The Colors of Space

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

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_But we tried! By God, we tried!_

"Bartol?" A gentle hand, cat claws retracted, came down on his shoulder.
Ringg bent over him. Good-natured rebuke was in his voice. "Why didn't
you tell us you got a bad reaction, and ask to sign out for this shift?"
he demanded. "Look, poor old Rugel's passed out again. He just won't
admit he can't take it--but one idiot on a watch is enough! Some people
just feel as if the bottom's dropped out of the ship, and that's all
there is to it."

Bart hauled his head upright, fighting a surge of stinging nausea. His
bones itched inside and he was damnably uncomfortable, but he was alive.

"I'm--fine."

"You look it," Ringg said in derision. "Think you can help me get Rugel
to his cabin?"

Bart struggled to his feet, and found that when he was upright he felt
better. "Wow!" he muttered, then clamped his mouth shut. He was supposed
to be an experienced man, a Lhari hardened to space. He said woozily,
"How long was I out?"

"The usual time," Ringg said briskly, "about three seconds--just while
we hit peak warp-drive. Feels longer, so they tell me, sometimes--time's
funny, beyond light-speeds. The medic says it's purely psychological.
I'm not so sure. I _itch_, blast it!"

He moved his shoulders in a squirming way, then bent over Rugel, who was
moaning, half insensible. "Catch hold of his feet, Bartol. Here--ease
him out of his chair. No sense bothering the medics this time. Think you
can manage to help me carry him down to the deck?"

"Sure," Bart said, finding his feet and his voice. He felt better as
they moved along the hallway, the limp, muttering form of the old Lhari
insensible in their arms. They reached the officer's deck, got Rugel
into his cabin and into his bunk, hauled off his cloak and boots. Ringg
stood shaking his head.

"And they say Captain Vorongil's so tough!"

Bart made a questioning noise.

"Why, just look," said Ringg. "He knows it would make poor old Rugel
feel as if he wasn't good for much--to order him into his bunk and make
him take dope like a Mentorian for every warp-shift. So we have this to
go through at every jump!" He sounded cross and disgusted, but there was
a rough, boyish gentleness as he hauled the blanket over the bald old
Lhari. He looked up, almost shyly.

"Thanks for helping me with Old Baldy. We usually try to get him out
before Vorongil officially takes notice. Of course, he sort of keeps his
back turned," Ringg said, and they laughed together as they turned back
to the drive room. Bart found himself thinking, _Ringg's a good kid_,
before he pulled himself up, in sudden shock.

He _had_ lived through warp-drive! Then, indeed, the Lhari had been
lying all along, the vicious lie that maintained their stranglehold
monopoly of star-travel. He was their enemy again, the spy within their
gates, like Briscoe, to be hunted down and killed, but to bring the
message, loud and clear, to everyone: _The Lhari lied! The stars can
belong to us all!_

When he got back to the drive room, he saw through the viewport that the
blur had vanished, the star-trails were clear, distinct again, their
comet-tails shortening by the moment, their colors more distinct.

The Lhari were waiting, a few poised over their instruments, a few more
standing at the quartz window watching the star-trails, some squirming
and scratching and grousing about "space fleas"--the characteristic
itching reaction that seemed to be deep down inside the bones.

Bart checked his panels, noted the time when they were due to snap back
into normal space, and went to stand by the viewport. The stars were
reappearing, seeming to steady and blaze out in cloudy splendor through
the bright dust. They burned in great streamers of flame, and for the
moment he forgot his mission again, lost in the beauty of the fiery
lights. He drew a deep, shaking gasp. It was worth it all, to see this!
He turned and saw Ringg, silent, at his shoulder.

"Me, too," Ringg said, almost in a whisper. "I think every man on board
feels that way, a little, only he won't admit it." His slanted gray eyes
looked quickly at Bart and away.

"I guess we're almost down to L-point. Better check the panel and report
nulls, so medic can wake up the Mentorians."

* * * * *

The _Swiftwing_ moved on between the stars. Aldebaran loomed, then faded
in the viewports; another shift jumped them to a star whose human name
Bart did not know. Shift followed shift, spaceport followed spaceport,
sun followed sun; men lived on most of these worlds, and on each of them
a Lhari spaceport rose, alien and arrogant. And on each world men looked
at Lhari with resentful eyes, cursing the race who kept the stars for
their own.

Cargo amassed in the holds of the _Swiftwing_, from worlds beyond all
dreams of strangeness. Bart grew, not bored, but hardened to the
incredible. For days at a time, no word of human speech crossed his
mind.

The blackout at peak of each warp-shift persisted. Vorongil had given
him permission to report off duty, but since the blackouts did not
impair his efficiency, Bart had refused. Rugel told him that this was
the moment of equilibrium, the peak of the faster-than-light motion.

"Perhaps a true limiting speed beyond which nothing will ever go,"
Vorongil said, touching the charts with a varnished claw. Rugel's
scarred old mouth spread in a thin smile.

"Maybe there's no such thing as a limiting speed. Someday we'll reach
true simultaneity--enter warp, and come out just where we want to be, at
the same time. Just a split-second interval. That will be real
transmission."

