The Colors of Space

Tommy looked after the two Mentorians enviously. "The fact is, I'd ship

out with the Lhari myself if I could. Wouldn't you?"

Bart's mouth twisted in a wry smile. "No," he said. "I could--I'm half

Mentorian, I can even speak Lhari."

"Why don't you? I would."

"Oh, no, you wouldn't," Bart said softly. "Not even very many Mentorians

will. You see, the Lhari don't trust humans too much. In the early days,

men were always planting spies on Lhari ships, to try and steal the

secret of warp-drive. They never managed it, but nowadays the Lhari give

all the Mentorians what amounts to a brainwashing--deep hypnosis, before

and after every voyage, so that they can neither look for anything that

might threaten the Lhari monopoly of space, nor reveal it--even under a

truth drug--if they find it out.

"You have to be pretty fanatical about space travel to go through that.

Oh, my mother could tell us a lot of things about her cruises with the

Lhari. The Lhari can't tell a diamond from a ruby, except by

spectrographic analysis, for instance. And she--"

A high gong note sounded somewhere, touching off an explosion of warning

bells and buzzers all over the enormous building. Bart looked up.

"The ship must be coming in to land."

"I'd better check into the passenger side," Tommy said. He stuck out his

hand. "Well, Bart, I guess this is where we say good-bye."

They shook hands, their eyes meeting for a moment in honest grief. In

some indefinable way, this parting marked the end of their boyhood.

"Good luck, Tom. I'm going to miss you."

They wrung each other's hands again, hard. Then Tommy picked up his

luggage and started down a sloping ramp toward an enclosure marked TO

PASSENGER ENTRANCE.

Warning bells rang again. The glare intensified until the glow in the

sky was unendurable, but Bart looked anyhow, making out the strange

shape of the Lhari ship from the stars.

It was huge and strange, glowing with colors Bart had never seen before.

It settled down slowly, softly: enormous, silent, vibrating, glowing;

then swiftly faded to white-hot, gleaming blue, dulling down through the

visible spectrum to red. At last it was just gleaming glassy Lhari-metal

color again. High up in the ship's side a yawning gap slid open,

extruding stairsteps, and men and Lhari began to descend.

Bart ran down a ramp and surged out on the field with the crowd. His

eyes, alert for his father's tall figure, noted with surprise that the

ship's stairs were guarded by four cloaked Lhari, each with a Mentorian

interpreter. They were stopping each person who got off the starship,

asking for identity papers. Bart realized he was seeing another segment

of the same drama he had overheard discussed, and wished he knew what it

was all about.