The Unreasoning Mask

  He fought down the impulse to leap out of the jeep and run at top speed to . . . where? . . . anywhere to get away from the horror and the pain.

  The driver shouted, "For God's sake, what is it? I can't stand it! I'm going crazy!"

  Ramstan had no need to shout to be heard, but he roared with panic and desperation. "1 don't know! Control yourself! Drive on! Drive on, I say!"

  She took her hands away from her ears, said, shakily, "Yes, sir," and grabbed the wheel and put her feet on the pedals. She was quivering, and she looked as if she were about to scream back at the screaming in her head.

  "There! There!" Ramstan said, pointing. Just beyond the hotel steps were two teardrop-shaped Tolt jeeps poised a half-meter above the sidewalk. Six armored and armed Tenolt sat in the first, the lower part of the prognathous faces masked, the woolly upper part between mask and helmet exposed. Five were in the second vehicle, two in the front seat and two in the back with Branwen Davis seated between them. Though she was masked, she was easily recognizable. All were holding their ears, and the jeeps had automatically stopped.

  Ramstan shouted at the driver, "Get down there before they recover!" He pointed at the Tenolt.

  He turned and bellowed at the marines. "It's no use holding your ears! Get ready to attack! Fire when I give the order! Shoot to kill!"

  They might not have been able to hear him above the screams and yells of the frantic crowd below them, but they understood his gestures. Their hands came down, and they unholstered their olsons.

  As suddenly as it had arrived, the whistling was gone.

  The pain dwindled away swiftly, leaving in its wake a relief almost as pleasurable as the pain had been agonizing. But there was no time for Ramstan to savor it. The Tenolt drivers had resumed control; the jeeps were moving up and towards the spaceport, though slowly. And, as was evident from the gestures of the Tenolt, they had seen the approaching Terrans.

  A marine behind him screamed, "Oh, God! Oh, God!"

  Most of the Kalafalans had ceased shrieking, though their babbling was loud. But now they started screaming again, and many were pointing upwards and past Ramstan.

  He turned and looked westward. The whistling had given him a sense of the unreality of the world which he had not yet overcome. Now the numbness and the feeling of being unmoored from the solidity of matter and time made a quantum jump. He could not understand, could not accept, what he was seeing. The thing in the sky should not exist. It was monstrous, unnatural, and yet there it was in Nature. Vaguely, he felt betrayed.

  From the valley far away drifted the bonging of thousands of gongs.

  There, surely, was the thing that had caused the whistling. The bolg. It was a sphere hanging over the planet, blotting out most of the sky, a frightening body that looked close, close, another planet just about to fall and crush all life, smash the earth, rip it apart, make it reel with the inconceivable mass, melt earth and the rock beneath the earth with the force of the collision.

  But it was not falling. It was moving swiftly eastwards, though not nearly quickly enough, if it had the mass evidenced by its size, to stay in orbit. It should have fallen by now. It was not falling. It was moving above the planet's atmosphere, perhaps just beyond the outer boundary, seemingly held there by its power.

  It was as round as a baseball, dark except for some paler markings which made it look like the face of a Halloween jack-o'-lantern carved by a palsied hand. A tiny horn, a truncated cone, projected from the bottom. Another horn, glittering in the light of the westering sun, stuck out from the center of the "face" like a parody of a nose. And there was another on the near side on the equatorial line.

  Ramstan clung to the back of his seat and stared as the ground westwards raised itself and curved, undulating, towards him. The distant mountain range shimmied. The back of the earth curved up and down like the swellings of a heavy sea. Forests lifted up and fell. Buildings rose and exploded and hurtled to the ground in fragments.

  At the same time, a wind from the east began keening past him. The air struck him like a fist

  There was a cracking noise like a Brobdingnagian whip snapping. The ground waves passed beneath the two jeeps, the crest of one almost touching the bottom of the vehicles. Roaring, the hotel collapsed. In the distance, the spaceport control tower leaned over and then broke in half. Tiny figures spilled out of it.

  He fought against withdrawing into himself and cutting off all the world outside his mind.

  The rumble caught up with the snapping, then. The entire planet was growling and shaking -- or so it seemed to him.

  The people on the ground had been hurled down. Some were trying to stand up again but could not do it because the earth was rocking like slush in a bowl in the hand of a terrified person.

  There were more cracks and rumbles. The earth split open in a great zigzag extending as far as he could see from the west. It sped like a crazed snake past him, people toppling into the suddenly opened crevasse, others, just on its edge, trying to crawl away or motionless with their faces pressed against the ground.

  The wind became stronger. Hats, pieces of clothing, branches, leaves, and dust flew by him.

  A voice was yammering from his skinceiver. Even though he held it close to his ear, he could not understand it. There was far too much noise from wind, screams, rumbles, and crackings. But he thought that he knew what the voice was warning him of.

