Ringg moaned, and Bart, glancing round, saw that he was struggling to sit up. He ran back to him, dropping to his knees at Ringg's side. "It's all right, Ringg, lie still. We're under cover now."
"Wha' happened?" Ringg said blurrily. "Head hurts--all sparks--all the pretty lights--can't _see_ you!" He fumbled with loose, uncoordinated fingers at his head and Bart grabbed at him before he poked a claw in his eye. "Don't _do_ that," Ringg complained, "can't _see_--"
_He must have a bad concussion then. That's a nasty cut._ Gently, he restrained the Lhari boy's hands.
"Bartol, what happened?"
Bart explained. Ringg tried to move, but fell limply back.
"Weren't you hurt? I thought I heard you cry out."
"A cut or two, but nothing serious," Bart said. "I think the hail's stopped. Lie still, I'd better go back to the ship and get help."
"Give me a hand and I can walk," Ringg said, but when he tried to sit up, he flinched, and Bart said, "You'd better lie still." He knew that head injuries should be kept very quiet; he was almost afraid to leave Ringg for fear the Lhari boy would have another delirious fit and hurt himself, but there was no help for it.
The hail had stopped, and the piled heaps were already melting, but it was bitterly cold. Bart wrapped himself in the silvery cloak, glad of its warmth, and struggled back across the slushy, ice-strewn meadow that had been so pink and flowery in the sunshine. The _Swiftwing_, a monstrous dark egg looming in the twilight, seemed like home. Bart felt the heavenly warmth close around him with a sigh of pure relief, but the Second Officer, coming up the hatchway, stopped in consternation:
"You're covered with blood! The hailstorm--"
"I'm all right," Bart said, "but Ringg's been hurt. You'll need a stretcher." Quickly, he explained. "I'll come with you and show you--"
"You'll do no such thing," the officer said. "You look as if you'd been caught out in a meteor shower, feathertop! We can find the place. You go and have those cuts attended to, and--what's wrong with your wrist? Broken?"
Bart heard, like an echo, the frightening words: _Don't break any bones. You won't pass an X-ray._
"It's all right, sir. When I get washed up--"
"That's an _order_," snapped the officer, "do you think, on this pestilential unlucky planet, we can afford any _more_ bad luck? Metals fatigue, Karol burned so badly the medic thinks he may never use his hand again, and now you and Ringg getting yourselves laid up and out of action? The medic will help me with Ringg; that Mentorian girl can look after you. Get moving!"
He hurried away, and Bart, his head beginning to hurt, walked slowly up the ramp. His whole arm felt numb, and he supported it with his good hand.
In the small infirmary, Karol lay groaning in a bunk, his arm bound in bandages, his head moving from side to side. The Mentorian girl Meta turned, charging a hypo. She looked pale and drawn. She went to Karol, uncovering his other arm, and made the injection; almost immediately the moaning stopped and Karol lay still. Meta sighed and drew a hand over her brow, brushing away feathery wisps that escaped from the cap tied over her hair.
"Bartol? You're hurt? Not more burns, I hope?"
_She looks just like a fluffy little kitten_, Bart thought incongruously. Fatigue was beginning to blur his reactions.
"Only a few cuts," he said, in Universal, though Meta had spoken Lhari. In his weariness and pain he was homesick for the sound of a familiar word. "Ringg and I were both caught in the hailstorm. He's badly hurt."
"Sit down here."
Bart sat. Meta's hands were skillful and cool as she sponged the blood away from his forehead and sprayed it with some pleasantly cold, mint-smelling antiseptic. Bart leaned back, tireder than he knew, half-closing his eyes.
"That hail must have been enormous; we heard it through the hull. Whatever possessed you to go out into it?"
"It wasn't hailing when we left," Bart said wearily. "The sun was as nice and green as it could be." He bit the words off, realizing he had made a slip, but the girl seemed not to hear, fastening a strip of plastic over a cut. She picked up his wrist. Bart flinched in spite of himself, and Meta nodded. "I was afraid of that; it may be broken. Better let me X-ray it."
"No!" Bart said harshly. "It's all right, I just twisted it. Nothing's broken. Just strap it up."
"It's pretty badly swollen," the girl said, moving it gently. "Does that hurt? I thought so."
