The Colors of Space

Raynor Three had said, Because I belong in space, because I'm never

happy anywhere else. Bart looked out the viewport at the swirl and burn

of the colors there. Now that he could never speak of the colors, it

seemed he had never been so wholly and wistfully aware of them. They

symbolized the thing he could never put into words.

So that everyone can have this. Not just the Lhari.

Rugel watched the Mentorians go, scowling. "I wish medic would find a

way to keep them alive through warp," he said. "My Mentorian assistant

could watch that frequency-shift as we got near the bottom of the arc,

and I'll bet she could see it. They can see the changes in intensity

faster than I can plot them on the photometer!"

Bart felt goosebumps break out on his skin. Rugel spoke as if the

certain death of humans, Mentorians, was a fact. Didn't the Lhari

themselves know it was a farce? Or was it?

Vorongil himself took the controls for the surge of Acceleration Two,

which would take them past the Light Barrier. Bart, watching his

instruments to exact position and time, saw the colors of each star

shift strangely, moment by moment. The red stars seemed hard to see. 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....

"Time," he said briefly to Vorongil, "Fifteen seconds...."

Rugel looked across from his couch. Bart felt that the old, scarred

Lhari could read his fear. Rugel said through a wheeze, "No matter how

old you get, Bartol, you're still scared when you make a warp-shift. But

relax, computers don't make mistakes."

"Catalyst," Vorongil snapped, "Ready--shift!"

At first there was no change; then Bart realized that the stars, through

the viewport, had altered abruptly in size and shade and color. They

were not sparks but strange streaks, like comets, crossing and

recrossing long tails that grew, longer and longer, moment by moment.

The dark night of space was filled with a crisscrossing blaze. They were

moving faster than light, they saw the light left by the moving Universe

as each star hurled in its own invisible orbit, while they tore

incredibly through it, faster than light itself....

Bart felt a curious, tingling discomfort, deep in his flesh; almost an

itching, a stinging in his very bones.