Rugel had a huge cleft darkish scar across his lip, and there were two bands on his cloak. He was completely bald, and he puffed when he walked. "Vorongil asked me to show you around. You'll share quarters with Ringg--no sense shifting another man. Come down and see the chart rooms--or do you want to leave your kit in your cabin first?"
"I don't have much," Bart said.
Rugel's seamed lip widened. "That's the way--travel light when you're on the drift," he confirmed.
Rugel took him down to the drive rooms, and here for a moment, in wonder and awe, Bart almost forgot his disguise. The old Lhari led him to the huge computer which filled one wall of the room, and Bart was smitten with the universality of mathematics. Here was something he _knew_ he could handle.
He could do this programming, easily enough. But as he stood before the banks of complex, yet beautifully familiar levers, the sheer exquisite complexity of it overcame him. To compute the movements of thousands of stars, all moving at different speeds in different directions in the vast swirling directionless chaos of the Universe--and yet to be sure that every separate movement would come out to within a quarter of a mile! It was something that no finite brain--man or Lhari--could ever accomplish, yet their limited brains had built these computers that _could_ do it.
Rugel watched him, laughing softly. "Well, you'll have enough time down here. I like to have youngsters who are still in the middle of a love affair with their work. Come along, and I'll show you your cabin."
Rugel left him in a cabin amidships; small and cramped, but tidy, two of the oval bunks slung at opposite ends, a small table between them, and drawers filled with pamphlets and manuals and maps. Furtively, ashamed of himself, yet driven by necessity, Bart searched Ringg's belongings, wanting to get some idea of what possessions he ought to own. He looked around the shower and toilet facilities with extra care--this was something he _couldn't_ slip up on and be considered even halfway normal. He was afraid Ringg would come in, and see him staring curiously at something as ordinary, to a Lhari, as a cake of soap.
He decided to go down to the port again and look around the shops. He was not afraid of being unable to handle his work. What he feared was something subtler--that the small items of everyday living, something as simple as a nail file, would betray him.
On his way he looked into the Recreation Lounge, filled with comfortable seats, vision-screens, and what looked like simple pinball machines and mechanical games of skill. There were also stacks of tapereels and headsets for listening, not unlike those humans used. Bart felt fascinated, and wanted to explore, but decided he could do that later.
Somehow he took the wrong turn coming out of the Recreation Lounge, and went through a door where the sudden dimming of lights told him he was in Mentorian quarters. The sudden darkness made him stumble, thrust out his hands to keep from falling, and an unmistakably human voice said, "Ouch!"
"I'm sorry," Bart said in Universal, without thinking.
"I admit the lights are dim," said the voice tartly, and Bart found himself looking down, as his eyes adjusted to the new light level, at a girl.
She was small and slight, in a metallic blue cloak that swept out, like wings, around her thin shoulders; the hood framed a small, kittenlike face. She was a Mentorian, and she was human, and Bart's eyes rested with comfort on her face; she, on the other hand, was looking up with anxiety and uneasy distrust. _That's right--I'm a Lhari, a nonhuman freak!_
"I seem to have missed my way."
"What are you looking for, sir? The medical quarters are through here."
"I'm looking for the elevator down to the crew exits."
"Through here," she said, reopening the door through which he had come, and shading her large, lovely, long-lashed eyes with a slender hand. "You took the wrong turn. Are you new on board? I thought all ships were laid out exactly alike."
"I've only worked on passenger ships."
"I believe they are somewhat different," said the girl in good Lhari. "Well, that is your way, sir."
He felt as if he had been snubbed and dismissed.
"What is your name?"
She stiffened as if about to salute. "Meta of the house of Marnay Three, sir."
Bart realized he was doing something wholly out of character for a Lhari--chatting casually with a Mentorian. With a wistful glance at the pretty girl, he said a stiff "Thank you" and went down the ramp she had indicated. He felt horribly lonely. Being a freak wasn't going to be much fun.
