seen; as
always, the Second Officer was the first to go through Decontam and
ashore, returning with exchanged mail and messages for the _Swiftwing_'s
crew. He laughed when he gave Bartol a sealed packet. "So you're not
quite the orphan we've always thought!"

Bart took it, his heart suddenly pounding, and walked away through the
groups of officers and crew eagerly debating how they would spend their
port leave. He knew what it would be.

It was on the letterhead of Eight Colors, and it contained no message.
Only an address--and a time.

He slipped away unobserved to the Mentorian part of the ship to borrow a
cloak from Meta. She did not ask why he wanted it, and stopped him when
he would have told her. "I'd--rather not know."

She looked very small and very scared, and Bart wished he could comfort
her, but he knew she would shrink from him, repelled and horrified by
his Lhari skin, hair, claws.

Yet she reached for his hand, gripping it hard in her own dainty one.
"Bartol, be careful," she whispered, then stopped. "Bartol--that's a
Lhari name. What's your real one?"

"Bart. Bart Steele."

"Good luck, Bart." There were tears in her gray eyes.

With the blue cloak folded around his face, hands tucked in the slits at
the side, he felt almost like himself. And as the strange crimson
twilight folded down across the streets, laden with spicy smells and
little, fragrant gusts of wind, he almost savored the sense of being a
conspirator, of playing for high stakes in a network of intrigue between
the stars. He was off on an adventure, and meant to enjoy it.

The address he had been given was a lavish estate, not far from the
spaceport, across a little gleaming lake that shimmered red, indigo,
violet in the crimson sunset, surrounded by a low wall of what looked
like purple glass. Bart, moving slowly through the gate, felt that eyes
were watching him, and forced himself to walk with slow dignity.

Up the path. Up a low flight of black-marble stairs. A door swung open
and shut again, closing out the red sunset, letting him into a room that
seemed dim after the months of Lhari lights. There were three men in the
room, but his eyes were drawn instantly to one, standing against an
old-fashioned fireplace.

He was very tall and quite thin, and his hair was snow-white, though he
did not look old. Bart's first incongruous thought was, _He'd make a
better Lhari than I would._ His firm, commanding voice told Bart at once
th