The Colors of Space

For a moment the words swirled before Bart's still-watering eyes. He

wiped them, trying to steady himself. Had he so soon reached the end of

his dangerous quest? Somehow he had expected it to lie in deep, dark

concealment.

Raynor One. The existence of Raynor One presupposed a Raynor Two and

probably a Raynor Three--for all he knew, Raynors Four, Five, Six, and

Sixty-six! The building looked solid and real. It had evidently been

there a long time.

With his hand on the door, he hesitated. Was it, after all, the right

Eight Colors? But it was a family saying; hardly the sort of thing you'd

be apt to hear outside. He pushed the door and went in.

The room was filled with brighter light than the Procyon sun outdoors,

the edges of the furniture rimmed with neon in the Mentorian fashion. A

prim-looking girl sat behind a desk--or what should have been a desk,

except that it looked more like a mirror, with little sparkles of

lights, different colors, in regular rows along one edge. The mirror-top

itself was blue-violet and gave her skin and her violet eyes a bluish

tinge. She was smooth and lacquered and glittering and she raised her

eyebrows at Bart as if he were some strange form of life she hadn't seen

very often.

"I'd--er--like to see Raynor One," he said.

Her dainty pointed fingernail, varnished blue, stabbed at points of

light. "On what business?" she asked, not caring.

"It's a personal matter."

"Then I suggest you see him at his home."

"It can't wait that long."

The girl studied the glassy surface and punched at some more of the

little lights. "Name, please?"

"David Briscoe."

He had thought her perfect-painted face could not show any emotion

except disdain, but it did. She looked at him in open, blank

consternation. She said into the vision-screen, "He calls himself David

Briscoe. Yes, I know. Yes, sir, yes." She raised her face, and it was

controlled again, but not bored. "Raynor One will see you. Through that

door, and down to the end of the hall."

At the end of the hallway was another door. He stepped through into a

small cubicle, and the door slid shut like a closing trap. He whirled in

panic, then subsided in foolish relief as the cubicle began to rise--it

was just an automatic elevator.

It rose higher and higher, stopping with an abrupt jerk, and slid open

into a lighted room and office. A man sat behind a desk, watching Bart

step from the elevator. The man was very tall and very thin, and the

gray eyes, and the intensity of the lights, told Bart that he was a

Mentorian. Raynor One?