"He can't be! There's no stone in his forehead. Not even a scar."
Saul's voice was flat and relentless. "He took a sun-stone. Only a Korin would touch one of the cursed things."
"But he says he's from outside the valley! From Earth, Saul. From Earth! Things would be different there."
Jen's insistence on that point had at least halted the men temporarily. And Trevor, looking at Saul's face, had suddenly begun to understand something.
"You think the sun-stones are evil," he said.
Saul gave him a sombre glance. "They are. And the one you have is going to be destroyed. Now."
Trevor swallowed the bitter anguish that choked him, and did some fast thinking. If the sun-stones had a superstitious significance in this benighted pocket of Mercury—and he could imagine why they might, with those damned unnatural hawks flying around with the equally unnatural Korins—that put a different light on their attitude.
He knew just by looking at their faces that it was "give them the sun-stone or die." Dying at the hands of a bunch of wild fanatics didn't make sense. Better let them have the stone and gamble on getting it back again later. Or on getting another one. They seemed plentiful enough in the valley!
Sure, let's be sensible about it. Let's hand over a lifetime of hoping to a savage with horny palms, and not worry about it. Let's.... Oh, hell.
"Here," he said. "All right. Take it."