The Colors of Space

He started to spring up, and the hands of his guards tightened, swift

and strong, even before his muscles had fully tightened. Bart's head

dropped. Cold common sense doused over his brave thoughts. He was

uncountable millions of light-years from his own people. He was

absolutely alone. Bravery would mean nothing; submission would mean

nothing. Would he be more of a man, somehow, if he let his mind be

wrecked?

"All right," he muttered, "I won't fight."

"You show your good sense," the Mentorian said quietly. "Give me your

left arm, please--or, if you are left-handed, your right. As you

prefer."

Deftly, almost painlessly, a needle slid into his arm. Giving in. A

dizzying welter of thoughts spun suddenly in his mind. Briscoe. Raynor

One and Raynor Three. The net between the stars. Ringg, Vorongil, Meta,

his father....

Consciousness slid away.

Years later--he never knew whether it was memory or imagination--it

seemed to him that he could reach into that patch of gray and dreamless

time and fish out questions and answers whole, the faces of Lhari

swelling up suddenly in his eyes and shrinking back into interstellar

distance, the sting-smell of drugs, the sound of unexpected voices, odd

reflex pains, cobwebs of patchy memories that fitted nowhere else into

his life so that he supposed they must go here.

He only knew that there was a time he did not remember and then a time

when he began to think there was such a thing as memory, and then a time

when he floated without a body, and then another time when the path of

every separate nerve in his body seemed to be outlined, a shimmering web

in the gray murk. There was a mirror and a face. There were blotchy

worms of light like the star-trails of peaking warp-drive through the

viewport, colors shifting and receding, a green star, the red eye of

Antares.

Then the peak-point faded, his mind began to decelerate and angle slowly

down and down into the field of awareness, and he became fuzzily aware

that he was lying full length on a sort of couch. He shook his head

groggily. It hurt. He sat up. That hurt, too. A hand closed gently

around his elbow and he felt the cold edge of a cup against his sore

mouth.

"Take a sip of this."

The liquid felt cool on his tongue, evaporating almost before he could

swallow; the fumes seemed to mount inside the root of his nose,

expanding tremendously inside his head and brain. Abruptly his head was

clear, the last traces of gray fuzz gone.