The Colors of Space

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

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"Half-fledged nestlings trying to do a man's work! So someone forgot the
panel, or damaged the panel by mistake--no, not another word," he
commanded, as Ringg's crest came proudly up. "I don't care who did what!
Any more of this, and the one who does it can try his claws on the
captain of the _Swiftwing_!" He looked ugly and dangerous. "I thought
better of you both. Get below, you squalling kittens! Let me not see
your faces again before we land!"

As they went along the corridor, Ringg turned to Bart, apology and
chagrin in his eyes. "Look--I never meant to get the Bald One down on
us," he said, but Bart kept his face resolutely averted. It was easier
this way, without pretense of friendship.

* * * * *

The light from the small captive sun grew more intense. Bart had never
known anything like it, and was glad to slip away and put the dark
contact lenses into his eyes. They made his eyes appear all enormous,
dilated pupil; fearfully, he hoped no one would notice. His arm smarted,
and he did not speak to Ringg all through the long, slow deceleration.

When the intercom ordered all crew members to the hatchway, Bart
lingered a minute, pinning the yellow radiation badge in a fold of his
cloak. A spasm of fear threatened to overwhelm him again, and
nightmarish loneliness. He felt agonizingly homesick for his own
familiar face. It seemed almost more than he could manage, to step out
into the corridor full of Lhari.

_It won't be long now._

The hatch opened. Even accustomed, as he was, to Lhari lights, Bart
squeezed his eyes shut at the blue-white brilliance that assaulted him
now. Then, opening slitted lids cautiously, he found that he could see.

A weirdly desolate scene stretched away before them. Bare, burning sand,
strewn with curiously colored rocks, lay piled in strange chaos; then he
realized there was an odd, but perceptible geometry to their
arrangement. They showed alternate crystal and opaque faces. Old Rugel
noted his look of surprise.

"Never been here before? That's right, you've always worked on the
Polaris run. Well, those aren't true rocks, but living creatures of a
sort. The crystals are alive; the opaque faces are lichens that have
something like chlorophyll and can make their food from air and
sunlight. The rocks and lichens live in symbiosis. They have
intelligence of a sort, but fortunately they don't mind us, or our
automatic mining machinery. Every time, though, we find some new lichen
that's trying to set up a symbiote cycle with the concrete of our
bunkers."

"And every time," Ringg said cheerfully, "somebody--usually me--has to
see about having them scraped down and repainted. Maybe someday I'll
find a paint the lichens don't like the taste of."

"Going to explore with Ringg?" Rugel asked, and Ringg, always ready to
let bygones be bygones, grinned and said, "Sure!" Bart could not face
him.

Vorongil stopped and said, "This your first time here, young Bartol? How
would you like to visit the monument with me? You can see the machinery
on the way back."

Relieved at not having to go with Ringg, he followed the captain,
falling into step beside him. They moved in silence, along the smooth
stone path.

"The crystal creatures made this road," Vorongil said at last. "I think
they read minds a little. There used to be a very messy, rocky desert
here, and we used to have to scrabble and scratch our way to the
monument. Then one day a ship--not mine--touched down and discovered
that there was a beautiful smooth road leading up to the monument. And
the lichens never touch that stone--but you probably had all this in
school. Excited, Bartol?"

"No--no, sir. Why?"

"Eyes look a bit odd. But who could blame you for being excited? I never
come here without remembering Rhazon and his crew on that long jump. The
longest any Lhari captain ever made. A blind leap in the dark, remember,
Bartol. Through the dark, through the void, with his own crew cursing
him for taking the chance! No one had ever crossed between galaxies--and
remember, they were using the Ancient Math!"

He paused, and Bart said through a catch of breath. "Quite an
achievement." His badge still looked reassuringly yellow.

"You young people have no sense of wonder," Vorongil said. "Not that I
blame you. You can't realize what it was like in those days. Oh, we'd
had star-travel for centuries, we were beginning to stagnate. And now
look at us! Oh, they derided Rhazon--said that even if he did find
anyone, any other race, they'd be monsters with whom we could never
communicate. But here we have a whole new galaxy for peaceful trade, a
new mathematics that takes all the hazard out of space travel, our
Mentorian friends and allies." He smiled. "Don't tell the High Council
on me, but I think they deserve a lot more credit than most Lhari care
to give them. Between ourselves, I think the next Panarch may see it
that way."

Vorongil paused. "Here's the monument."

It lay between the crystal columns, tall, of pale blue sandstone, with
letters in deep shadow of such contrast that the Lhari could read them:
a high, sheer, imposing stele. Vorongil read the words slowly aloud in
the musical Lhari language:

"'Here, with thanks to Those who Watch the Great Night, I, Rhazon of
Nedrun, raise a stone of memory. Here we first do touch the new worlds.
Let us never again fear to face the unknown, trusting that the Mind of
All Knowledge still has many surprises in store for all the living.'

"I think I admire courage more than anything there is, Bartol. Who else
could have dared it? Doesn't it make you proud to be a Lhari?"

Bart had felt profoundly moved; now he snapped back to awareness of who
he was and what he was doing. So only the Lhari had courage? _Life has
surprises, all right, Captain_, he thought grimly.

