw it
pure, a sight no human eyes had ever seen. A sight that _no_ eyes had
seen, human or otherwise, for the Lhari could not see it....

"Time," he said briefly to Vorongil, "Fifteen seconds...."

Rugel looked across from his couch. Bart felt that the old, scarred
Lhari could read his fear. Rugel said through a wheeze, "No matter how
old you get, Bartol, you're still scared when you make a warp-shift. But
relax, computers don't make mistakes."

"Catalyst," Vorongil snapped, "Ready--_shift!_"

At first there was no change; then Bart realized that the stars, through
the viewport, had altered abruptly in size and shade and color. They
were not sparks but strange streaks, like comets, crossing and
recrossing long tails that grew, longer and longer, moment by moment.
The dark night of space was filled with a crisscrossing blaze. They were
moving faster than light, they saw the light left by the moving Universe
as each star hurled in its own invisible orbit, while they tore
incredibly through it, faster than light itself....

Bart felt a curious, tingling discomfort, deep in his flesh; almost an
itching, a stinging in his very bones.

_Lhari flesh is no different from ours...._

Space, through the viewport, was no longer space as he had come to know
it, but a strange eerie limbo, the star-tracks lengthening, shifting
color until they filled the whole viewport with shimmering, gray,
recrossing light. The unbelievable reaction of warp-drive thrust them
through space faster than the lights of the surrounding stars, faster
than imagination could follow.

The lights in the drive chamber began to dim--or was he blacking out?
The stinging in his flesh was a clawed pain.

Briscoe lived through it....

_They say._

The whirling star-tracks fogged, coiled, turned colorless worms of
light, went into a single vast blur. Dimly Bart saw old Rugel slump
forward, moaning softly; saw the old Lhari pillow his bald head on his
veined arms. Then darkness took him; and thinking it was death, Bart
felt only numb, regretful failure. _I've failed, we'll always fail. The
Lhari were right all long._

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