"Shut up."
"I'll bet you find it hard to breathe."
"Shut up!"
"Try and make me." Marie got off the bed, and when Marsden made a threatening gesture he thought she would run away. Instead, she leaped at him, got her strong fingers under the collar and yanked. The stiff collar burst open, the entire shirt-front ripped. Marie began to laugh.
Marsden went for her with murder in his eyes, but at that moment there came a roaring overhead like a dozen summer storms rolled into one, booming and crashing in the sky over their cabin. Talbor's sullen orange sun had almost set, but bright light flashed in through the window, blinding them.
"I ought to beat you," said Marsden. But he opened the door and went outside into the strong, hot wind which had stirred over their rocky farmland and flapped the torn ends of his shirt against his chest.
The spaceship from Earth had arrived on Talbor.
Talbor City's one street, dry and dusty from the long day and hot sun, was ablaze with light. Marsden had never seen so many electric lights lit at once, not even on Saturday nights. Even as he entered the city from the north, taking off his torn shirt and discarding it because no shirt seemed better than a damaged one, he heard the singing.
Charlie Adcock's deep, off-key voice rose stridently above the others, singing a song which was popular among the men of Talbor, but which the women hated.