Bart set his teeth against a cry. "It's all right, I tell you. Just because it's black and blue--"
He heard her breath jolt out, her fingers clenched painfully on his wounded wrist. She did not hear his cry this time. "And the sun was nice and _green_," she whispered. _"What are you?"_
Bart felt himself slip sidewise; he thought for a moment that he would faint where he sat. Terrified, he looked up at Meta. Their eyes met, and she said, hardly moving her pale lips, "Your eyes--they're like mine. Your eyelashes--dark, not white. _You're not a Lhari!_"
The pain in his wrist suddenly blurred everything else, but Meta suddenly realized she was gripping it; she gave a little, gentle cry, and cradled the abused wrist in her palm.
"No wonder you didn't want it X-rayed," she whispered. Biting her lip, she glanced, terrified, at Karol, unconscious in the bunk. "No, he can't hear us; I gave him a heavy shot of hypnin, poor fellow."
"Go ahead," Bart said bitterly, "yell for your keepers."
Her gray eyes blazed at him for a moment; then, gently, she laid his wrist on the table, went to the infirmary door and locked it on the inside. She turned around, her face white; even her lips had lost their color. "Who are you?" she whispered.
"Does it matter now?"
Shocked comprehension swept over her face. "You don't think I'd _tell_ them," she whispered. "I heard talk, in the Procyon port, of a spy that had managed to get through on a Lhari ship." Her face twisted. "You--you must know about the man on the _Multiphase_, you know they'll--make sure I can't--hide anything dangerous to the Lhari at the end of the voyage."
"Meta--" concern for her swept over him--"what will they do to you when they find out that you know and--didn't tell?"
Her gray eyes were wide as a kitten's. "Why, nothing. The Lhari would never _hurt_ anyone, would they?"
Brainwashed? He set his mouth grimly. "I hope you never find out different."
"Why would they need to?" she asked, reasonably. "They could just erase the memory. I never heard of a Lhari actually hurting anyone. But something like this--" She wavered, looking at him. "You look so _much_ like a Lhari! How was it done? How could they do it? Poor fellow, you must be the--the loneliest man in the Universe!"
Her voice was compassionate. Bart felt his throat tighten, and had the awful feeling that he was going to cry. He reached with his good hand for hers, seeking the comfort of a human touch, but she flinched instinctively away.
_He was a monster to this pretty girl...._
"It looks so real," she said helplessly. "Yes, now I can see, you have tiny moons at the base of the nail, and the Lhari don't." Her face worked. "It's--it's horrifying! How could you--"
There was a noise in the corridor. Meta gasped and ran to unlock the door, stood back as the medic and the Second Officer came in, staggering under Ringg's weight. Carefully, they put him into a bunk. The medic straightened, shaking his crest.
"Did you get that wrist taken care of, Bartol?"
Meta stepped between Bart and the officer, reaching for a roll of bandage. "I'm working on it now, _rieko mori_," she said. "It only wants strapping up." But her fingers trembled as she wound the gauze, pulling each fold tight.
"How's--Ringg?"
"Needs quiet," grunted the medic, "and a few sutures. Lucky you got him under cover when you did."
Ringg said weakly from his bunk, "Bartol saved my life. I can think of plenty who'd have run for cover, instead of staying out in that stuff long enough to drag me inside. Thanks, shipmate."
Meta's hand, with a swift hard pressure, lingered on Bart's shoulder as she cut the bandage and fastened the end. "I don't think that will bother you much now," she whispered, fleetingly. "I didn't dare say it was broken or they'd insist on X-rays. If it hurts I'll get you something later for the pain. If you keep it strapped up tight--"
"It will do," Bart said aloud. The tight bandage made it feel a little better, but he felt sick and dizzy, and when the medic turned and saw him, the officer said brusquely "Watch off for you, Bartol. I'll fix the sign-out sheet, but you go to your cabin and get yourself at least four hours of sleep. _That's an order._"
Bart stumbled out of the cabin with relief. Safe in his own quarters, he flung himself down on his bunk, shaking all over. He'd come safely through one more nightmare, one more terror--for the moment! Had he put Meta in danger, too? Was there no end to this ceaseless fear? Not only for himself, but for others, the innocent bystanders who stumbled into plots they did not understand?
_You're doing this for the stars. It's bigger than your fear. It's bigger than you are, or any of the others...._