It was. It was a week before the Lhari ship went into warp-drive, and
all that time Bart stayed in his cabin, not daring to go to the
observation Lounge or dining hall. He got tired of eating synthetics
(oh, they were nourishing enough, but they were altogether
uninteresting) and tired of listening to the tapes the room steward got
him from the ship's library. By the time they had been in space a week,
he was so bored with his own company that even the Mentorian medic was a
welcome sight when he came in to prepare him for cold-sleep.
Bart had had the best education on Earth, but he didn't know precisely
how the Lhari warp-drive worked. He'd been told that only a few of the
Lhari understood it, just as the man who flew a copter didn't need to
understand Newton's Three Laws of Motion in order to get himself back
and forth to work.
But he knew this much; when the ship generated the frequencies which
accelerated it beyond the speed of light, in effect the ship went into a
sort of fourth dimension, and came out of it a good many light-years
away. As far as Bart knew, no human being had ever survived warp-drive
except in the suspended animation which they called cold-sleep. While
the medic was professionally reassuring him and strapping him in his
bunk, Bart wondered what humans would do with the Lhari star-drive if
they had it. Well, he supposed they could use automation in their ships.
The Mentorian paused, needle in hand. "Do you wish to be wakened for the
week we shall spend in each of the Proxima, Sirius and Pollux systems,
sir? You can, of course, be given enough drug to keep you in cold-sleep
until we reach the Procyon system."
Bart wondered if the room steward had mentioned the passenger so bored
with the trip that he didn't even visit the Observation Lounge. He felt
tempted--he was getting awfully tired of staring at the walls. On the
other hand, he wanted very much to see the other star-systems. When he
passed through them on the trip to Earth, he'd been too young to pay
much attention.
Firmly he put the temptation aside. Better not to risk meeting other
passengers, Tommy especially, if he decided he couldn't take the
boredom.
The needle went into his arm. He felt himself sinking into sleep, and,
in sudden panic, realized that he was helpless. The ship would touch
down on three worlds, and on any of them the Lhari might have his
description, or his alias! He could be taken off, drugged and
unconscious, and might never wake up! He tried to move, to protest, to
tell them he was changing his mind, but already he was unable to speak.
There was a freezing moment of intense, painful cold. Then he was
floating in what felt like waves of cosmic dust, swirling many-colored
before his eyes. And then there was nothing, no color, nothing at all
except the nowhere night of sleep.