Tài liệu The Colors of Space docx

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Inside the building, it was searingly bright. The high open rotunda
was filled with immense mirrors, and glass ramps running up and
down, moving staircases, confusing signs and flashing lights on tall
oddly shaped pillars. The place was crowded with men from all over the
planet, but the dark glasses they all wore gave them a strange sort of
family resemblance.
Tommy said, "I'd better check my reservations."
Bart nodded. "Meet you on the upper level later," he said, and got on a
moving staircase that soared slowly upward, past level after level, to-
ward the information desk located on the topmost mezzanine.
The staircase moved slowly, and Bart had plenty of time to see
everything. On the step immediately in front of him, two Lhari were
standing; with their backs turned, they might almost have been men.
Unusually tall, unusually thin, but men. Then Bart amended that men-
tally. The Lhari had two arms, two legs and a head apiece—they were
that much like men. Their faces had two eyes, two ears, and a nose and
mouth, all in the right places. But the similarity ended there.
They had skin of a curious pale silvery gray, and pale, pure-white hair
rising in what looked like a feathery crest. The eyes were long and slant-
ing, the forehead high and narrow, the nose delicately thin and chiseled
with long vertically slit nostrils, the ears long, pointed and lobeless. The
mouth looked almost human, though the chin was abnormally pointed.
The hands would almost have passed inspection as human
hands—except for the long, triangular nails curved over the fingertips
like the claws of a cat. They wore skin-tight clothes of some metallic silky
stuff, and long flowing gleaming silvery capes. They looked unearthly,
elfin and strange, and in their own way they were beautiful.
The two Lhari in front of Bart had been talking softly, in their fast twit-
tering speech; but as the hum of the crowds on the upper levels grew
louder, they raised their voices, and Bart could hear what they were say-
ing. He was a little surprised to find that he could still understand the
Lhari language. He hadn't heard a word of it in years—not since his
Mentorian mother died. The Lhari would never guess that he could un-
derstand their speech. Not one human in a million could speak or under-
stand a dozen words of Lhari, except the Mentorians.
"Do you really think that human—" the first Lhari spoke the word as if
it were a filthy insult—"will have the temerity to come in by this ship?"
"No reasonable being can tell what humans will do," said the second
Lhari. "But then, no reasonable being can tell what our own Port Author-
ities will do either! If the message had only reached us sooner, it would
5
have been easier. Now I suppose it will have to clear through a dozen of-
ficials and a dozen different kinds of formalities."
The younger Lhari sounded angry. "And we have only a descrip-
tion—no name, nothing! How do they expect us to do anything under
those conditions? What I can't understand is how it ever happened, or
how the man managed to get away. What worries me is the possibility
that he may have communicated with others we don't know about.
Those bungling fools who let the first man get away can't even be
sure—"
"Do not speak of it here," said the old Lhari sharply. "There are
Mentorians in the crowd who might understand us." He turned and
looked straight at Bart, and Bart felt as if the slanted strange eyes were
looking right through to his bones. The Lhari said, in Universal, "Who
are you, boy? What iss your businesssses here?"
Bart replied in the same language, politely, "My father's coming in on
this ship. I'm looking for the information desk."
"Up there," said the old Lhari, pointing with a clawed hand, and lost
interest in Bart. He said to his companion, in their own language,
"Always, I regret these episodes. I have no malice against humans. I sup-
pose even this Vegan that we are seeking has young, and a mate, who
will regret his loss."
"Then he should not have pried into Lhari matters," said the younger
Lhari fiercely. "If they'd killed him right away—"
The soaring staircase swooped up to the top level; the two Lhari
stepped off and mingled swiftly with the crowd, being lost to sight. Bart
whistled in dismay as he got off and turned toward the information
desk. A Vegan! Some poor guy from his own planet was in trouble with
the Lhari. He felt a cold, crawling chill down his insides. The Lhari had
spoken regretfully, but the way they'd speak of a fly they couldn't man-
age to swat fast enough. Sooner or later you had to get down to it, they
just weren't human!
Here on Earth, nothing much could happen, of course. They wouldn't
let the Lhari hurt anyone—then Bart remembered his course in Universal
Law. The Lhari spaceport in every system, by treaty, was Lhari territory.
Once you walked beneath the lightning-flash sign, the authority of the
planet ceased to function; you might as well be on that unbelievably re-
mote world in another galaxy that was the Lhari home planet—that
world no human had ever seen. On a Lhari spaceport, or on a Lhari ship,
you were under the jurisdiction of Lhari law.