  The western sky between the horizon and that sphere was on fire.

  At first, there seemed to be many, thousands, perhaps, of thin, blazing lines. They originated from above the atmosphere, no doubt, from the truncated cone which stuck out from the bottom of the gigantic thing. Meteorites. Missiles. Such as had swept fierily over Walisk. They were few, comparatively few, in the beginning. But now the curving lines from the upper air to the earth had become more numerous, seeming to expand, and now the sky between the vast bulge overhead and the ground was a solid curtain of fire.

  The bolg was moving east, towards the Kalafalan capital, towards him, towards al-Buraq.

  The ground undulated again.

  The crust of Kalafala was tortured by the gravitational pull of the bolg. It was rising was being ripped upwards, shaking, falling apart.

  The air of Kalafala was being pulled upwards, also.

  So was the oceanic area. Colossal tides would follow the path of the bolg.

  Vomit threatened to spew out of him. But he looked at it again and saw that a shimmering corona, white shot with blue, surrounded it. Was that an energy discharge?

  The world was literally falling down around him, and he had to get his marines back to the ship before that onrushing metal storm caught them. Or before a chasm opened up beneath al-Buraq and swallowed her. Yet . . . he could not leave Branwen or the glyfa here.

  The two Tolt jeeps were moving towards the spaceport now. Their passengers were bent over, their faces turned away from the wind smiting them. Below them, the natives were rolling over and over, pushed by the wind though their fingers dug into earth or they clung to pieces of rocks or fragments of buildings blown their way. Some of the natives spun into the first crevasse opened or into new ones which had formed afterwards.

  Ramstan looked away and saw that the Tolt jeeps were accelerating.

  He bellowed, "After them! Shoot them! But don't hit Lieutenant Davis!"

  Even if the situation had been that expected, he would not have been sure that they would immediately obey his orders. There had been no war on Earth for one hundred and thirty-five years, and these marines had not experienced even simulated combat. They had probably not expected to fight.

  And now they were close to complete shock and panic. They would want to get back to ship as swiftly as possible. He did, too, but he would not permit himself to be diverted from his original mission.

  Ramstan's skinceiver quit yaminering. The voice was replaced by a shrill and loud series of dots and dashes. Code:

  RETURN TO SHIP AT ONCE. RETURN TO SHIP AT ONCE. MISSI
LES FROM USO [unidentified Space Object] APPROACHING AT RATE OF 1999 KILOMETERS PER HOUR. ARRIVAL HERE ETA TEN MINUTES. REPEAT. RETURN TO SHIP AT ONCE. ALARAF IN NINE MINUTES. REPEAT. RETURN TO SHIP AT ONCE. ALARAF IN NINE MINUTES. REPEAT . . .

  Tenno was doing what he would have done. Regardless of who was or was not within ship, she would go into alaraf drive in nine minutes.

  His mother's voice spoke. "Get back to ship! Now! Don't waste a second! Now! If you don't, you'll die! All will be lost!"

  Ramstan forgot to subvocalize. He said, "I can't leave you here! And what about Davis?"

  "Get back to al-Buraq!" the gly!a said, now switching to the voice of his commandant at the space academy. "Now! Now! It's the bolg, you fool! The bolg!"

  Light flashed in the rear Tolt jeep, the one in which Branwen was. Three short, bright, thin beams. Allah! Branwen had pulled her olson from its holster or snatched one from a marine by her. She had shot the two beside her. Another flash. She had shot the fourth.

  The jeep dived, struck the ground, bounced up, half-rolled, tossing the box out -- the box which held the glyfa, surely -- crashed on its side, and rolled completely over, sliding until its side rammed into a tree.

  The other Tolt jeep stopped, swiveled, and started back. The ship's captain was in it, and he had great coolness and courage. He had ordered the jeep to come back and pick up the glyfa. And perhaps to kill Davis. Or pick her up. After all, he would probably not have seen that she had beamed her escort. The glyfa, however, would be his overriding concern.

  Ramstan yelled. His driver had slumped over. Her face was slack. The jeep had stopped. Out of the corner of his eye he saw, but did not fully register, that the other jeep with his marines had pulled up alongside. He raised the driver and saw the holes, cauterized, in the front and back of her head.

  A Tolt had shot her.

  A hole appeared in the windshield by him. A marine in the back seat bent over. His helmet had a very thin hole in its back.

  The marines in his jeep did not seem to know what was happening. But those in the jeep by his were firing their olsons at the Tolt jeep.

  The box was a meter or so near the edge of a ragged crack in the earth. Branwen had gotten free of the vehicle -- its security magnetic field must have gone off when the jeep was wrecked -- and she was crawling away from it. The ground was swelling beneath her, she was on top of a wave, and then the torn earth collapsed beneath her. Her legs and buttocks were buried beneath dirt.

