Chapter 8
Race hurled himself into his study with a grim fury.
For weeks he had gone without evoking that subtle tension that accompanied the power. It was not difficult to pose as an ordinary man. Even Starlings commonly walked, ate with forks, and the like, and he had found that the hands were more deft than the mind. To call up the tension and make use of the mind was equivalent to mounting and riding a bicycle, not done for trivial reasons.
Starlings commonly had two modes of action, physical and mental. It was said, and Race believed it, that a bullet fired at a Starling would simply rebound before it reached him. Once a bird had startled him by plunging out of a tree past his head and he had deflected it — like flinging up an arm in amazement, without the arm. With practice the St
