"Be you not just a—little bit afraid?" His eyebrows mounted the wrinkled expanse of his forehead.
The nearby hedge rustled and parted to let through a dark-haired girl whose tanned skin suggested accustomed exposure to the multiple sunlight. Wearing a belted tunic that lacked inches of reaching her knees, she confronted the old man calmly.
"It's all about what, Papa?" she asked, with a trace of an amused smile.
"Trespassers! On our property, Riva! The alarm sound! Scat! To the woods take! Or a dead duck you be!"
"Now, Papa," she chided. Then, through the fence, "Him you musn't mind. It's only his duty he's attending to."
From the distance, Cassidy had suspected the man was of Terran descent. Now, with Riva in the picture, he was certain this world was stocked either by intent or accident with true humans.
"We're from Terra," he said.