6
Tommy stepped off a moving stair and joined him. "The ship's on
time—it reported past Luna City a few minutes ago. I'm thirsty—how
about a drink?"
There was a refreshment stand on this level; they debated briefly
between orange juice and a drink with a Lhari name that meant simply
cold sweet, and finally decided to try it. The name proved descriptive; it
was very cold, very sweet and indescribably delicious.
"Does this come from the Lhari world, I wonder?"
"I imagine it's synthetic," Bart said.
"I suppose it won't hurt us?"
Bart laughed. "They wouldn't serve it to us if it would. No, men and
Lhari are alike in a lot of ways. They breathe the same air. Eat about the
same food." Their bodies were adjusted to about the same gravity. They
had the same body chemistry—in fact, you couldn't tell Lhari blood from
human, even under a microscope. And in the terrible Orion Spaceport
wreck sixty years ago, doctors had found that blood plasma from hu-
mans could be used for wounded Lhari, and vice versa, though it wasn't
safe to transfuse whole blood. But then, even among humans there were
five blood types.
And yet, for all their likeness, they were different.
Bart sipped the cold Lhari drink, seeing himself in the mirror behind
the refreshment stand; a tall teen-ager, looking older than his seventeen
years. He was lithe and well muscled from five years of sports and acro-
batics at the Space Academy, he had curling red hair and gray eyes, and
he was almost as tall as a Lhari.
Will Dad know me? I was just a little kid when he left me here, and
now I'm grown-up.
Tommy grinned at him in the mirror. "What are you going to do, now
we've finished our so-called education?"
"What do you think? Go back to Vega with Dad, by Lhari ship, and
help him run Vega Interplanet. Why else would I bother with all that as-
trogation and math?"
"You're the lucky one, with your father owning a dozen ships! He
must be almost as rich as the Lhari."
Bart shook his head. "It's not that easy. Space travel inside a system
these days is small stuff; all the real travel and shipping goes to the Lhari
ships."
It was a sore point with everyone. Thousands of years ago, men had
spread out from Earth—first to the planets, then to the nearer stars,
crawling in ships that could travel no faster than the speed of light. They
7
had even believed that was an absolute limit—that nothing in the uni-
verse could exceed the speed of light. It took years to go from Earth to
the nearest star.
But they'd done it. From the nearer stars, they had sent out colonizing
ships all through the galaxy. Some vanished and were never heard from
again, but some made it, and in a few centuries man had spread all over
hundreds of star-systems.
And then man met the people of the Lhari.
It was a big universe, with measureless millions of stars, and plenty of
room for more than two intelligent civilizations. It wasn't surprising that
the Lhari, who had only been traveling space for a couple of thousand
years themselves, had never come across humans before. But they had
been delighted to meet another intelligent race—and it was extremely
profitable.
Because men were still held, mostly, to the planets of their own star-
systems. Ships traveling between the stars by light-drive were rare and
ruinously expensive. But the Lhari had the warp-drive, and almost
overnight the whole picture changed. By warp-drive, hundreds of times
faster than light at peak, the years-long trip between Vega and Earth, for
instance, was reduced to about three months, at a price anyone could
pay. Mankind could trade and travel all over their galaxy, but they did it
on Lhari ships. The Lhari had an absolute, unbreakable monopoly on
star travel.
"That's what hurts," Tommy said. "It wouldn't do us any good to have
the star-drive. Humans can't stand faster-than-light travel, except in
cold-sleep."
Bart nodded. The Lhari ships traveled at normal speeds, like the regu-
lar planetary ships, inside each star-system. Then, at the borders of the
vast gulf of emptiness between stars, they went into warp-drive; but
first, every human on board was given the cold-sleep treatment that
placed them in suspended animation, allowing their bodies to endure
the warp-drive.
He finished his drink. The increasing bustle in the crowds below them
told him that time must be getting short. A tall, impressive-looking Lhari
strode through the crowd, followed at a respectful distance by two
Mentorians, tall, redheaded humans wearing metallic cloaks like those of
the Lhari. Tommy nudged Bart, his face bitter.
"Look at those lousy Mentorians! How can they do it? Fawning upon
the Lhari that way, yet they're as human as we are! Slaves of the Lhari!"
8
Bart felt the involuntary surge of anger, instantly controlled. "It's not
that way at all. My mother was a Mentorian, remember. She made five
cruises on a Lhari ship before she married my father."
