"on the other side of his face. He's begging for it, all right." He chewed his lip for a moment, then shrugged. With a nod to Polf, he started down the street to the huts assigned to Trent and Karen. He found the girl behind the squat stone house, doing her best to comb out a mop of freshly washed chestnut hair. "You'd do better to leave some mud in it," he advised her. This drew a hard gray stare. Guthrie turned to Polf. "Can't you do something with this one sitting beside her?" he demanded. Polf grinned, showing a sturdy set of broad teeth. "It would be like sacrifice to those who sent down these others," he said. "Last night, when leaving Retho at your door, I kill chivah lizard in street. With club. But was only a little blood and we are full of thanks." After a few minutes of conversation under the glowering gaze of the Terran girl, he enticed the Skirkhi woman around the corner toward the entrance of the hut. Guthrie turned to Karen. "Listen!" he said urgently. "What is this I hear about Trent going around like a cock-eyed good-will ambassador?" "I can't help what he does," Karen said defensively. She had trouble meeting his eye. "I told him I didn't think he should talk that way, but he said ... well ... that you—" "I can imagine," said Guthrie. "Well, he'd better stop it, and not on my account. This is a queer, dangerous place." He took a few steps to the corner of the hut, to check that the space between adjoining houses was empty of spies. The guards loitered in the street. "It may sound strange," he continued, "but it makes a distorted kind of sense for people who live on a planet like Boyd III—this belief in sky spirits. I told you about the bad season, I think, and the uproar raised by coinciding tides." Karen, having brushed her hair into some sort of order, eyed him watchfully. "I would expect them to protect themselves from the rains," she remarked. "Rains!" snorted Guthrie. "You don't know! Hurricanes! Tidal waves! Floods! They lose people every storm. This is a very bad place to live. So what do you suppose they worship?"