"Too old and fat," Stryker finished for him. "And too damned slow and garrulous. You're right, of course."
They let it go at that and put Xavier on guard for the night. The mechanical was infinitely more alert and sensitive to approach than any of the crew, but the knowledge did not make Farrell's sleep the sounder.
He dozed fitfully, waking a dozen times during the night to smoke cigarettes and to speculate fruitlessly on what he might find in the dome. He was sweating out a nightmare made hideous by monstrous bees that threatened him in buzzing alien voices when Xavier's polite monotone woke him for breakfast.
Farrell was halfway down the grassy slope to the village when he realized that the Marco was still under watch. Approaching close enough for recognition, he saw that the sentry this time was Tarvil, the Sadrian who had first approached the ship. The native's glance took in Farrell's shoulder-pack of testing tools and audiphone, brushed the hand-torch and blast gun at the Terran's belt, and slid away without trace of expression.
"I'm going into the dome," Farrell said. He tried to keep the uncertainty out of his voice, and felt a rasp of irritation when he failed. "Is there a taboo against that?"
The native fell in beside him without speaking and they went down together, walking a careful ten feet apart, through dew-drenched grass flats that gleamed like fields of diamonds under the early morning sun. From the village, as they approached, straggled the inevitable exodus of adults and half-grown children, moving silently out to the fields.
"Weird beggars," Farrell said into his audiphone button. "They don't even rub elbows at work. You'd think they were afraid of being contaminated."
Stryker's voice came tinnily in his ear. "They won't seem so strange once we learn their motivations. I'm beginning to think this aloofness of theirs is a religious concomitant, Arthur, a hangover from slave-controls designed to prevent rebellion through isolation. Considering what they must have suffered under the Hymenops, it's a wonder they're even sane."
"I'll grant the religious origin," Farrell said. "But I wouldn't risk a centicredit on their sanity. I think the lot of them are nuts."