Tommy sighed. "I guess I'm just jealous—to think the Mentorians can
sign on the Lhari ship as crew, while you and I will never pilot a ship
between the stars. What did she do?"
"She was a mathematician. Before the Lhari met up with men, they
used a system of mathematics as clumsy as the old Roman numerals.
You have to admire them, when you realize that they learned stellar nav-
igation with their old system, though most ships use human math now.
And of course, you know their eyes aren't like ours. Among other things,
they're color-blind. They see everything in shades of black or white or
gray.
"So they found out that humans aboard their ships were useful. You
remember how humans, in the early days in space, used certain birds,
who were more sensitive to impure air than they were. When the birds
keeled over, they could tell it was time for humans to start looking over
the air systems! The Lhari use Mentorians to identify colors for them.
And, since Mentor was the first planet of humans that the Lhari had con-
tact with, they've always been closer to them."
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 spectro-
graphic 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.
9
"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 be-
fore. 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-met-
al color again. High up in the ship's side a yawning gap slid open, ex-
truding 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 inter-
preter. 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.
The crowd was thinning now. Robotcabs were swerving in, hovering
above the ground to pick up passengers, then veering away. The gap in
the starship's side was closing, and still Bart had not seen the tall, slim,
flame-haired figure of his father. The port on the other side of the ship,
he knew, was for loading passengers. Bart moved carefully through the
thinning crowd, almost to the foot of the stairs. One of the Lhari check-
ing papers stopped and fixed him with an inscrutable gray stare, but fi-
nally turned away again.
Bart began really to worry. Captain Steele would never miss his ship!
But he saw only one disembarking passenger who had not yet been sur-
rounded by a group of welcoming relatives, or summoned a robotcab
and gone. The man was wearing Vegan clothes, but he wasn't Bart's fath-
er. He was a fat little man, with ruddy cheeks and a fringe of curling
gray hair all around his bald dome. Maybe he'd know if there was anoth-
er Vegan on the ship.
10
Then Bart realized that the little fat man was staring straight at him.
He returned the man's smile, rather hesitantly; then blinked, for the fat
man was coming straight toward him.
"Hello, Son," the fat man said loudly. Then, as two of the Lhari started
toward him, the strange man did an incredible thing. He reached out his
two hands and grabbed Bart.
"Well, boy, you've sure grown," he said, in a loud, cheerful voice, "but
you're not too grown-up to give your old Dad a good hug, are you?" He
pulled Bart roughly into his arms. Bart started to pull away and stammer
that the fat man had made a mistake, but the pudgy hand gripped his
wrist with unexpected strength.
"Bart, listen to me," the stranger whispered, in a harsh fast voice. "Go
along with this or we're both dead. See those two Lhari watching us?
Call me Dad, good and loud, if you want to live. Because, believe me,
your life's in danger—right now!"
11
Chapter
2
For a moment, pulled off balance in the fat stranger's hug, Bart remained
perfectly still, while the man repeated in that loud, jovial voice, "How
you've grown!" He let him go, stepping away a pace or two, and
whispered urgently, "Say something. And take that stupid look off your
face."
As he stepped back, Bart saw his eyes. In the chubby, good-natured
red face, the stranger's eyes were half-mad with fear.
In a split second, Bart remembered the two Lhari and their talk of a fu-
gitive. In that moment, Bart Steele grew up.
He stepped toward the man and took him quickly by the shoulders.
"Dad, you sure surprised me," he said, trying to keep his voice from
shaking. "Been such a long time, I'd—half forgotten what you looked
like. Have a good trip?"
"About like always." The fat man was breathing hard, but his voice
sounded firm and cheerful. "Can't compare with a trip on the old As-
terion though." The Asterion was the flagship of Vega Interplanet, Ru-
pert Steele's own ship. "How's everything?"
Beads of sweat were standing out on the man's ruddy forehead, and
his grip on Bart's wrist was so hard it hurt. Bart, grasping at random for
something to say, gabbled, "Too bad you couldn't get to my graduation. I
made th-third in a class of four hundred—"
The Lhari had surrounded them and were closing in.
The fat man took a deep breath or two, said, "Just a minute, Son," and
turned around. "You want something?"
The tallest of the Lhari—the old one, whom Bart had seen on the escal-
ator—looked long and hard at him. When they spoke Universal, their
voices were sibilant, but not nearly so inhuman.
"Could we trrrouble you to sssshow us your paperrrssss?"
"Certainly." Nonchalantly, the fat man dug them out and handed them
over. Bart saw his father's name printed across the top.
