"That's the call to the testing. It's an emergency call. It means us."
He saw unease appear momentarily on the face of his son and the men with him, then he saw it shrugged away. "If we have to pass some kind of a test to do business with these fools, all right. We'll pass it."
"I hope," Boyd Larkin whispered. Already the elders had put in their appearance and were coming toward them. They carried with them the long metal rods like the one Malovar carried and which were the sign of their office.
"They come to take us to the place of the testing," Larkin said. He straightened his shoulders. The Martian elders bowed politely and motioned him to precede them.
Neither his son nor the men with him liked the idea. They did not know what was going to happen. They would have preferred to go elsewhere. But Larkin was going and they could hardly let him out-face them. Besides, they had Kell guns. So what danger could they meet that they could not overcome?
IV
The place of the testing was a huge coliseum that had been centuries old when the human race was still in the barbaric stage of its development. It had been designed to hold tens of thousands of spectators and once unquestionably it had held them but the whole population of Sudal and the surrounding territory would now hardly fill the lower tiers. Looking out at the encroaching desert, where pathetic little patches of greenery tried to stem the tide of encroaching desolation, it was easy to see why this stadium could no longer be filled.
Already the Martians were beginning to trickle into the lower seats when the humans arrived at the top of the vast bowl.
"What the hell goes on here?" Roy Larkin kept demanding. "I don't like this."
"You've got your Kell guns, what are you afraid of?" the trader asked.