The Colors of Space Read online

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  _A Juvenile Science Fiction Novel_

  THE COLORS OF SPACE

  Marion Zimmer Bradley

  MONARCH BOOKS, INC.Derby, Connecticut

  Published in August, 1963Copyright 1963 by Marion Zimmer Bradley

  [Transcriber's note: This is a rule 6 clearance. PG has not been ableto find a copyright renewal.]

  _Cover Painting by Ralph Brillhart_

  Monarch Books are published by MONARCH BOOKS, INC., Capital Building,Derby, Connecticut, and represent the works of outstanding novelists andwriters of non-fiction especially chosen for their literary merit andreading entertainment.

  Printed in the United States of AmericaAll Rights Reserved

  ToDAVID STEPHEN

  SUDDEN PANIC

  It was a week before the Lhari ship went into warp-drive, and all thattime young Bart Steele had stayed in his cabin. He was so bored with hisown company that the Mentorian medic was a welcome sight when he came toprepare him for _cold-sleep_.

  The Mentorian paused, needle in hand. "Do you wish to be wakened for thetime we shall spend in each of the three star systems, sir? You can, ofcourse, be given enough drug to keep you in cold-sleep until we reachyour destination."

  Bart felt tempted--he wanted very much to see the other star systems.But he couldn't risk meeting other passengers.

  The needle went into his arm. In sudden panic, he realized he washelpless. The ship would touch down on three worlds, and on any of themthe Lhari might have his description, or his alias! He could be takenoff, unconscious, and might never wake up! He tried to move, to protest,but he couldn't. There was a freezing moment of intense cold and thennothing....

  CHAPTER ONE

  The Lhari spaceport didn't belong on Earth.

  Bart Steele had thought that, a long time ago, when he first saw it. Hehad been just a kid then; twelve years old, and all excited about seeingEarth for the first time--Earth, the legendary home of mankind beforethe Age of Space, the planet of Bart's far-back ancestors. And the firstthing he'd seen on Earth, when he got off the starship, was the Lharispaceport.

  And he'd thought, right then, _It doesn't belong on Earth._

  He'd said so to his father, and his father's face had gone strange,bitter and remote.

  "A lot of people would agree with you, Son," Captain Rupert Steele hadsaid softly. "The trouble is, if the Lhari spaceport wasn't on Earth, wewouldn't be on Earth either. Remember that."

  Bart remembered it, five years later, as he got off the strip of movingsidewalk. He turned to wait for Tommy Kendron, who was getting hisbaggage off the center strip of the moving roadway. Bart Steele andTommy Kendron had graduated together, the day before, from the SpaceAcademy of Earth. Now Tommy, who had been born on the ninth planet ofthe star Capella, was taking the Lhari starship to his faraway home, andBart's father was coming back to Earth, on the same starship, to meethis son.

  _Five years,_ Bart thought. _That's a long time. I wonder if Dad willknow me?_

  "Let me give you a hand with that stuff, Tommy."

  "I can manage," Tommy chuckled, hefting the plastic cases. "They don'tallow you much baggage weight on the Lhari ships. Certainly not morethan I can handle."

  The two lads stood in front of the spaceport gate for a minute. Over thegate, which was high and pointed and made of some clear colorlessmaterial like glass, was a jagged symbol resembling a flash oflightning; the sign, in Lhari language, for the home world of the Lhari.

  They walked through the pointed glass gate, and stood for a moment, bymutual consent, looking down over the vast expanse of the Lharispaceport.

  This had once been a great desert. Now it was all floored in with somestrange substance that was neither glass, metal nor concrete; it lookedlike gleaming crystal--though it felt soft underfoot--and in the glareof the noonday sun, it gave back the glare in a million rainbow flashes.Tommy put his hands up to his eyes to shield them. "The Lhari must havefunny eyes, if they can stand all this glare!"

  Inside the glass gate, a man in a guard's uniform gave them each a pairof dark glasses. "Put them on now, boys. And don't look directly at theship when it lands."

  Tommy hooked the earpieces of the dark glasses over his ears, and sighedwith relief. Bart frowned, but finally put them on. Bart's mother hadbeen a Mentorian--from the planet Mentor, of the star Deneb, a hundredtimes brighter than the sun. Bart had her eyes. But Mentorians weren'tpopular on Earth, and Bart had learned to be quiet about his mother.

