If ever he had seen pain, Sean swore to himself, it had been on Klash's face then. But what had caused it?
What had made an invulnerable Krak wince at the blows from an Earthman's fist?
There were no earthly words to describe Karrar, the home planet of the Kraks.
Karrar was Karrar—a stupendous planet, brooded over by a sullen sun, a land of harsh reds and blacks. Impassive it was—as indestructible as its spawn of Kraks.
They'd known when the landing had been made, for the Kraks, their blank faces rigid, had come into the prison room and roughly strapped a metal contrivance on the back of each Earth person, man, woman and child.
For such a sullen-looking planet, Sean decided, the weather was exceedingly cold, striking at his flesh and bones like tiny needles.
The Kraks herded the long line of humans through the airlock out onto the huge expanse of the space port. There were thousands of ship cradles, it seemed, and they were packed with other ships unloading their cargo. As far as his green eyes could see, Sean recognized only human beings—thousands of them moving single file out of the maws of the swollen Krak ships. Those files were converging at a huge gate at the far end of the port.
They looked, Sean thought, like long lines of ants moving toward their hill. Then he, too, was moving toward the same gate.
Perhaps only he, of those thousands, was different. For he was not squeezed into the line. The human ahead of him and the human behind were a good four feet from him, as if keeping as far from a carrier of the plague as possible.