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Updated: May 15, 2025
We reached this point once before. Then a Lhari captain, Rhazon of Nedrun, abandoned the safe ways of caution, and out of his blind leap in the blind dark came many good things. Trade with the human race. Our Mentorian allies. A system of mathematics to take the hazards from our star-travel. "Yet once again the Lhari had grown cautious and fearful.
But first of all are you all right, Meta?" Her chin went up, defiantly. "Yes. And why have you lied to us all these years all of you?" Vorongil looked mildly startled. "It wasn't exactly a lie. Nine out of ten Lhari captains believe it with all their heart that humans die in warp-drive. I wasn't sure myself until I heard the debates in Council City, last year." "But why?" Vorongil sighed.
Fawning upon the Lhari that way, yet they're as human as we are! Slaves of the Lhari!" Bart felt the involuntary surge of anger, instantly controlled. "It's not that way at all. My mother was a Mentorian, remember. She made five cruises on a Lhari ship before she married my father." Tommy sighed.
After a while he heard the elevator again; the panel slid open and Raynor Three came into the room. It had to be Raynor Three; there was no one else he could have been. He was as like Raynor One as Tweedledum to Tweedledee: tall, stern, ascetic and grim. He wore the full uniform of a Mentorian on Lhari ships: the white smock of a medic, the metallic blue cloak, the low silvery sandals.
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.
It was a week before the Lhari ship went into warp-drive, and all that time Bart stayed in his cabin, not daring to go to the observation Lounge or dining hall. By the time they had been in space a week, he was so bored with his own company that even the Mentorian medic was a welcome sight when he came in to prepare him for cold-sleep.
The Lhari had spoken regretfully, but the way they'd speak of a fly they couldn't manage to swat fast enough. Sooner or later you had to get down to it, they just weren't human! Here on Earth, nothing much could happen, of course. They wouldn't let the Lhari hurt anyone then Bart remembered his course in Universal Law. The Lhari spaceport in every system, by treaty, was Lhari territory.
The Lhari gestured, and Bart went through the narrow passageway, came out at the other end, and found himself at the very base of a curving stair that led up and up toward a door in the side of the huge Lhari ship. Bart hesitated. In another minute he'd be on his way to a strange sun and a strange world, on what might well be the wild-goose chase of all time.
"The trouble is, if the Lhari spaceport wasn't on Earth, we wouldn't be on Earth either. Remember that." Bart remembered it, five years later, as he got off the strip of moving sidewalk. He turned to wait for Tommy Kendron, who was getting his baggage off the center strip of the moving roadway. Bart Steele and Tommy Kendron had graduated together, the day before, from the Space Academy of Earth.
Before every trip, with self-hypnosis and self-suggestion, I erase my own memories a sort of artificial amnesia so that the Lhari can't find out any more than I want them to find out.
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