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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.
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?"
Tell me who's going to be opening the panels in here anyhow?" "No, no," Rugel said patiently, "I'm not accusing you of anything, only being careless, young Ringg. You poke with those buzzing instruments and things, maybe once you tear loose some wires." Bart remembered he wasn't supposed to know what was going on. "What's this all about?" It was Rugel who answered.
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.
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?"
When he had finished, Tommy leaned forward and gripped Bart's hand tightly. "You make them sound like pretty decent people," he said, looking at Ringg. "A year ago, if you'd told me I'd be here with a Lhari spaceman and a bunch of Mentorians, I'd never have believed it." "Nor I, that I would be as friend under a human roof," Ringg replied. "But a friend to Bart is my friend also."
Word came from Antares that Montano had been arrested and his ship confiscated for illegal landing on Lharillis. I thought you were probably dead." "We sent a boy to do a man's job," Raynor Three said, "and he came back a man. But tell me " He looked curiously at Ringg and Meta. Bart introduced them, adding, "I came for help, really. I'm facing charges, and I'm afraid you are, too."
Ringg laughed and gave him a rough, affectionate shove. "You're Bartol, all right!" Even his sense of defeat vanished in wonder as they came out into the great spaceport. He saw, now, that the Lhari spaceports in human worlds were built to create, for the spacemen so far from their native worlds, some feeling of home. But everything here was so vast as to stagger the imagination.
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.
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!
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