Tallon lay down and Fordyce stooped over him.
“In a way you’re lucky,” Fordyce said as he held a syringe up to the light. “The masking of the eye pigmentation and retinal patterns is always the most painful, but you’ve nothing to worry about, have you?”
“You sound like the medic back in the Pavilion,” Tallon replied wryly. “He seemed to enjoy his work, too.”
The treatment was not as bad as Tallon had anticipated. Some of the processes — darkening his skin and lightening his hair — were completely painless; others hurt a bit, or were uncomfortable. Fordyce worked quickly and expertly as he administered the necessary injections. Some of the needles were inserted just beneath skin of Tallon’s fingertips, distorting the patterns. Some were plunged deep into major muscle groups, producing tension or relaxation, subtly altering his posture, his bodily dimensions, even his walk. The same techniques, on a reduced scale, were applied to his face.
While the drugs were taking effect Fordyce helped Tallon change into fresh clothing from the skin out. The suit was gray, casual, and completely nondescript, which looked right for a spacehand laying up between tours of duty. Tallon enjoyed the civilized feel of clean clothing against his skin, especially the shoes and socks, although the shoes were built up to make him appear taller.
“That’s it, Sam,” Fordyce said finally, with evident satisfaction. “You wouldn’t know your own mother, or something like that. Here are your papers and your new identity. They’re more than good enough to get you through the spaceport checkpoints.”
“How about money?”
“You won’t need it. We’re dropping you right at the terminal. You’ll have to get rid of the dog, of course.”
“Seymour stays with me.”
“But what if — ”
“Was there any mention of a dog being with me — from official sources, or in any of the papers or broadcasts?”
“No, but — ”
“Then Seymour stays.” Tallon explained that his eyeset worked by picking up optic nerve signals from the dog’s eyes. And besides, he liked Seymour and would have been taking him anyway. Fordyce shrugged and looked carefully unconcerned. The truck began to slow down, and Tallon picked up the dog.
“Here we are, Sam,” Fordyce said. “The space terminal. When you get through the main gates take the slideway to the north side. You’ll find the Lyle Star in docking area N. 128. Captain Tweedie will be expecting you.”
Suddenly Tallon was reluctant to go. Space was big, cold, and endless, and he was not prepared for it.
“Listen, Vic,” he stalled, “this is a bit sudden, isn’t it? I was expecting to talk to someone here in New Wittenburg. Doesn’t the cell leader want to see me?”
“We’re processing you just the way the Block wants it done. Goodbye, Sam.”
The truck began to move as soon as Tallon had stepped down. He lifted Seymour to his chest and surveyed the half-mile stretch of passenger and cargo entrances, from which branches of slideways and roads fanned out toward a dazzling white concrete horizon. Vehicles of all shapes and sizes moved among the reception buildings, warehouses, and vast service hangars. The gleaming whale-backs of ships in their cradles sparkled in the morning sun; and high up in the blue of the sky were the bright sequins that were other ships drifting in on finals.
Tallon took a deep breath and began to walk. He discovered that the treatment not only changed his appearance; it also made him feel different. He walked steadily, but with a strange rhythm, noting that buses and taxis were discharging their passengers outside the gates and onto the main slideway system. Joining the steady stream of pedestrians, he found the entrance reserved for port officials and flight crews. The bored-looking clerk barely glanced at his papers before handing them back. Tallon noticed two other men lounging in the office behind the clerk. They too seemed totally uninterested in flight personnel; but Tallon had no doubt that sensors, linked to a computer, had scanned and measured him from head to foot, and would have screamed their plastic heads off had he fit their specifications.
Hardly believing he was through the checkpoint so easily, Tallon took the north-bound slideway, looking for the Lyle Star as the high-speed belt carried him between rows of ships. It was a long time since he had been so close to space vessels, and through Seymour’s eyes he saw them with a new clarity, suddenly aware of how unreal they looked in the morning light. The huge metal ellipsoids lay helplessly in their cradles, many of them with raised hatches that were cantilevered like insect’s wing casings. Cargo-handling and servicing vehicles were clustered at the open hatches.
There were no other exploitable worlds in the Lutheran system, so all the ships in the port were interstellar craft, fitted with three entirely separate drives. Gravity negators were used at take off, allowing the big ships to fall upward into the sky; but these were effective only so long as there was a strong gravitic field available to be twisted back on itself. When a planet’s portal was a long distance off, as most of them were, ion-reaction drives punched the ships out to it in the old-fashioned way. Then came the null-space drives. that — in some half-understood way — sucked the big ships into another universe in which the game of energy versus mass was played with different rules.
Tallon noted that of the many uniforms he saw in and around the terminal, the gray cords of the E.L.S.P. men were the most common. There was no doubt that the net was out for him, yet he had strolled right through it. Although Cherkassky’s resources were limited compared with those of the Block, this was, after all, his home ground. It was almost as if …
A sign reading “N.128” loomed up, and Tallon edged across the progressively slower strips until he could step off onto the concrete. He began walking down a lateral row of ships, looking for the centaur symbol carried by Paranian vessels. A few paces along the row a slab-shouldered giant, in a black uniform with gold insignia, stepped out from behind a crane, in whose shade he had been standing.
“You’re Tallon?”
“That’s right.” Tallon was taken aback by the stranger’s size. Everybody looked big to Tallon while he was carrying his eyes under his arm, but this man was extraordinary, a towering pyramid of muscle and bone.
“Captain Tweedie of the Lyle Star. I’m glad you made it, Tallon.”
“I’m glad, too. Where’s the ship?” Tallon tried hard to sound glad, but he kept thinking about the eighty thousand portals that lay between Emm Luther and Earth. Soon they would be between Helen and himself. She would be waiting in a hotel room in New Wittenburg, and he would be eighty thousand portals away, so many giant zigzag steps across the heavens, with no chance of getting back. Red hair and whiskey-colored eyes. … No colors in the dark… .I wish I were where Helen lies.… No colors, but texture and warmth and communion… .Night and day on me she cries.…
Tweedie pointed toward the far end of the line and began to walk quickly. Tallon kept up with him for several yards, then realized it was no good this way.
“Captain,” he said calmly. “You go on ahead to the ship and wait for me.”
“What do you mean?” Tweedie turned instantly, like a huge cat. His eyes flashed from beneath the visor of his cap.
“I’ve got to go back into the city for an hour; I left something behind.” Tallon kept his voice flat and cool while his mind kept chanting, What am I doing? What am I doing? What …
Tweedie smiled humorlessly, showing unusually thick teeth. “Tallon,” he said with exaggerated patience, “I don’t know what you’re thinking about, and I don’t want to find out. All I know is, you will board my ship — right now.”