"What?"
One of the crewmen came dashing up, his crest sweat-streaked. "Captain!
Rugel has collapsed! We don't know what's wrong with him."
"Radiation sickness," said Bart, and Vorongil reached out, catching his
shoulder in a cruel taloned grip. Bart said desperately "I'm not a
Lhari! I signed on in disguise--I knew they meant to take the ship, but
I can't let you all die.
"How can I make you believe me? Here--" In desperation, Bart reached up.
Pain stabbed his eyeballs, fierce, blinding, as he pulled out one of the
contact lenses. He could not see the captain's face through the light,
but suddenly two Lhari were holding his arms. The fear of death was on
Bart, but it no longer mattered. He saw through watering eyes the
ever-deepening orange of the badge disappearing.
"Here," he said, tearing at it, "radiation. You must be able to see how
dark it is. Even if it's just darkness...."
Suddenly Vorongil was shouting, but Bart could not hear. Two men were
dragging him along. They hustled him up the ramp of the ship. He could
see again, but his eyes were blurred, and he felt sick, colors spinning
before his eyes, a nauseated ringing in his head.
At first he thought it was his ears ringing; then he made out the
rising, shrieking wail and fall of the emergency siren, steps running,
shouting voices, the slow clang of the doors. Someone was pushing at
him, babbling words in Lhari, but he heard them through an
ever-increasing distance: Vorongil's face bent over his, only a blurred
crimson blob that flashed away like a vanishing star in the viewport. It
flamed out into green darkness, vanished, and Bart fell through what
seemed to be a bottomless chasm of starless night.
* * * * * When he woke, acceleration had its crushing hand on his chest. He tried
to move, discovered that he was strapped hard into a bunk, and fainted
again.
Suddenly the pressure was gone and he was lying at ease on the smooth
sheets of a hospital bunk. His eyes were covered with a light bandage,
and there was a sharp pain in his left arm. He tried to move it and
found it was tied down.
"I think he's coming round," said Vorongil's voice.
"Yes, and a lot too soon for me," said a bitter voice which Bart
recognized as that of the ship's medic. "Freak!"
"Listen, Baldy," said Vorongil, "whoever he is, he could have been
blinded or killed. You wouldn't be alive now if it wasn't for that
freak, as you call him. Bartol, can you hear me? How much light can
your eyes stand?"