  Through the dark lenses, the glare was only a pale gleam. Far out in thevery center of the spaceport, a high, clear-glass skyscraper rose,catching the sunlight in a million colors. Around the building, smallcopters and robotcabs veered, discharging passengers; and the movingsidewalks were crowded with people coming and going. Here and there inthe crowd, standing out because of their height and the silvery metalliccloaks they wore, were the strange tall figures of the Lhari.

  "Well, how about going down?" Tommy glanced impatiently at histimepiece. "Less than half an hour before the starship touches down."

  "All right. We can get a sidewalk over here." Reluctantly, Bart tore hiseyes from the fascinating spectacle, and followed Tommy, stepping ontoone of the sidewalks. It bore them down a long, sloping ramp toward thefloor of the spaceport, then sped toward the glass skyscraper; came torest at the wide pointed doors, depositing them in the midst of thecrowd. The jagged lightning flash was there over the doors of thebuilding, and the words:

  HERE, BY THE GRACE OF THE LHARI, IS THE DOORWAY TO ALL THE STARS.

  Bart remembered, as if it were yesterday, how he and his father hadfirst passed through this doorway. And his father, looking up, had saidunder his breath "Not for always, Son. Someday men will have a doorwayto the stars, and the Lhari won't be standing in the door."

  Inside the building, it was searingly bright. The high open rotunda wasfilled with immense mirrors, and glass ramps running up and down, movingstaircases, confusing signs and flashing lights on tall oddly shapedpillars. The place was crowded with men from all over the planet, butthe dark glasses they all wore gave them a strange sort of familyresemblance.

  Tommy said, "I'd better check my reservations."

  Bart nodded. "Meet you on the upper level later," he said, and got on amoving staircase that soared slowly upward, past level after level,toward the information desk located on the topmost mezzanine.

  The staircase moved slowly, and Bart had plenty of time to seeeverything. On the step immediately in front of him, two Lhari werestanding; with their backs turned, they might almost have been men.Unusually tall, unusually thin, but men. Then Bart amended thatmentally. The Lhari had two arms, two legs and a head apiece--they werethat much like men. Their faces had two eyes, two ears, and a nose andmouth, all in the right places. But the similarity ended there.

  They had skin of a curious pale silvery gray, and pale, pure-white hairrising in what looked like a feathery crest. The eyes were long andslanting, the forehead high and narrow, the nose delicately thin andchiseled with long vertically slit nostrils, the ears long, pointed andlobeless. The mouth looked almost human, though the chin was abnormallypointed. The hands would almost have passed inspection as humanhands--except for the long, triangular nails curved over the fingertipslike the claws of a cat. They wore skin-tight clothes of some metallicsilky stuff, and long flowing gleaming silvery capes. They lookedunearthly, elfin and strange, and in their own way they were beautiful.

  The two Lhari in front of Bart had been talking softly, in their fasttwittering speech; but as the hum of the crowds on the upper levels grewlouder, t
hey raised their voices, and Bart could hear what they weresaying. He was a little surprised to find that he could still understandthe Lhari language. He hadn't heard a word of it in years--not since hisMentorian mother died. The Lhari would never guess that he couldunderstand their speech. Not one human in a million could speak orunderstand a dozen words of Lhari, except the Mentorians.

  "Do you really think that _human_--" the first Lhari spoke the word asif it were a filthy insult--"will have the temerity to come in by thisship?"

  "No reasonable being can tell what _humans_ will do," said the secondLhari. "But then, no reasonable being can tell what our own PortAuthorities will do either! If the message had only reached us sooner,it would have been easier. Now I suppose it will have to clear through adozen officials and a dozen different kinds of formalities."

  The younger Lhari sounded angry. "And we have only a description--noname, nothing! How do they expect us to do anything under thoseconditions? What I can't understand is how it ever happened, or how theman managed to get away. What worries me is the possibility that he mayhave communicated with others we don't know about. Those bungling foolswho let the first man get away can't even be sure--"

  "Do not speak of it here," said the old Lhari sharply. "There areMentorians in the crowd who might understand us." He turned and lookedstraight at Bart, and Bart felt as if the slanted strange eyes werelooking right through to his bones. The Lhari said, in Universal, "Whoare you, boy? What iss your businesssses here?"

  Bart replied in the same language, politely, "My father's coming in onthis ship. I'm looking for the information desk."

  "Up there," said the old Lhari, pointing with a clawed hand, and lostinterest in Bart. He said to his companion, in their own language,"Always, I regret these episodes. I have no malice against humans. Isuppose even this Vegan that we are seeking has young, and a mate, whowill regret his loss."

