As they went along the corridor, Ringg turned to Bart, apology and
chagrin in his eyes. "Look--I never meant to get the Bald One down on
us," he said, but Bart kept his face resolutely averted. It was easier
this way, without pretense of friendship.
* * * * * The light from the small captive sun grew more intense. Bart had never
known anything like it, and was glad to slip away and put the dark
contact lenses into his eyes. They made his eyes appear all enormous,
dilated pupil; fearfully, he hoped no one would notice. His arm smarted,
and he did not speak to Ringg all through the long, slow deceleration.
When the intercom ordered all crew members to the hatchway, Bart
lingered a minute, pinning the yellow radiation badge in a fold of his
cloak. A spasm of fear threatened to overwhelm him again, and
nightmarish loneliness. He felt agonizingly homesick for his own
familiar face. It seemed almost more than he could manage, to step out
into the corridor full of Lhari.
It won't be long now.
The hatch opened. Even accustomed, as he was, to Lhari lights, Bart
squeezed his eyes shut at the blue-white brilliance that assaulted him
now. Then, opening slitted lids cautiously, he found that he could see.
A weirdly desolate scene stretched away before them. Bare, burning sand,
strewn with curiously colored rocks, lay piled in strange chaos; then he
realized there was an odd, but perceptible geometry to their
arrangement. They showed alternate crystal and opaque faces. Old Rugel
noted his look of surprise.
"Never been here before? That's right, you've always worked on the
Polaris run. Well, those aren't true rocks, but living creatures of a
sort. The crystals are alive; the opaque faces are lichens that have
something like chlorophyll and can make their food from air and
sunlight. The rocks and lichens live in symbiosis. They have
intelligence of a sort, but fortunately they don't mind us, or our
automatic mining machinery. Every time, though, we find some new lichen
that's trying to set up a symbiote cycle with the concrete of our
bunkers."
"And every time," Ringg said cheerfully, "somebody--usually me--has to
see about having them scraped down and repainted. Maybe someday I'll
find a paint the lichens don't like the taste of."
"Going to explore with Ringg?" Rugel asked, and Ringg, always ready to
let bygones be bygones, grinned and said, "Sure!" Bart could not face
him.
Vorongil stopped and said, "This your first time here, young Bartol? How
would you like to visit the monument with me? You can see the machinery
on the way back."