"It's not murder; it's self-defense."
"No!" said Joel and refused to hear any more about it.
The succession of days crept past as alike as beads on a string. Joel tried to draw Tamis out about the Ganelons, but she had been too badly frightened by Liedl's death.
She was afraid of him, too; he could see it in her eyes and it worried him. One sleeping period he asked her about it with characteristic bluntness.
Tamis bit her lip. "I—I never saw a man killed before. I can't get it out of my mind. It's not you, Joel." And then she began to tell him about her early life in the Ganelon village.
It was a life without sham—a simple joyous pagan existence close to the primal forces of nature. Tamis' voice trembled with nostalgia.
Joel was fascinated. He was on fire with impatience to reach Asgard.
On the forty-third day the Zenith came out of the Stellar Drive and began to fire her braking tubes.
Down, down she settled towards the surface of Asgard, second planet of Alpha Centauri A. An electric excitement ran like flames through the Unfit.
Joel couldn't eat. "How much longer?" he asked Thorp for the hundredth time.