  The wave had shifted the box nearer to the crevasse.

  "You damn fool!" the space academy commandant's voice said. "Get back to ship! Leave me here! Come back and get me later! After the bolg is gone!"

  "I might never find you!" Ramstan shrieked.

  Something streaked fierily from the Tolt jeep. The jeep beside him exploded, and Ramstan felt heat and some stings on his side.

  He did not remember how he had done it. But the body of the jeep driver was in the back seat and he was at the controls. His jeep shot by the Tolt jeep. A marine fell on him. He had been hit and had fallen on top of his captain. Ramstan ignored the corpse and directed the jeep towards al-Buraq, which was panting a yellowish-red light. A port opened in her, Ramstan drove the jeep into it, and slammed on the brakes. Energy shot red-bluishly from its vents. The magnetic field cushioned him and prevented him from dashing out his brains against the control paneL The shock emptied him of action for a moment.

  The port crew had scattered when they had seen the speeding jeep. Now they ran out and gathered around him. The entrance closed up like a healing wound; the illumination within the port became brighter.

  "Take care of them!" Ramstan said, waving his hand to indicate the dead or wounded in the jeep. He ran through the corridors, speaking into his skinceiver while he did so.

  "Is everybody in?"

  "Everybody except your marines," Tenno said. "I mean those in the other jeep."

  "They're dead," Ramstan said. "Put ship in alaraf! Now! Destination: the Tolt bell!"

  "Aye, aye, sir," Tenno said. His face, on the screen moving along the bulkhead to Ramstan's right, was fixed, seemingly emotionless except for intensity on the next order.

  "That's the thing that destroyed Walisk!" Ramstan said. Tenno did not reply, but he paled.

  A few minutes later, Ramstan was on the bridge.

  All there were pale, and their faces were strained. A few were calling on God under their breaths. They all stank of deep fright. Ramstan was not sure that he had not wet his own shorts.

  "We can write off Kalafala," Ramstan said. "We weren't able to get to Davis. I'll have a report from personnel later. Did the Tenolt send any messages?"

  "No, sir."

  "We're going back to Kalafala. We have to check it out. But not for some time."

  "What could that thing be?" Tenno said. His voice was low and trembling. His head shook.

  "I don't know. But I think that it can detect our trail and follow us."

  "Follow us?" Tenno said. "Why? How?"

  "I don't know."

  Ramstan called Hu.

  "We all need some antishock, Doctor."

  "I have it ready, Captain. I was just about to call you."

  A few minutes later, Hu, followed by two corpsratings, entered. They scanned every person to determine the amount each needed, and then applied the flat ends of their osmosers to the skins of the "patients." Ramstan immediately felt better; the sense of unreality and the numbness of perception faded.

  Ramstan thought that it would be best if he told his officers why he was going to Tolt.

  "I want to determine whether or not that monster has attacked Tolt."

  His thoughts kept slipping back to the glyfa. And near it would be what was left -- not much -- of Branwen Davis. Unless the Tolt officer in the jeep had rescued the glyfa and, perhaps, Davis.

  He wondered if the Popacapyu had alarafed before the storm had swept over it. Or had it waited too long for its marines to return with the glyfa?

  Six days later, the pear-shaped planet of Tolt filled the viewscreens. Clouds covered three-fourth, of it, but the heat detectors and the analyzers showed that great fires were still raging in many areas. Al-Buraq curved around to the nightside; here, the large areas of heat were visible to the eye through the clouds.

  "There's no use going down there," Ramstan said. "What happened is evident."

  Though he had no evidence at all that he was responsible for the destruction of so much life, for the slaying of billions of sentients, he did feel guilty.

  Tenno motioned with his finger for Ramstan to join him in a privacy field.

  "I don't think we should be overheard, Captain. I'm worried, justifiably so. It seems that the Tenolt were able to track us through alarafian space. If they can do that, why not someone -- or something -- else? That monster that's been destroying planets, for instance?"

  Tenno paused, looking as if he did not want to say what he must say.

  "What is it?"

  Tenno swallowed, and he said, "If it can track us, it could follow the path we've made from Earth back to Earth. Follow the space traces, I mean."

  "We don't know that," Ramstan said, grabbing Tenno's arm. Tenno's pained expression made him release his grip.

  "We don't know that it can't," Tenno said. "And that is what counts!"

  "All right," Ramstan said. "One thing at a time. What concerns me most just now is the thing seemingly appearing from nowhere. I realize that anyone seeing us just come into a bell would think that we, too, popped out of nowhere. But this thing doesn't enter a bell at its edge. I'm not sure that it can't appear anywhere it wants to."