"Maybe I should have stayed awake."
"You should," Tommy said. "I only slept for a couple of hours at each
warp-drive shift. We had a day-long stopover at Sirius Eighteen, and I
took a tour of the planet. And I've spent a lot of time down here, just
star-gazing--not that it did me much good. Which one is Antares? How do
you tell it from Aldebaran? I'm always getting them mixed up."
Bart pointed. "Aldebaran--that's the big red one there," he said. "Think
of the constellation Taurus as a necklace, with Aldebaran hanging from
it like a locket. Antares is much further down in the sky, in relation
to the arbitrary sidereal axis, and it's a deeper red. Like a burning
coal, while Aldebaran is like a ruby--"
He broke off in mid-word, realizing that Tommy was gazing at him in a
mixture of triumph and consternation. Too late, Bart realized he had
been tricked. Studying for an exam, the year before, he had explained
the difference between the two red stars in almost the same words.
"Bart," Tommy said in a whisper, "I knew it had to be you. Why didn't
you tell me, fella?"
Bart felt himself start to smile, but it only stretched his mouth. He
said, very low, "Don't say my name out loud Tom. I'm in terrible
trouble."
"Why didn't you tell me? What's a friend for?"
"We can't talk here. And all the cabins are wired for sound in case
somebody stops breathing, or has a heart attack in space," Bart said,
glancing around.
They went and stood at the very foot of the quartz window, seeming to
tread the brink of a dizzying gulf of cosmic space, and talked in low
tones while Alpha and Beta and Gamma swelled like blown-up balloons in
the port.
Tommy listened, almost incredulous. "And you're hoping to find your
father, with no more information than that? It's a big universe," he
said, waving at the gulf of stars. "The Lhari ships, according to the
little tourist pamphlet they gave me, touch down at nine hundred and
twenty-two different stars in this galaxy!"
Bart visibly winced, and Tommy urged, "Come to Capella with me. You can
stay with my family as long as you want to, and appeal to the
Interplanet authority to find your father. They'd protect him against
the Lhari, surely. You can't chase all over the galaxy playing
interplanetary spy all by yourself, Bart!"
But Briscoe had deliberately gone to his death, to give Bart the chance
to get away. He wouldn't have died to send Bart into a trap he could
easily have sprung on Earth.