Yann chattered happily as they went along the winding lanes, telling of his multifarious sins and adventurings and the clever ways in which he had cheated the factory. The hostile curious eyes of the women followed them and now and again a man spat expressively into the mud behind them.
They came at last to a hut on the outskirts of the town. Beside it were chained four pairs of beasts the size of harriers, milk-white with dark muzzles and feet, the undulating bodies built light and long for speed. They made shrill barking sounds and leaped at the strangers, showing hungry fangs. Trehearne thought they looked like gigantic weasels—and quite as friendly.
"Hounds," said Yann. "Kurat is a hunter. I had a private arrangement with him for skins." He winked hugely and lifted up his voice, shouting in the native tongue an obvious demand for Kurat to come out and welcome his brother.
A lean, hard-muscled man emerged. He wore a loin-cloth of brilliant blue silk, not very clean, and a necklet of hammered metal. He greeted Yann with glad cries. Trehearne smiled inwardly. They were two of a kind, the Vardda and the hunter, a brace of happy scoundrels. Kurat welcomed him in the lingua franca of the factory towns. A brother of Yann, it seemed, was his brother also. He swept Trehearne before him into the hut.
There was a numerous family inside. A very old man and woman sat in a corner, doing nothing. Babes and children cluttered the floor. Kurat's hulking wife waded imperturbably among them. A handsome younger woman brought in a great sweating jug and poured from it into Trehearne's cup. The wine was cold and bitter. Trehearne, draining it, began to forget the heat and his weariness. Then, as he looked up into the young woman's face, he was startled by the hatred in her watching eyes.
He said suddenly, "Why do you hate us so?"
She laughed metallically. "Is there any world where the Vardda are loved?"
"Because we are able to fly the stars and you aren't?"
"Because we too could have had the stars and you Vardda kept us from it!"
Trehearne stared at her, disconcerted by her sudden passion. "But the secret was lost...."