Secure in the knowledge, he turned over and went peacefully to sleep.
When he woke again, he felt better. The Mentorian girl, Meta, was
sitting quietly between the bunks, watching him. He started to turn
over, flinched at the pain in his arm.
"Yes," she said, "we're giving you one last transfusion. Plasma, this
time. It's Lhari, but if you know that much, you know it won't hurt
you." She came and inspected the needle in his wrist, and Bart caught
her hand with his free one. "Meta, does anyone else know?"
She looked down with a troubled smile. "I don't think so. I was off
watch, waiting for cold-sleep--we're just about to make the long
jump--when Vorongil came to my quarters. I was startled almost out of my
wits. He asked if I could keep a secret; then he told me about you. Oh,
Bart!" Her small soft hand closed convulsively on his, "I was so afraid!
I knew they wouldn't kill you, but I was afraid!"
Yet they had killed David Briscoe, Bart thought, and hunted down two
of his friends. It was the only thing he couldn't square with his
perception of the Lhari. It didn't fit. He could understand that they
had shot down the robotcab with Edmund Briscoe in it, in pure
self-defense; and that knowledge had taken off the edge of the horror.
But the death of young Briscoe and everyone he had talked to could not
be explained away.
"You seem very sure they wouldn't have killed me, Meta," he said,
carefully clasping his hand around hers.
"They wouldn't," she affirmed. "But they could--make you forget--"
A small chill went over Bart. He let go of her hand and lay staring
bleakly at the wall. He supposed that was his probable fate: remembering
the tragic tone of Raynor Three when he said I won't remember you, he
gritted his teeth, feeling his face twist convulsively. Meta, watching,
misunderstood.
"Arm hurting? I'll have that needle out of your vein in a few minutes
now."
When she had freed his arm and put away the apparatus, she came to his
side. "Bart, how did it happen? How did they find you out?"
Suddenly, the longing for human contact was too much for Bart, and the
knowledge of his secret intolerable. The Lhari could find out what he
knew, if they wanted to know, very simply; he was in their power. It
didn't matter any more.
The telling of the story took a long time, and when he finished, Meta's
soft small kitten-face was compassionate.