  "Then he should not have pried into Lhari matters," said the youngerLhari fiercely. "If they'd killed him right away--"

  The soaring staircase swooped up to the top level; the two Lhari steppedoff and mingled swiftly with the crowd, being lost to sight. Bartwhistled 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 theLhari. He felt a cold, crawling chill down his insides. The Lhari hadspoken regretfully, but the way they'd speak of a fly they couldn'tmanage 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 letthe 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 theplanet ceased to function; you might as well be on that unbelievablyremote world in another galaxy that was the Lhari home planet--thatworld no human had ever seen. On a Lhari spaceport, or on a Lhari ship,you were under the jurisdiction of Lhari law.

  Tommy stepped off a moving stair and joined him. "The ship's on time--itreported past Luna City a few minutes ago. I'm thirsty--how about adrink?"

  There was a refreshment stand on this level; they debated brieflybetween orange juice and a drink with a Lhari name that meant simply_cold sweet_, and finally decided to try it. The name proveddescriptive; 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 andLhari are alike in a lot of ways. They breathe the same air. Eat aboutthe same food." Their bodies were adjusted to about the same gravity.They had the same body chemistry--in fact, you couldn't tell Lhari bloodfrom human, even under a microscope. And in the terrible Orion Spaceportwreck sixty years ago, doctors had found that blood plasma from humanscould be used for wounded Lhari, and vice versa, though it wasn't safeto transfuse whole blood. But then, even among humans there were fiveblood types.

  And yet, for all their likeness, they were _different_.

  Bart sipped the cold Lhari drink, seeing himself in the mirror behindthe refreshment stand; a tall teen-ager, looking older than hisseventeen years. He was lithe and well muscled from five years of sportsand acrobatics at the Space Academy, he had curling red hair and grayeyes, 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 nowI'm grown-up._

  Tommy grinned at him in the mirror. "What are you going to do, now we'vefinished our so-called education?"

  "What do you think? Go back to Vega with Dad, by Lhari ship, and helphim run Vega Interplanet. Why else would I bother with all thatastrogation and math?"

  "You're the lucky one, with your father owning a dozen ships! He must bealmost as rich as the Lhari."

  Bart shook his head. "It's not that easy. Space travel inside a systemthese days is small stuff; all the real travel and shipping goes to theLhari ships."

  It was a sore point with everyone. Thousands of years ago, men hadspread 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 had even believed that was an absolute limit--that nothing in theuniverse could exceed the speed of light. It took years to go from Earthto the nearest star.

  But they'd done it. From the nearer stars, they had sent out colonizingships all through the galaxy. Some vanished and were never heard fromagain, but some made it, and in a few centuries man had spread all overhundreds of star-systems.

  And then man met the people of the Lhari.

  It was a big universe, with measureless millions of stars, and plenty ofroom for more than two intelligent civilizations. It wasn't surprisingthat the Lhari, who had only been traveling space for a couple ofthousand years themselves, had never come across humans before. But theyhad been delighted to meet another intelligent race--and it wasextremely profitable.

  Because men were still held, mostly, to the planets of their ownstar-systems. Ships traveling between the stars by light-drive were rareand ruinously expensive. But the Lhari had the warp-drive, and almostovernight the whole picture changed. By warp-drive, hundreds of timesfaster than light at peak, the years-long trip between Vega and Earth,for instance, was reduced to about three months, at a price anyone couldpay. Mankind could trade and travel all over their galaxy, but they didit on Lhari ships. The Lhari had an absolute, unbreakable monopoly onstar travel.

  "That's what hurts," Tommy said. "It wouldn't do us any good to have thestar-drive. Humans can't stand faster-than-light travel, except incold-sleep."

  Bart nodded. The Lhari ships traveled at normal speeds, like the regularplanetary ships, inside each star-system. Then, at the borders of thevast gulf of emptiness between stars, they went into warp-drive; butfirst, every human on board was given the cold-sleep treatment thatplaced them in suspended animation, allowing their bodies to endure thewarp-drive.

  He finished his drink. The increasing bustle in the crowds below themtold him that time must be getting short. A tall, impressive-lookingLhari strode through the crowd, followed at a respectful distance by twoMentorians, tall, redheaded humans wearing metallic cloaks like those ofthe Lhari. Tommy nudged Bart, his face bitter.

  "Look at those lousy Mentorians! How can they do it? Fawning upon theLhari that way, yet they're as human as we are! _Slaves_ of the Lhari!"