CHAPTER EIGHT
He saw the girl again next day, when they checked in for blastoff. She was seated at a small desk, triangular like so much of the Lhari furniture, checking a register as they came out of the Decontam room, making sure they downed their greenish solution of microorganisms.
"Papers, please?" She marked, and Bart noticed that she was using a red pencil.
"Bartol," she said aloud. "Is that how you pronounce it?" She made small scribbles in a sort of shorthand with the red pencil, then made other marks with the black one in Lhari; he supposed the red marks were her own private memoranda, unreadable by the Lhari.
"Next, please." She handed a cup of the greenish stuff to Ringg, behind him. Bart went down toward the drive room, and to his own surprise, found himself wishing the girl were a mathematician rather than a medic. It would have been pleasant to watch her down there.
Old Rugel, on duty in the drive room, watched Bart strap himself in before the computer. "Make sure you check all dials at null," he reminded him, and Bart felt a last surge of panic.
This was his first cruise, except for practice runs at the Academy! Yet his rating called him an experienced man on the Polaris run. He'd had the Lhari training tape, which was supposed to condition his responses, but would it? He tried to clench his fists, drove a claw into his palm, winced, and commanded himself to stay calm and keep his mind on what he was doing.
It calmed him to make the routine check of his dials.
"Strapdown check," said a Lhari with a yellowed crest and a rasping voice. "New man, eh?" He gave Bart's straps perfunctory tugs at shoulders and waist, tightened a buckle. "Karol son of Garin."
Bells rang in the ship, and Bart felt the odd, tonic touch of fear. _This was it._
Vorongil strode through the door, his banded cloak sweeping behind him, and took the control couch.
"Ready from fueling room, sir."
"Position," Vorongil snapped.
Bart heard himself reading off a string of figures in Lhari. His voice sounded perfectly calm.
"Communication."
"Clear channels from Pylon Dispatch, sir." It was old Rugel's voice.
"Well," Vorongil said, slowly and almost reflectively, "let's take her up then."
He touched some controls. The humming grew. Then, swift, hard and crushing, weight mashed Bart against his couch.
"Position!" Vorongil's voice sounded harsh, and Bart fought the crushing weight of it. Even his eyeballs ached as he struggled to turn the tiny eye muscles from dial to dial, and his voice was a dim croak: "Fourteen seven sidereal twelve point one one four nine...."
"Hold it to point one one four six," Vorongil said calmly.
"Point one one four six," Bart said, and his claws stabbed at dials. Suddenly, in spite of the cold weight on his chest, the pain, the struggle, he felt as if he were floating. He managed a long, luxurious breath. He _could_ handle it. He knew what he was doing.
_He was an Astrogator...._
Later, when Acceleration One had reached its apex and the artificial gravity made the ship a place of comfort again, he went down to the dining hall with Ringg and met the crew of the _Swiftwing_. There were twelve officers and twelve crewmen of various ratings like himself and Ringg, but there seemed to be little social division between them, as there would have been on a human ship; officers and crew joked and argued without formality of any kind.
None of them gave him a second look. Later, in the Recreation Lounge, Ringg challenged him to a game with one of the pinball machines. It seemed fairly simple to Bart; he tried it, and to his own surprise, won.
Old Rugel touched a lever at the side of the room. With a tiny whishing sound, shutters opened, the light of Procyon Alpha flooded them and he looked out through a great viewport into bottomless space.
Procyon Alpha, Beta and Gamma hung at full, rings gently tilted. Beyond them the stars burned, flaming through the shimmers of cosmic dust. The colors, the never-ending colors of space!
And he stood here, in a room full of monsters--_he was one of the monsters_--
"Which one of the planets was it we stopped on?" Rugel asked. "I can't tell 'em apart from this distance."
Bartol swallowed; he had almost said _the blue one_. He pointed. "The--the big one there, with the rings almost edge-on. I think they call it Alpha."
"It's their planet," said Rugel. "I guess they can call it what they want to. How about another game?"
Resolutely, Bart turned his back on the bewitching colors, and bent over the pinball machine.