veil
and turban well up over his face. Earlier, Crawford had shown him how
to wind the ten-foot long, indigo-blue cloth around the head and
features.

Isobel, of course, was unveiled, Tuareg fashion, and wore baggy
trousers of black cotton held in place with a braided leather cord by
way of drawstring and a gandoura upper-garment consisting of a huge
rectangle of cloth some seven to eight feet square and folded over on
itself with the free corners sewed together so as to leave bottom and
most of both sides open. A V-shaped opening for her head and neck was
cut out of a fold at the top, and a large patch had been sewed inside
to make a pocket beneath her left breast. She wasn't exactly a
Parisian fashion plate.

Even as they stepped down from the hovercraft, immediately after it
had drifted to rest on the ground, an elderly man came from the tent
entrance.

He looked at them for a moment, then rested his eyes exclusively on
Homer Crawford.

"_La Bas_, El Hassan," he said through the cloth that covered his
mouth.

Homer Crawford was taken aback, but covered the fact. "There is no
evil," he repeated the traditional greeting. "But why do you name me
El Hassan?"

A dozen veiled desert men, all with the Tuareg sword, several with
modern rifles, had formed behind the Tuareg chief.

Melchizedek made a movement of hand to mouth, in a universal gesture
of amusement. "Ah, El Hassan," he said, "you forget you left me the
magical instrument of the Roumi."

Crawford was mystified, but he stood in silence. What the Tuareg
paramount chief said now made considerable difference. As he recalled
his former encounter with the Ahaggar leader, the other had been
neither friendly nor antagonistic to the Reunited Nations team
Crawford had headed in their role as itinerant desert smiths.

The Amenokal said, "Enter then my tent, El Hassan, and meet my
chieftains. We would confer with you."

The first obstacle was cleared. Subduing a sigh of relief, Homer
Crawford turned to Cliff. "This, O Amenokal of all the Ahaggar, is
Clif ben Jackson, my Vizier of Finance."

The Amenokal bowed his head slightly, said, "_La Bas_."

Cliff could go that far in the Tuareg tongue. He said, "_La Bas_."

The Amenokal said, looking at Isobel, "I hear that in the lands of the
Roumi women are permitted in the higher councils."

Homer said steadily, "This I have also been amazed to hear. However,
it is fitting that my followers remain here while El H