Ringg scoffed, "And suppose you get even better--and come out of warp
_before_ you go into it? What then, Honorable Bald One?"

Rugel chuckled, and did not answer. Bart turned away. It was not easy to
keep on hating the Lhari.

There came a day when he came on watch to see drawn, worried faces; and
when Ringg came into the drive room they threw their levers on
_automatic_ and crowded around him, their crests bobbing in question and
dismay. Vorongil seemed to emit sparks as he barked at Ringg, "You found
it?"

"I found it. Inside the hull lining."

Vorongil swore, and Ringg held up a hand in protest. "I only _locate_
metals fatigue, sir--I don't _make_ it!"

"No help for it then," Vorongil said. "We'll have to put down for
repairs. How much time do we have, Ringg?"

"I give it thirty hours," Ringg said briefly, and Vorongil gave a long
shrill whistle. "Bartol, what's the closest listed spaceport?"

Bart dived for handbooks, manuals, comparative tables of position, and
started programming information. The crew drifted toward him, and by the
time he finished feeding in the coded information, a row three-deep of
Lhari surrounded him, including all the officers. Vorongil was right at
his shoulder when Bart slipped on his earphones and started decoding the
punched strips that fed out the answers from the computer.

"Nearest port is Cottman Four. It's almost exactly thirty hours away."

"I don't like to run it that close." Vorongil's face was bitten deep
with lines. He turned to Ramillis, head of Maintenance. "Do we need
spare parts? Or just general repairs?"

"Just repairs, sir. We have plenty of shielding metal. It's a long job
to get through the hulls, but there's nothing we can't fix."

Vorongil flexed his clawed hands nervously, stretching and retracting
them. "Ringg, you're the fatigue expert. I'll take your word for it. Can
we make thirty hours?"

Ringg looked pale and there was none of his usual boyish nonsense when
he said, "Captain, I swear I wouldn't risk Cottman. You know what
crystallization's like, sir. We can't get through that hull lining to
repair it in space, if it _does_ go before we land. We wouldn't have the
chance of a hydrogen atom in a tank of halogens."

Vorongil's slanted eyebrows made a single unbroken line. "That's the
word then. Bartol, find us the closest star with a planet--spaceport or
not."

Bart's hands were shaking with sudden fear. He checked each digit of
their present position, fed it into the computer, waited, finally wet
his lips and plunged, taking the strip from a computer.

"This small star, called Meristem. It's a--" he bit his lip, hard; he
had almost said _green_--"type Q, two planets with atmosphere within
tolerable limits, not classified as inhabited."

"Who owns it?"

"I don't have that information on the banks, sir."

Vorongil beckoned the Mentorian assistant. So apart were Lhari and
Mentorian on these ships that Bart did not even know his name. He said,
"Look up a star called Meristem for us." The Mentorian hurried away,
came back after a moment with the information that it belonged to the
Second Galaxy Federation, but was listed as unexplored.

Vorongil scowled. "Well, we can claim necessity," he said. "It's only
eight hours away, and Cottman's thirty. Bartol, plot us a warp-drive
shift that will land us in that system, and on the inner of the two
planets, within nine hours. If it's a type Q star, that means dim
illumination, and no spaceport mercury-vapor installations. We'll need
as much sunlight as we can get."

It was the first time that Bart, unaided, had had the responsibility of
plotting a warp-drive shift. He checked the coordinates of the small
green star three times before passing them along to Vorongil. Even so,
when they went into Acceleration Two, he felt stinging fear. _If I
plotted wrong, we could shift into that crazy space and come out
billions of miles away...._

But when the stars steadied and took on their own colors, the blaze of a
small green sun was steady in the viewport.

"Meristem," Vorongil said, taking the controls himself. "Let's hope the
place is really uninhabited and that catalogue's up to date, lads. It
wouldn't be any fun to burn up some harmless village, or get shot at by
barbarians--and we're setting down with no control-tower signals and no
spaceport repair crews. So let's hope our luck holds out for a while
yet."

Bart, feeling the minute, unsteady trembling somewhere in the
ship--_Imagination_, he told himself, _you can't feel metal-fatigue
somewhere in the hull lining_--echoed the wish. He did not know that he
had already had the best luck of his unique voyage, or realize the
fantastic luck that had brought him to the small green star Meristem.

CHAPTER NINE

The crews of repairmen were working down in the hull, and the
_Swiftwing_ was a hell of clanging noise and shuddering heat.
Maintenance was working overtime, but the rest of the crew, with nothing
to do, stood around in the recreation rooms, tried to play games, cursed
the heat and the dreary dimness through the viewports, and twitched at
the boiler-factory racket from the holds.

Toward the end of the third day, the biologist reported air, water and
gravity well within tolerable limits, and Captain Vorongil issued
permission for anyone who liked, to go outside and have a look around.

Bart had a sort of ship-induced claustrophobia. It was good to feel
solid ground under his feet and the rays of a sun, even a green sun, on
his back. Even more, it was good to get away from the constant presence
of his shipmates. During this enforced idleness, their presence
oppressed him unendurably--so many tall forms, gray skins, feathery
crests. He was always alone; for a change, he felt that he'd like to be
alone without Lhari all around him.