The Lhari gestured to a Mentorian interpreter: "What colorrr isss thisss
man's hairrr?"
12
The Mentorian said in the Lhari language, "His hair is gray." He used
the Universal word; there were, of course, no words for colors in the
Lhari speech.
"The man we sssseek has hair of red," said the Lhari. "And he isss tall,
not fat."
"The boy is tall and with red hair," the Mentorian volunteered, and the
old Lhari made a gesture of disdain.
"This boy is twenty years younger than the man whose description
came to us. Why did they not give us a picture or at least a name?" He
turned to the other Lhari and said in their own shrill speech, "I suspected
this man because he was alone. And I had seen this boy on the upper
mezzanine and spoken with him. We watched him, knowing sooner or
later the father would seek him. Ask him." He gestured and the Mentori-
an said, "Who is this man, you?"
Bart gulped. For the first time he noted the energon-ray shockers at the
belts of the four Lhari. He'd heard about those. They could stun—or they
could kill, and quite horribly. He said, "This is my father. You want my
cards, too?" He hauled out his identity papers. "My name's Bart Steele."
The Lhari, with a gesture of disgust, handed them back. "Go, then,
father and son," he said, not unkindly.
"Let's get going, Son," said the little bald man. His hand shook on
Bart's, and Bart thought, If we're lucky, we can get out of the port before
he faints dead away. He said "I'll get a copter," and then, feeling sorry for
the stranger, gave him his arm to lean on. He didn't know whether he
was worried or scared. Where was his father? Why did this man have his
dad's papers? Was his father hiding inside the Lhari ship? He wanted to
run, to burst away from the imposter, but the guy was shaking so hard
Bart couldn't just leave him standing there. If the Lhari got him, he was a
dead duck.
A copter swooped down, the pilot signaling. The little man said
hoarsely, "No. Robotcab."
Bart waved the copter away, getting a dirty look from the pilot, and
punched a button at the stand for one of the unmanned robotcabs. It
swung down, hovered motionless. Bart boosted the fat man in. Inside,
the man collapsed on the seat, leaning back, puffing, his hand pressed
hard to his chest.
"Punch a combo for Denver," he said hoarsely.
Bart obeyed, automatically. Then he turned on the man.
"It's your game, mister! Now tell me what's going on? Where's my
father?"
13
The man's eyes were half-shut. He said, gasping, "Don't ask me any
questions for a minute." He thumbed a tablet into his mouth, and
presently his breathing quieted.
"We're safe—for the minute. Those Lhari would have cut us down."
"You, maybe. I haven't done anything. Look, you," Bart said in sudden
rage, "you owe me some explanations. For all I know, you're a criminal
and the Lhari have every right to chase you! Why have you got my
father's papers? Did you steal them to get away from the Lhari? Where's
my father?"
"It's your father they were looking for, you young fool," said the man,
gasping hard. "Lucky they had only a description and not a name—but
they've probably got that by now, uncoded. We've only confused them
for a little while. But if you hadn't played along, they'd have had you
watched, and when they get hold of the name Steele—they will, sooner
or later, the people in the Procyon system—"
"Where is my father?"
"I hope I don't know," the fat man said. "If he's still where I left him,
he's dead. My name is Briscoe. Edmund Briscoe. Your father saved my
life years ago, never mind how. The less you know, the safer you'll be for
a while. His major worry just now is about you. He was afraid, if he
didn't turn up here, you'd take the first ship back to Vega. So he gave me
his papers and sent me to warn you—"
Bart shook his head. "It all sounds phony as can be. How do I know
whether to believe you or not?" His hand hovered over the robotcab con-
trols. "We're going straight to the police. If you're okay, they won't turn
you over to the Lhari. If you're not—"
"You young fool," said the fat man, with feeble violence, "there's no
time for all that! Ask me questions—I can prove I know your father!"
"What was my mother's name?"
"Oh, God," Briscoe said, "I never saw her. I knew your father long be-
fore you were born. Until he told me, I never knew he'd married or had a
son. I'd never have known you, except that you're the living image—" He
shook his head helplessly, and his breathing sounded hoarse.
"Bart, I'm a sick man, I'm going to die. I want to do what I came here to
do, because your father saved my life once when I was young and
healthy, and gave me twenty good years before I got old and fat and
sick. Win or lose, I won't live to see you hunted down like a dog, like my
own son—"
"Don't talk like that," Bart said, a creepy feeling coming over him. "If
you're sick, let me take you to a doctor."
14