"Perhaps ... for the time being...."
Don't know why I took that for an answer, thought Yorgh, staring across the flatland the next morning at dawn. Suppose I tell him the Raydowers call us married? Would he just say their law doesn't count? Vaneen looks kindly at me from a distance, but she hasn't spoken.
He chewed moodily on a blade of grass, thinking that he heard a distant herd of kromp moving.
Then his head jerked up as a great flame ripped across the sky.
VI
There were shouts behind him in the camp, and he saw motion about the borrowed tents of the Raydowers.
A huge, gleaming thing sank down to the plain on a cushion of smoke and flame. The fires disappeared as it touched ground. A moment later, the thunder died out.