(Don’t worry, Neeva. I’ll take care of everything,) Thariinye thought blithely.
The base of Neeva’s horn ached. Thariinye would not have been her first choice to take on the task of calming the hornless ones … but it was a small task; what difference did it make who did it? Still, her forehead ached as though the horn were warn”ig her of calamities ahead.
And it might have been right, for Thariinye did not stop at showing himself long enough to establish his influence over the bipeds near the ship. Cloaked in his projected cloud of (You haven’t seen anything unusual) and (Everything’s all right), he went down all the way to the ground level and casually strolled among the bipeds there. The little group gathered near the ship was breaking up now, the members of the group moving away briskly in different directions as if they had suddenly remembered something they were supposed to be doing and couldn’t imagine why they were wasting time staring at what was, after all, just another spaceship of the hundreds that docked at Maganos.
Melireenya chuckled at the sight. (Thariinye must have added a bit of “Urgent business” to his projections, to clear them out so fast!)
(I wish he wouldn’t. We shouldn’t fool with their minds any more than we have to. And-Thariinye! Where do you think you’re going?) The young fool was following several of the bipeds toward the guarded exit from the docking facility.
(Quit worrying, Neeva!) Thariinye s images, slightly weakened by distance from the ship, were nonetheless sharp enough to convey a sense of slight irritation. (We agreed that one of us must find ‘Khornya, did we not? And since I have already expended the effort to cloud these bipeds’ minds into believing that I am one of them, why should I not go on into the base and seek out ‘Khornya right now, before her captors have time to hide her elsewhere?)
(He may be right, Neeva. Khariinya’s visit may have alerted them.)
(But you do not know where she is! The base is large… .)
(Not large enough to hide another Linyaari. I shall simply wander until I sense her presence; then I shall ask her how she is held and what would be the best way to free her. I am not entirely stupid, Neeva.)
And since she could not think of any better plan, Neeva let him go without further protest.
During his first minutes inside the base proper, Thariinye kept letting his calming projections slip as he was distracted by the oddities of this alien construction, then hurriedly projecting extra soothing feelings to relax and distract surprised onlookers. AS he cataloged the alien peculiarities, he left behind him a trail of slightly perturbed base workers who had the vague feeling that they’d just forgotten something very important, or that something -wonderful had almost happened and if only they’d been looking carefully enough they might have seen it.
The corridors connecting the docking facility to Maganos Central, and that central complex to other parts of the shielded base, were so dark and low that Thariinye felt almost as if he were exploring a mine. After cracking his head on a projecting air vent and catching his hom a really painful blow at a slit-opening door of unfamiliar design, he learned to stoop slightly, walk slowly, and watch the way ahead very carefully for obstructions.
The high dome of Maganos Central, with its seemingly extravagant aerie of scaffolding in a spiderweb design spirahng to the top, was as much a physical relief to Thariinye as a shot of oxygen would have been. But the design itself distracted him for dangerous moments. The spirahng web of scaffolding was hung with green plants that dangled invitingly downward, and in the light gravity of this moon he could easily have jumped high enough to browse at will. What was this place-some sort of cafeteria?
A gasp from a passerby reminded him to maintain his cloaking shields. (You haven’t seen anything unusual) he projected, with a hint of (urgent business somewhere else) to hurry her on her way.
The female trotted off and later told her partner in Shipping and Receiving that she’d seen the most amazingly handsome young man just coming into Central, she’d have stopped and tried to chat him up if they hadn’t been so behindhand with the monthly report; whereupon her partner gave her a very odd look and said that the monthly report wouldn’t be due for another six shifts, and did she think she might be coming down with something?