But as he moved away from the ship, Ringg dropped out of the hatchway
and hailed him. "Where are you going?"

"Just for a walk."

Ringg drew a deep breath of weariness. "That sounds good. Mind if I come
along?"

Bart did, but all he could say was, "If you like."

"How about let's get some food from the rations clerk, and do some
exploring?"

The sun overhead was a clear greenish-gold, the sky strewn with soft
pale clouds that cast racing shadows on the soft grass underfoot,
fragrant pinkish-yellow stuff strewn with bright vermilion puff-balls.
Bart wished he were alone to enjoy it.

"How are the repairs coming?"

"Pretty well. But Karol got his hand half scorched off, poor fellow.
Just luck the same thing didn't happen to me." Ringg added. "You know
that Mentorian--the young one, the medic's assistant?"

"I've seen her. Her name's Meta, I think." Suddenly, Bart wished the
Mentorian girl were with him here. It would be nice to hear a human
voice.

"Oh, is it a female? Mentorians all look alike to me," Ringg said, while
Bart controlled his face with an effort. "Be that as it may, she saved
me from having the same thing happen. I was just going to lean against a
strip of sheet metal when she _screamed_ at me. Do you think they can
really _see_ heat vibrations? She called it _red_-hot."

They had reached a line of tall cliffs, where a steep rock-fall divided
off the plain from the edge of the mountains. A few slender, drooping,
gold-leaved trees bent graceful branches over a pool. Bart stood
fascinated by the play of green sunlight on the emerald ripples, but
Ringg flung himself down full length on the soft grass and sighed
comfortably. "Feels good."

"Too comfortable to eat?"

They munched in companionable silence. "Look," said Ringg at last,
pointing toward the cliffs, "Holes in the rocks. Caves. I'd like to
explore them, wouldn't you?"

"They look pretty gloomy to me. Probably full of monsters."

Ringg patted the hilt of his energon-ray. "This will handle anything
short of an armor-plated saurian."

Bart shuddered. As part of uniform, he, too, had been issued one of the
energon-rays; but he had never used it and didn't intend to. "Just the
same, I'd rather stay out here in the sun."

"It's better than vitamin lamps," Ringg admitted, "even if it's not very
bright."

Bart wondered, suddenly and worriedly, about the effects of green
sunburn on his chemically altered skin tone.

"Well, let's enjoy it while we can," Ringg said, "because it seems to be
clouding over. I wouldn't be surprised if it rained." He yawned. "I'm
getting bored with this voyage. And yet I don't want it to end, because
then I'll have to fight it out all over again with my family. My father
owns a hotel, and he wants me in the family business, not five hundred
light-years away. None of our family have ever been spacemen before," he
explained, "and they don't understand that living on one planet would
drive me out of my mind." He sighed. "How did you explain it to your
people--that you couldn't be happy in the mud? Or are you a career man?"

"I guess so. I never thought about doing anything else," Bart said
slowly, Ringg's story had touched him; he had never realized quite so
fully how much alike the two races were, how human the Lhari problems
and dreams could seem. _Why, of course, the Lhari aren't all spacemen.
They have hotel keepers and garbage men and dentists just as we do.
Funny, you never think of them except in space._

"My mother died when I was very young," Bart said, choosing his words
very carefully. "My father owned a fleet of interplanetary ships."

"But you wanted the real thing, deep space, the stars," Ringg said. "How
did he feel about that?"

"He would have understood," Bart said, unable to keep emotion out of his
voice, "but he's dead now. He died, not long ago."

Ringg's eyes were bright with sympathy. "While you were off on the
drift? Bad luck," he said gently. He was silent, and when he spoke again
it was in a very different tone.

"But some of the older generation--I had a professor in training school,
funny old chap, bald as the hull of the _Swiftwing_. Taught us
cosmic-ray analysis, and what he didn't know about spiral nebulae could
be engraved on my fifth toe-claw, and he'd never been off the face of
the planet. Not even to one of the moons! He was the supervisor of my
student lodge, and oh, was he a--" The phrase Ringg used meant,
literally, _a soft piece of cake_.

"His feet may have been buried in mud, but his head was off in the Great
Nebula. We had some wild times," Ringg reminisced. "We'd slip away to
the city--strictly against rules, it was an old-style school--and draw
lots for one of us to stay home and sign in for all twelve. You see,
he'd sit there reading, and when one of us came in, just shove the wax
at us, with his nose in a text on cosmic dust, never looking up. So the
one who stayed home would scrawl a name on it, walk out the back door,
come around and sign in again. When there were twelve signed in, of
course, the old chap would go up to bed, and late that night the one who
stayed in would sneak down and let us in."

Ringg sat up suddenly, touching his cheek. "Was that a drop of rain? And
the sun's gone. I suppose we ought to start back, though I hate to leave
those caves unexplored."

Bart bent to gather up the debris of their meal. He flinched as
something hard struck his arm. "Ouch! What was that?"

Ringg cried out in pain. "It's hail!"

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."

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