Bart set his teeth against a cry. "It's all right, I tell you. Just because it's black and blue—"
He heard her breath jolt out, her fingers clenched painfully on his wounded wrist. She did not hear his cry this time. "And the sun was nice and green," she whispered. "What are you?"
Bart felt himself slip sidewise; he thought for a moment that he would faint where he sat. Terrified, he looked up at Meta. Their eyes met, and she said, hardly moving her pale lips, "Your eyes—they're like mine. Your eyelashes—dark, not white. You're not a Lhari!"
The pain in his wrist suddenly blurred everything else, but Meta suddenly realized she was gripping it; she gave a little, gentle cry, and cradled the abused wrist in her palm.
"No wonder you didn't want it X-rayed," she whispered. Biting her lip, she glanced, terrified, at Karol, unconscious in the bunk. "No, he can't hear us; I gave him a heavy shot of hypnin, poor fellow."
"Go ahead," Bart said bitterly, "yell for your keepers."
Her gray eyes blazed at him for a moment; then, gently, she laid his wrist on the table, went to the infirmary door and locked it on the inside. She turned around, her face white; even her lips had lost their color. "Who are you?" she whispered.
"Does it matter now?"
Shocked comprehension swept over her face. "You don't think I'd tell them," she whispered. "I heard talk, in the Procyon port, of a spy that had managed to get through on a Lhari ship." Her face twisted. "You—you must know about the man on the Multiphase, you know they'll—make sure I can't—hide anything dangerous to the Lhari at the end of the voyage."
"Meta—" concern for her swept over him—"what will they do to you when they find out that you know and—didn't tell?"