The town took shape as he approached it. The stone-built houses, mostly round or octagonal, were scattered out with no particular plan. Under the red and gold and diamond-colored stars that burned above them as bright as moons, they looked curiously remote and evil, like old wizards in peaked hats, peering with little winking eyes. The dry wind blew, laden with alien scents. Apart from the wind there was no sound.
Three men met him at the edge of the town. They wore pale cloaks and carried long staffs tipped with horn. They were all of seven feet tall. They wore their hair high on their heads to accentuate this height, and they were slender and graceful as reeds, walking along with a light dancing step as though the wind blew them. But their faces in the star-glow were smooth and secret, their eyes as expressionless as bits of shiny glass.
"What does the man from outside desire?" asked one of them, in the universal speech.
Kirk said, "He desires to speak with those others from outside who enjoy your hospitality."
But they were not going to make it that easy for him. Their faces remained impassive, and the one who had just spoken said coolly, "Our lord has wisdom in all matters. Perhaps he will understand your words. I do not."
They fell in around Kirk and moved with him into the wide sandy space that went between the wandering houses. The nerves tightened up in Kirk's belly, and his back felt cold. He looked at his wrist chrono, carefully. There was no sound but the whispering of sand under their feet. Garstang would be watching with the 'scope, but once he was in among the houses he could no longer be seen.
That was almost at once. The tall men walked on with their light swaying stride, so that he had to move at an undignified trot to keep up. The stone houses with their high roofs closed in behind him. This dark and brooding town ill accorded with old tales of cluster-kings, he thought. Yet the past held many things.
When they were close to the center of the town, the leader stopped beside a round structure from whose open door came light.
"Will the man from outside enter the dwelling of our lord?"