He glanced down at the badge strip of plastic on his arm. It began to
tinge faint orange as he looked, and a chill of fear went over him. He
had to get away somehow--get to cover!

He looked round and his fear was almost driven from his mind. "Captain,
the rocks! They're moving!"

Vorongil said, unruffled, "Why, so they are. They do, you know; they
have intelligence of a sort. Though I've never actually _seen_ them move
before, I know they shift places overnight. I wonder what's going on?"
They were edging back, the path widening and changing. "Oh, well, maybe
they're going to do some more landscaping for us. I once knew a captain
who swore they could read his mind."

Bart saw the slow, inexorable deepening of his badge--he _had_ to get
away. He tensed, impatient; gripped by fists of panic. Somewhere on this
world, Montano and his men were setting up their lethal radiations....

_Think of this: a Lhari ship of our own to study, to know how it works,
to see the catalyst and find out where it comes from, to read their
records and star routes. Now we know we can use it without dying in the
warp-drive...._

_Think of this: to be human again, yet to travel the stars with men of
my own race!_

_It's worth a few deaths!_

Even Vorongil? Standing here, talking to him, he might--_say it! You
talked to him as if he'd been your father! Oh, Dad, Dad, what would you
do?_

His voice was steady, as he said, "It's very good of you to show me all
this, sir, but the other men will call me a slacker. Hadn't I better get
to a work detail?"

"Hm, maybe so, feathertop," Vorongil said. "Let me see--well, down this
way is the last row of bunkers. See the humps? You can check inside to
see if they're full or empty and save us the trouble of exploring if
they're all empty. Have a look round inside if you care to--the robot
machinery's interesting."

Bart tensed; he had wondered how he'd get hidden inside, but he asked,
"Not locked?"

"Locked?" The old Lhari's short, yellowed crest bobbed in surprise.
"Why? Who ever comes here but our ships? And what could we do with the
stuff but take it back with us? Why locked? You've been on the drift too
long--among those thieving humans! It's time you got back to live among
decent folk again. Well, go along."

The sting of the words stiffened Bart as he took his leave. The color of
the badge seemed deeper orange....

_When it's red, you're dead._

_It's true. The Lhari don't steal. They don't even seem to understand
dishonesty._

_But they lied--lied to us all...._

_Knowing what we were like, maybe! That we'd steal their ships, their
secrets, their lives!_

The deepening color of the badge seemed the one visible thing in a
strange glaring world. He walked along the row of bunkers, realizing he
need not check if they were full or empty--the Lhari wouldn't live long
enough to harvest their better-than-graphite lubricant. They'd be dead.

The last bunker was empty. He looked at his orange badge and stepped
inside, heart pounding so loudly he thought it was an external sound--it
_was_ an external sound, a step.

"Don't move one inch," said a voice in Universal, and Bart froze,
trembling. He looked cautiously round.

Montano stood there, spacesuited, his head bare, dark contact lenses
blurring his eyes. And in his hand a drawn blaster was held
level--trained straight at Bart's heart.

CHAPTER TWELVE

After the first moment of panic, Bart realized Montano could not tell
him from a Lhari. He remained motionless. "It's me, Montano--Bart
Steele."

The man lowered the weapon and put it away. "You nearly got yourself cut
down," he said. "Did you make it all right?" He crossed behind Bart,
inspecting the fastenings of the bunker.

"It's just luck I didn't shoot you first and ask questions afterward."
Montano drew a deep breath and sat down on the concrete floor. "Anyway,
we're safe in here. We've got about half an hour before the radiation
will reach lethal intensity. It has a very short half-life, though; only
about twelve minutes. If we spend an hour in here, we'll be safe enough.
Did you have any trouble putting the radiation counter out of
commission?"

So in half an hour they would all be dead. Ringg, Rugel, Captain
Vorongil. Two dozen Lhari, all dead so that Montano could have a Lhari
ship to play with.

And what then? More killing, more murder? Would Montano start killing
everyone who tried to get the secret of the drive from him? The Lhari
had the star-drive; maybe it belonged to them, maybe not. Maybe humans
had a right to have it, too. But this wasn't the right way. Maybe they
didn't deserve it.

He turned to look at Montano. The man was leaning back, whistling softly
through his teeth. He felt like telling Montano that he couldn't go
through with it. He started to speak, then stopped, his blood icing
over.

_If I try to argue with him, I'll never get out of here alive. It means
too much to him._

_Do I just salve my conscience with that then? Sit here and let them
die?_

With a shock of remembrance, it came to Bart that he had a weapon. He
was armed, this time, with the energon-beam that was part of his
uniform. Montano had evidently forgotten it. _Could_ he kill Montano?
Even to save two dozen Lhari?

He reached hesitantly toward the beam-gun, quickly thumbed the catch
down to the lowest point, which was simple shock. He froze as Montano
looked in his direction, hand out of sight under his cloak.

"How many Lhari on board?"

"Twenty-three, and three Mentorians."

"Anyone apt to be behind shielding--say, in the drive chamber?"

"No, I think they're all outside."

Montano nodded, idly. "Then we won't have to worry."

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."

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