"I would expect them to protect themselves from the rains," she remarked.
"Rains!" snorted Guthrie. "You don't know! Hurricanes! Tidal waves! Floods! They lose people every storm. This is a very bad place to live. So what do you suppose they worship?"
"Sky spirits, you keep telling me."
"Yes," he said, lowering his voice instinctively. "But not good ones, naturally—spirits of evil."
Karen looked at him sidelong and clucked her tongue.
"It's not funny; it's perfectly logical. They spend their lives one jump ahead of freezing or drowning. Their world's against them. Other savage races have figured it that way, even on Terra."
"All right, it's logical. What has it to do with us?"
"It has this to do," said Guthrie. "That clown, Trent, is going around making friends like a puppy. He's cutting his own throat, an' I'd bet he thinks he's cutting mine. But you don't think they'd sacrifice a bad person, do you?"
The thought penetrated, and she rose slowly to her feet. He reached out to her shoulders and gave her a little shake.
"The Skirkhi spend weeks before the stormy season making sure the evil spirits notice what nasty people they are. Like Terran kids before Christmas, in reverse. And there's that apple-polisher making a gilded saint of himself while the natives are spitting in their friends' faces and trying to steal their wives or cheat old Thyggar on their taxes."