Words so unnatural here that they seemed to reverberate through the little cave-room with echoes that jostled and muttered like alien, menacing things which had no right here—and yet, were here.
"You saw him—lying there?" Lee prompted.
"Yes. His throat, with red blood running out of it where they had cut him—and he was dying—he died while I stood there—"
The first murder. A thing so unnatural. Old Anthony stared for an instant mute at the girl who now had covered her face with her hands as she trembled against Lee.
"Killed him?" Lee murmured.
On Anthony's face there was wonderment—disillusion, and then bitterness. "So? This is what comes to us, from Earth?"
Lying so helpless, old Anthony could only murmur that now Lee must do what he could.
"Your own judgement, my son—do what you can to meet this." The sunken, burning eyes of the old man flashed. "If there must be violence here, let it be so. Violence for that which is right."
"Grandfather—yes! That miserable cowardly murderer—"
To meet force, with force. Surely, even in a world of ideals, there is no other way.