The Colors of Space - Page 51/108

The absence of color from speech and life was the hardest thing to get

used to. Every star in the manual was listed by light-frequency waves,

to be checked against a photometer for a specific reading, and it almost

drove Bart mad to go through the ritual when the Mentorians were off

duty and could not call off the color and the equivalent frequency type

for him. Yet he did not dare skip a single step, or someone might have

guessed that he could see the difference between a yellow and a green

star before checking them.

The Academy ships had had the traditional human signal system of

flashing red lights. Bart was stretched taut all the time, listening for

the small codelike buzzers and ticks that warned him of filled tanks,

leads in need of servicing, answers ready. Ringg's metal-fatigues

testing kit was a bewildering muddle of boxes, meters, rods and

earphones, each buzzing and clicking its characteristic warning.

At first he felt stretched to capacity every waking moment, his memory

aching with a million details, and lay awake nights thinking his mind

would crack under the strain. Then Alpha faded to a dim bluish shimmer,

Beta was eclipsed, Gamma was gone, Procyon dimmed to a failing spark;

and suddenly Bart's memory accustomed itself to the load, the new habits

were firmly in place, and he found himself eating, sleeping and working

in a settled routine.

He belonged to the Swiftwing now.

Procyon was almost lost in the viewports when a sort of upswept tempo

began to run through the ship, an undercurrent of increased activity.

Cargo was checked, inventoried and strapped in. Ringg was given four

extra men to help him, made an extra tour of the ship, and came back

buzzing like a frantic cricket. Bart's computers told him they were

forging toward the sidereal location assigned for the first of the

warp-drive shifts, which would take them some fifteen light-years toward

Aldebaran.

On the final watch before the warp-drive shift, the medical officer came

around and relieved the Mentorians from duty. Bart watched them go, with

a curious, cold, crawling apprehension. Even the Mentorians, trusted by

the Lhari--even these were put into cold-sleep! Fear grabbed his

insides.

No human had ever survived the shift into warp-drive, the Lhari said.

Briscoe, his father, Raynor Three--they thought they had proved that the

Lhari lied. If they were right, if it was a Lhari trick to reinforce

their stranglehold on the human worlds and keep the warp-drive for

themselves, then Bart had nothing to fear. But he was afraid.

Why did the Mentorians endure this, never quite trusted, isolated among

aliens?