  Bart felt the involuntary surge of anger, instantly controlled. "It'snot that way at all. My mother was a Mentorian, remember. She made fivecruises on a Lhari ship before she married my father."

  Tommy sighed. "I guess I'm just jealous--to think the Mentorians cansign on the Lhari ship as crew, while you and I will never pilot a shipbetween the stars. What did she do?"

  "She was a mathematician. Before the Lhari met up with men, they used asystem of mathematics as clumsy as the old Roman numerals. You have toadmire them, when you realize that
they learned stellar navigation withtheir old system, though most ships use human math now. And of course,you know their eyes aren't like ours. Among other things, they'recolor-blind. They see everything in shades of black or white or gray.

  "So they found out that humans aboard their ships were useful. Youremember how humans, in the early days in space, used certain birds, whowere more sensitive to impure air than they were. When the birds keeledover, they could tell it was time for humans to start looking over theair systems! The Lhari use Mentorians to identify colors for them. And,since Mentor was the first planet of humans that the Lhari had contactwith, they've always been closer to them."

  Tommy looked after the two Mentorians enviously. "The fact is, I'd shipout 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 halfMentorian, I can even speak Lhari."

  "Why don't you? I would."

  "Oh, no, you wouldn't," Bart said softly. "Not even very many Mentorianswill. 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 thesecret of warp-drive. They never managed it, but nowadays the Lhari giveall the Mentorians what amounts to a brainwashing--deep hypnosis, beforeand after every voyage, so that they can neither look for anything thatmight threaten the Lhari monopoly of space, nor reveal it--even under atruth 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 theLhari. The Lhari can't tell a diamond from a ruby, except byspectrographic analysis, for instance. And she--"

  A high gong note sounded somewhere, touching off an explosion of warningbells and buzzers all over the enormous building. Bart looked up.

  "The ship must be coming in to land."

  "I'd better check into the passenger side," Tommy said. He stuck out hishand. "Well, Bart, I guess this is where we say good-bye."

  They shook hands, their eyes meeting for a moment in honest grief. Insome 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 hisluggage and started down a sloping ramp toward an enclosure marked TOPASSENGER ENTRANCE.

  Warning bells rang again. The glare intensified until the glow in thesky was unendurable, but Bart looked anyhow, making out the strangeshape of the Lhari ship from the stars.

  It was huge and strange, glowing with colors Bart had never seen before.It settled down slowly, softly: enormous, silent, vibrating, glowing;then swiftly faded to white-hot, gleaming blue, dulling down through thevisible spectrum to red. At last it was just gleaming glassy Lhari-metalcolor again. High up in the ship's side a yawning gap slid open,extruding stairsteps, and men and Lhari began to descend.

  Bart ran down a ramp and surged out on the field with the crowd. Hiseyes, alert for his father's tall figure, noted with surprise that theship's stairs were guarded by four cloaked Lhari, each with a Mentorianinterpreter. They were stopping each person who got off the starship,asking for identity papers. Bart realized he was seeing another segmentof the same drama he had overheard discussed, and wished he knew what itwas all about.

  The crowd was thinning now. Robotcabs were swerving in, hovering abovethe ground to pick up passengers, then veering away. The gap in thestarship'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 theship, he knew, was for loading passengers. Bart moved carefully throughthe thinning crowd, almost to the foot of the stairs. One of the Lharichecking papers stopped and fixed him with an inscrutable gray stare,but finally 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 beensurrounded by a group of welcoming relatives, or summoned a robotcab andgone. The man was wearing Vegan clothes, but he wasn't Bart's father. Hewas a fat little man, with ruddy cheeks and a fringe of curling grayhair all around his bald dome. _Maybe he'd know if there was anotherVegan on the ship._

  Then Bart realized that the little fat man was staring straight at him.He returned the man's smile, rather hesitantly; then blinked, for thefat man was coming straight toward him.

  "Hello, Son," the fat man said loudly. Then, as two of the Lhari startedtoward him, the strange man did an incredible thing. He reached out histwo hands and grabbed Bart.

  "Well, boy, you've sure grown," he said, in a loud, cheerful voice, "butyou're not too grown-up to give your old Dad a good hug, are you?" Hepulled Bart roughly into his arms. Bart started to pull away and stammerthat the fat man had made a mistake, but the pudgy hand gripped hiswrist with unexpected strength.

  "Bart, listen to me," the stranger whispered, in a harsh fast voice. "Goalong 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!"