The Colors of Space - Page 85/108

Secure in the knowledge, he turned over and went peacefully to sleep.

When he woke again, he felt better. The Mentorian girl, Meta, was

sitting quietly between the bunks, watching him. He started to turn

over, flinched at the pain in his arm.

"Yes," she said, "we're giving you one last transfusion. Plasma, this

time. It's Lhari, but if you know that much, you know it won't hurt

you." She came and inspected the needle in his wrist, and Bart caught

her hand with his free one. "Meta, does anyone else know?"

She looked down with a troubled smile. "I don't think so. I was off

watch, waiting for cold-sleep--we're just about to make the long

jump--when Vorongil came to my quarters. I was startled almost out of my

wits. He asked if I could keep a secret; then he told me about you. Oh,

Bart!" Her small soft hand closed convulsively on his, "I was so afraid!

I knew they wouldn't kill you, but I was afraid!"

Yet they had killed David Briscoe, Bart thought, and hunted down two

of his friends. It was the only thing he couldn't square with his

perception of the Lhari. It didn't fit. He could understand that they

had shot down the robotcab with Edmund Briscoe in it, in pure

self-defense; and that knowledge had taken off the edge of the horror.

But the death of young Briscoe and everyone he had talked to could not

be explained away.

"You seem very sure they wouldn't have killed me, Meta," he said,

carefully clasping his hand around hers.

"They wouldn't," she affirmed. "But they could--make you forget--"

A small chill went over Bart. He let go of her hand and lay staring

bleakly at the wall. He supposed that was his probable fate: remembering

the tragic tone of Raynor Three when he said I won't remember you, he

gritted his teeth, feeling his face twist convulsively. Meta, watching,

misunderstood.

"Arm hurting? I'll have that needle out of your vein in a few minutes

now."

When she had freed his arm and put away the apparatus, she came to his

side. "Bart, how did it happen? How did they find you out?"

Suddenly, the longing for human contact was too much for Bart, and the

knowledge of his secret intolerable. The Lhari could find out what he

knew, if they wanted to know, very simply; he was in their power. It

didn't matter any more.

The telling of the story took a long time, and when he finished, Meta's

soft small kitten-face was compassionate.