The low rainbow building of Eight Colors, near the spaceport of Procyon
Alpha, had not changed; and when Bart went in, as he had done a year
ago, it seemed that the same varnished girl was sitting before the same
glass desk, neon-edged and brittle, with the same chrome-tinged hair and
blue fingernails. She looked at Bart in his Lhari clothing, at Meta in
her Mentorian robe and cloak, at Ringg, and her unruffled dignity did
not turn a hair.
"May I help you?" she inquired, still not caring.
"I want to see Raynor One."
"On what business, please?"
"Tell him," said Bart, with immense satisfaction, "that his boss is
here--Bart Steele--and wants to see him right away."
It had a sort of disrupting effect. She seemed to go blurred at the
edges. After a minute, blinking carefully, she spoke into the
vision-screen, and reported, numbly, "Go on up, Mr. Steele."
He wasn't expecting a welcome. He said so as the elevator rose. "After
all, if I'd never come back, he'd doubtless have inherited the whole
Eight Colors line, unencumbered. I don't expect he'll be happy to see
me. But he's the only one I can turn to."
The elevator stopped, opened. They stepped out, and a man stepped
nervously toward them. For a moment, expecting Raynor One, Bart was
deceived; then as the man's face spread in a smile of welcome, he
stopped in incredulous delight.
"Raynor Three!"
In overflowing gladness, Bart hugged him. It was like a meeting with the
dead. He felt as if he had really come home. "But--but you remember me!"
he exclaimed, backing away, in amazement.
Slowly, the man nodded. His eyes were grave. "Yes. I decided it wasn't
worth it, Bart, to go on losing everything that meant anything to me.
Even if it meant I had to give up the stars, never travel again except
as a passenger, I couldn't go on being afraid to remember, never knowing
the consequences or responsibilities of what I'd done." His sad smile
was strangely beautiful. "The Multiphase sailed without me. I've been
here, hoping against hope that someday I'd know the rest."
Associations clicked into place in Bart's mind. The Multiphase. So
Raynor Three was the Mentorian who had smuggled David Briscoe off the
ship, and whose memories, wrung out by the Lhari captain of that ship,
had touched off so many deaths. But he had paid for that--paid many
times over. And now must he pay for this, too?
Raynor One strode toward them. "So it's really you. I thought it might
be a trap, but Three wouldn't listen. Word came from Antares that
Montano had been arrested and his ship confiscated for illegal landing
on Lharillis. I thought you were probably dead."