The spacefield reached almost to the near horizon. At one end clustered several towers. They must be two kilometers high, thought Holbrook in the depths of an overwhelmed brain: half a dozen titanic leaps of metal, but blended into a harmony which caught at his heart.

"There!"

He turned around. The Zolotoyans were approaching.

There were ten of them, riding on two small platforms: the propulsive system was not clear, and Holbrook's engineer's mind speculated about magnetic-field drives. They stood up, so rigid that not until the flying things had grounded and the creatures disembarked could the humans be quite sure they were alive.

There was about them the same chill beauty as their city bore. Two and a half meters tall they stood, and half of it was lean narrow-footed legs. Their chests and shoulders tapered smoothly, the arms were almost cylindrical but ended in eerily manlike hands. Above slender necks poised smooth, mask-faced heads—a single slit nostril, delicately lipped mouths immobile above narrow chins, fluted ears, long amber eyes with horizontal pupils. Their skins were a dusky hairless purple. They were clad identically, in form-fitting black; they carried vaguely rifle-like tubes, the blast-guns Holbrook remembered.

He thought between thunders: Why? Why should they ignore us for months, and then attack us so savagely when we dared to look at them, and then fail to pursue us or even search for our camp?

What are they going to do now?

Grushenko stepped forward. "Comrades," he said, holding up his hands. His voice came as if from far away; the bare black spaces ate it down, and Holbrook saw how a harshly suppressed fear glistened on the Ukrainian's skin. But Grushenko pointed to himself. "Man," he said. He pointed to the sky. "From the stars."

One of the Zolotoyans trilled a few notes. But it was at the others he (?) looked. A gun prodded Holbrook's back.

Ekaterina said with a stiff smile: "They are not in a conversational mood, Ilya Feodorovitch. Or perhaps only the commissar of interstellar relations is allowed to speak with us."

Hands closed on Holbrook's shoulders. He was pushed along, not violently but with firmness. He mounted one of the platforms. The others followed him. They rose without sound into the air. Looking back, Holbrook saw no one, no thing, on all 

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