Kirk laughed. The laugh was not pleasant. He was thinking of the cold huts of the Hans and the thin babies that cried, and Jakk Randl dying on the pillbox wall, telling him what he'd seen.
"You lie. You bring the stones up out of the gorge and hide them here. Jakk Randl saw your daughter doing it."
"There was only a tiny pipe of stones in the gorge. This is almost the last of them. We used them rather than take from the community supply."
Samel smiled his lazy smile and started toward the barred door. His eyes had a queer wild shine to them. The Captain cried out:
"Wait! Wait, and let me speak!"
Samel looked at the door and his breath made a little sob in his throat. "All right," he said hoarsely. "I can wait."
He wasn't thinking about the heat-stones so much then. He was thinking of the words of the legend, power and gold.
The Captain said quietly, "You can kill me, and go on. But I ask you not to. I ask you to believe me. There are no heat-stones in that room. The bar hasn't been lifted since the Crash. I ask you not to violate a sacred trust."
Kirk scowled and looked at the bar. It didn't look as though it had been lifted since the Crash. He began to be uneasy.
Samel spoke silkily. "Sacred trust, eh? Something that belongs to us, the Piruts. Something we've waited for, longer than anyone knows."