United States or Bosnia and Herzegovina ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"How did you get through the Lhari? In that?" He moved his head at the Mentorian cloak. Bart explained briefly, and Raynor One shook his head. "You were lucky," he said, "you could have been blinded. You must have inherited flash-accommodation from the Mentorian side Rupert Steele didn't have it. I'll tell you this much," he added, sitting down again. "In a manner of speaking, you're my boss.
When I was a young man, I qualified as a medic on the Lhari ships, and I've been star-hopping ever since. People call us the slaves of the Lhari maybe we are," he added wryly. "But I began it just because space is where I belong, and there's nowhere else that I've ever wanted to be. And I'll take it at any price. "I never questioned what I was doing until a few years ago.
"They were holding someone for questioning, and he seems to have gotten away somehow, so I wanted to make sure he didn't come through here." "What is the matter that one man can give us all the slip this way?" the Lhari said curiously. "Well, one thing is sure, he's Vegan or Solarian or Capellan, one of the dim-star people.
He was to be asked one question again and again in the days that followed, but his real answer was to Meta and Raynor Three, looking quietly past Raynor One and speaking to the news cameras that would carry his words all over the galaxy to men and Lhari: "Why didn't I keep it for myself? Because there are always men like Montano, who in their mistaken pride will murder and steal for such things.
He watched the two Lhari riffle through his papers with their odd pointed claws. "What isss your planet?" Bart bit his lip, hard he had almost said, "Vega Four." "Aldebaran Four." The Lhari said in his own language, "We should have Margil in here. He actually saw them." The other replied, "But I saw the machine that disintegrated. I still say there was enough protoplasm residue for two bodies."
The Lhari don't shake hands." He turned abruptly and went out of the door and out of Bart's life, while Bart stood at the dome-window, feeling alone as he had never felt alone before. He had to wait six days, and they felt like six eternities. He played the training tape over and over. With his Academy background, it wasn't nearly so difficult as he'd feared.
They had to wait for representatives of the Lhari Council to make the journey from their home galaxy; meanwhile they kept Bart in protective custody.
It was a Lhari spaceport that lay before him, to all appearances identical with the one on Earth: sloping glass ramps, tall colorless pylons, a skyscraper terminus crowded with men of all planets. But the sun overhead was brilliant and clear gold, the shadows sharp and violet on the spaceport floor.
Tommy wanted to know everything, and both Raynors wanted to know every detail of Bart's year among the Lhari, while Meta and Ringg were both curious about how it had begun. Bart tried to forget that the next day might bring trouble, even imprisonment. The Lhari Council had told him to talk as much as he liked about his voyage, and this might be his only chance.
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....
Word Of The Day