Bart laughed. “They wouldn’t serve it to us if it would. No, men and
Lhari are alike in a lot of ways. They breathe the same air. Eat about
the same food.” Their bodies were adjusted to about the same gravity.
They had the same body chemistry–in fact, you couldn’t tell Lhari blood
from human, even under a microscope. And in the terrible Orion Spaceport
wreck sixty years ago, doctors had found that blood plasma from humans
could be used for wounded Lhari, and vice versa, though it wasn’t safe
to transfuse whole blood. But then, even among humans there were five
blood types.

And yet, for all their likeness, they were _different_.

Bart sipped the cold Lhari drink, seeing himself in the mirror behind
the refreshment stand; a tall teen-ager, looking older than his
seventeen years. He was lithe and well muscled from five years of sports
and acrobatics at the Space Academy, he had curling red hair and gray
eyes, and he was almost as tall as a Lhari.

_Will Dad know me? I was just a little kid when he left me here, and now
I’m grown-up._

Tommy grinned at him in the mirror. “What are you going to do, now we’ve
finished our so-called education?”

“What do you think? Go back to Vega with Dad, by Lhari ship, and help
him run Vega Interplanet. Why else would I bother with all that
astrogation and math?”

“You’re the lucky one, with your father owning a dozen ships! He must be
almost as rich as the Lhari.”

Bart shook his head. “It’s not that easy. Space travel inside a system
these days is small stuff; all the real travel and shipping goes to the
Lhari ships.”

It was a sore point with everyone. Thousands of years ago, men had
spread out from Earth–first to the planets, then to the nearer stars,
crawling in ships that could travel no faster than the speed of light.
They had even believed that was an absolute limit–that nothing in the
universe could exceed the speed of light. It took years to go from Earth
to the nearest star.

But they’d done it. From the nearer stars, they had sent out colonizing
ships all through the galaxy. Some vanished and were never heard from
again, but some made it, and in a few centuries man had spread all over
hundreds of star-systems.

And then man met the people of the Lhari.

It was a big universe, with measureless millions of stars, and plenty of
room for more than two intelligent civilizations. It wasn’t surprising
that the Lhari, who had only been traveling space for a couple of
thousand years themselves, had never come across humans before. But they
had been delighted to meet another intelligent race–and it was
extremely profitable.

Because men were still held, mostly, to the planets of their own
star-systems. Ships traveling between the stars by light-drive were rare
and ruinously expensive. But the Lhari had the warp-drive, and almost
overnight the whole picture changed. By warp-drive, hundreds of times
faster than light at peak, the years-long trip between Vega and Earth,
for instance, was reduced to about three months, at a price anyone could
pay. Mankind could trade and travel all over their galaxy, but they did
it on Lhari ships. The Lhari had an absolute, unbreakable monopoly on
star travel.

“That’s what hurts,” Tommy said. “It wouldn’t do us any good to have the
star-drive. Humans can’t stand faster-than-light travel, except in
cold-sleep.”

Bart nodded. The Lhari ships traveled at normal speeds, like the regular
planetary ships, inside each star-system. Then, at the borders of the
vast gulf of emptiness between stars, they went into warp-drive; but
first, every human on board was given the cold-sleep treatment that
placed them in suspended animation, allowing their bodies to endure the
warp-drive.

He finished his drink. The increasing bustle in the crowds below them
told him that time must be getting short. A tall, impressive-looking
Lhari strode through the crowd, followed at a respectful distance by two
Mentorians, tall, redheaded humans wearing metallic cloaks like those of
the Lhari. Tommy nudged Bart, his face bitter.

“Look at those lousy Mentorians! How can they do it? Fawning upon the
Lhari that way, yet they’re as human as we are! _Slaves_ of the Lhari!”

Bart felt the involuntary surge of anger, instantly controlled. “It’s
not that way at all. My mother was a Mentorian, remember. She made five
cruises on a Lhari ship before she married my father.”

Tommy sighed. “I guess I’m just jealous–to think the Mentorians can
sign on the Lhari ship as crew, while you and I will never pilot a ship
between the stars. What did she do?”

“She was a mathematician. Before the Lhari met up with men, they used a
system of mathematics as clumsy as the old Roman numerals. You have to
admire them, when you realize that they learned stellar navigation with
their old system, though most ships use human math now. And of course,
you know their eyes aren’t like ours. Among other things, they’re
color-blind. They see everything in shades of black or white or gray.

“So they found out that humans aboard their ships were useful. You
remember how humans, in the early days in space, used certain birds, who
were more sensitive to impure air than they were. When the birds keeled
over, they could tell it was time for humans to start looking over the
air systems! The Lhari use Mentorians to identify colors for them. And,
since Mentor was the first planet of humans that the Lhari had contact
with, they’ve always been closer to them.”

Tommy looked after the two Mentorians enviously. “The fact is, I’d ship
out with the Lhari myself if I could. Wouldn’t you?”

Bart’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “No,” he said. “I could–I’m half
Mentorian, I can even speak Lhari.”

“Why don’t you? I would.”