The Unreasoning Mask Read Free

suspect

hostility."
     
     
Was there a questioning tone in Tenno's voice?
     
     
He added, "Sir, more Tenolt have left the ship. They're unarmed --

like the others."
     
     
Ramstan had continued walking. He stopped under a tree on the edge of

the field. He could not see his ship, al-Buraq, because she was on a

lower-level berth in the center of a great concrete basin. But the upper

part of the oyster-shaped Tolt vessel was visible. Most of the ship was

concealed by a triple-row of giant, poplarlike trees. Only Kalafalans

would plant trees and flowers in the middle of a landing field.
     
     
The ship had to be the Popacapyu, which had been berthed near al-Buraq on

the Tolt port on the night that al-Buraq took off so suddenly, uncleared

by the Tolt authorities.
     
     
Now that the Popacapyu was here -- and how had the Tenolt found al-Buraq?

-- her captain would, sooner or later, be visiting Ramstan. He would ask

why the Earthship had made its unauthorized departure. Or would he?

He knew why.
     
     
Ramstan started walking again. When he came to the limit of the field,

he left the trees to continue southward. After going down the hill

far enough so he would not be seen from the Tolt ship, he walked east

across the face of the hill. He took a half-hour to circle until he

could approach al-Buraq from the east.
     
     
He paused to lean against the slim, corkscrew-shaped flying buttress of

a government building to catch his breath and to admire -- for how many

times? -- his ship.
     
     
From this side of the field, he could see her upper part. The vessel lay

in a depression, the opposite wall of which was deep and vertical.

On this side, ramps led up from the craft for the passage of crew and

supplies. Many Kalafalans stood along the edges of the depression gazing

at al-Buraq. She crouched in her berth, glowing with a bright-red wax

and wane, breathing light. A monstrous starfish-form bright as a hot

coal just fallen from a fireplace, her five arms sprawled out from the

fat central body. She was now in this form so that the loading and

unloading of cargo and supplies and the entry and exit of personnel

could be expedited. For take-off, she could shift to space-form in

two minutes, though she did not have to metamorphose to do so. The

five arms, covered with hundreds of thousands of small armor plates,

would shrink in length, swell in circumference, draw up, become part

of the saucer-shaped body. Or, if she were to travel in the atmosphere,

she would become needle-shaped. There was no danger of personnel being

crushed in corridors or cabins during the shape-change. The bulkhead

sensors detected that which must be uninjured or undamaged. Only if the

captain -- or a delegated authority -- overrode the inhibitions with a

spoken code could the shape-shifting be harmful to the crew.
     
     
Ramstan crossed the field and gently moved through the hundreds gathered

to admire the ship. They smiled and spoke to him in their native tongue or

in Urzint. Many reached out to touch him lightly. Their fingers scraped

off dust of meteors, powder of comets, light-exudations of stars, and

also the texture of all the fleshes of Earth. Or so they claimed.
     
     
Ramstan smiled diplomatically when the fingers touched him. He smiled at

a baby held up to him and at a particularly pixyish female. She gestured

with one hand, thumb and a finger curved and touching to indicate she'd

like to rendezvous with him.
     
     
At that moment he envied those of his crew who would have accepted her

invitation. But he had to behave as the representative of the best on

Earth. Whether or not he liked it, he was clad in moral armor. It was

not that of Kalafala but of Earth. And his own.
     
     
The natives did not understand his behavior. Some of it repelled them,

though they had not told him so directly. Despite this, they touched

him with wondering, wonder-netting fingers. He might be as cold as

interstellar space,