The Colors of Space

Vorongil touched his arm. "Come, Bartol," he said gently, "I'm taking

you back to the Swiftwing. I don't have to treat you like a prisoner,

do I?"

Numbly, Bart gave what the old Lhari asked, his word of honor not to

attempt escape (Escape? Where to?) or to attempt to enter the drive

chamber of the Swiftwing while they were still among the Lhari worlds.

As they left the council hall, Bart, in a gesture of despair, covered

his face with his hands. As he brought them down, he found himself

staring at them, transfixed.

The fingers looked longer and thinner than he remembered them, but they

were his own hands again. The nails seemed faintly thick and ridged, and

there was still a faint grayish tinge through the pale flesh color, but

they were human hands. Unmistakably. He felt of his nose and ears, with

fumbling fingers; raised his hand and touched the very short, crisp hair

growing on his newly shaven skull.

"You fool," said Vorongil to the Mentorian, in disgust, "why didn't you

tell him what the medics had done for him? Easy, Bartol!" The old

Lhari's arm tightened around his shoulder. "I thought they'd told you.

Somebody come here and give the youngster a hand."

Later, in the small cabin (it had been Rugel's) which was to be his

prison during the return voyage of the Swiftwing, he had a chance to

study his familiar-strange face. He had thought that only a short

time--an hour or so--had elapsed between the time he was drugged and the

time they took him before the Council. Later, from what he learned about

the dispatch schedules of the Swiftwing, he realized that he had been

kept under sedation for nearly three weeks, while his face and hands

healed.

As Raynor Three had warned, the change was not altogether reversible.

Studying his face in the mirror, he could still see a hint of something

thin, strange, alien in the set of his features; the nose and chin

somewhat too pointed, elfin, to be human. His hands would always be too

long, too narrow, too supple. For the rest, he looked grim, older. He

could never go back to what he had been before he became a Lhari; it had

left its mark on him forever.

Before the Swiftwing lifted, outbound, Vorongil came to his cabin.

"You've seen very little of our world," he said diffidently. "I have

permission for you to visit the city before we leave Council Spaceport."

"You think you can trust me?" Bart asked bitterly.