ver have again. He might as
well take advantage of it.

Ringg and Meta both seemed startled at his new appearance, but Meta
instantly held out her hands, clasping his quickly and warmly. "Bart! I
wondered what your real face looked like. But I think I'd have known you
anyhow."

Ringg surveyed him wonderingly, shaking his head. "Say something," he
implored, "so I'll know you're Bartol."

Bart held out his arm, less gray by the day as the drug wore out of his
system. The thin line of the scar was still on it. He raised his
forefinger lightly to the fine line on Ringg's cheek. "I couldn't return
that now. So let's not get into any more fights."

Ringg laughed and gave him a rough, affectionate shove. "You're Bartol,
all right!"

Even his sense of defeat vanished in wonder as they came out into the
great spaceport. He saw, now, that the Lhari spaceports in human worlds
were built to create, for the spacemen so far from their native worlds,
some feeling of home. But everything here was so vast as to stagger the
imagination. There were miles and miles of the great ships, lying strewn
like pebbles on this monster beachhead into space, bearing the
strangeness of a million far-flung stars. He gaped like a child.

Above them, the burning brilliance of a star gave strange glow and color
to the crystal pylons. What color was the star? He turned to Meta,
irritated at his inability to be sure.

"Meta, what color is this sun? I've been all around the spectrum, and
it's not red, blue, green, orange, violet--" He broke off, realizing
what he had said and what he had seen. "An eighth color," he finished,
anticlimatically.

"You and your talk of colors," Ringg grumbled, "I wish I knew what you
Mentorians see! It's like trying to imagine seeing a smell or hearing
light!"

Meta laughed. "As far as I know, no one's named it. Sometimes we
Mentorians call it _catalyst color_. I think only Mentorians can see it
as separate color."

"So what?" Ringg said impatiently, "What are we going to do, chatter
about light waves or see the city?"

Bart acquiesced, trying to sound eager, but a wild excitement was
gusting up in him. He dutifully pretended fascination with the towers,
the many-leveled roads, the giant dams and pylons, but his thoughts were
racing.

_The eighth color!_ There can't be too many suns of this color, or
they'd have named it and known it! And telescopes can find it.

Could success be salvaged, then, at the very edg