Bart put the papers in his pants pocket and the torn-up scraps of his
old ones into the trashbin before he realized that they looked exactly
like what they were--torn-up legal identity papers and a broken plastic
card. Nobody destroyed identity papers for any good reason. What could
he do?
Then he remembered something from the Academy. Starships were
closed-system cycles, no waste was discarded, but everything was
collected in big chemical tanks, broken down to separate elements,
purified and built up again into new materials. He threw the paper into
the toilet, worked the plastic card back and forth, back and forth until
he had wrenched it into inch-wide bits, and threw it after them.
The cabin door opened and a Mentorian said irritably, "Please lie down
and fasten your straps. I haven't all day."
Hastily Bart flushed the toilet and went to the bunk. Now everything
that could identify him as Bart Steele was on its way to the breakdown
tanks. Before long, the complex hydrocarbons and cellulose would all be
innocent little molecules of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen; they might turn
up in new combinations as sugar on the table!
The Mentorian grumbled, "You young people think the rules mean everybody
but you," and strapped him far too tightly into the bunk. Bart felt
resentful; just because Mentorians could work on Lhari ships, did they
have to act as if they owned everybody?
When the man had gone, Bart drew a deep breath. Was he really doing the
right thing?
If he'd refused to get out of the robotcab-If he'd driven Briscoe straight to the police-Then maybe Briscoe would still be alive. And now it was too late.
A warning siren went off in the ship, rising to hysterical intensity.
Bart thought, incredulously, this is really happening. It felt like a
nightmare. His father a fugitive from the Lhari. Briscoe dead. He
himself traveling, with forged papers, to a star he'd never seen.
He braced himself, knowing the siren was the last warning before
takeoff. First there would be the hum of great turbines deep in the
ship, then the crushing surge of acceleration. He had made a dozen trips
inside the solar system, but no matter how often he did it, there was
the strange excitement, the little pinpoint of fear, like an exotic
taste, that was almost pleasant.
The door opened and Bart grabbed a fistful of bed-ticking as two Lhari
came into the room.
One of them said, in their strange shrill speech, "This boy is the right
age."
Bart froze.
"You're seeing spies in every corner, Ransell," said the other, then in
Universal, "Could we trrouble you for your paperesses, sirr?"