ust.

Above Rynason the enormous arch of the Hirlaji dome loomed darkly
against the deep cerulean blue of the sky. The lines of all Hirlaji
architecture were deceptively simple, but Rynason had already found that
if he tried to follow the curves and angles he would soon find his head
swimming. There was a quality to these ancient buildings which was not
quite understandable to a Terran mind, as though the old Hirlaji had
built them on geometric principles just slightly at a tangent from those
of Earth. The curve of the arch drew Rynason's eyes along its silhouette
almost hypnotically. He caught himself, and shook his head, and turned
again to the alien before him.

The creature's name, as well as it could be rendered in a Terran script,
was Horng. The head of the alien was dark and hairless, leathery,
weathered; the light wires of the interpreter trailed down and across
the floor from where they were clamped to the deep indentations of the
temples. Massive boney ridges circled the shadowed eyes set low on the
head, directly above the wide mouth which always hung open while the
Hirlaji breathed in long gulps of air. Two atrophied nostrils were
situated on either side and slightly below the eyes. The neck was so
thick and massive that it was practically nonexistent, blending the head
with the shoulders and trunk, on which the dry skin stretched so thin
that Rynason could see the solid bone of the chest wall. Two squat arms
hung from the shoulders, terminating in four-digited hands on which two
sets of blunt fingers were opposed; Horng kept moving them constantly,
in what Rynason automatically interpreted as a nervous habit. The lower
body was composed of two heavily-muscled legs jointed so that they could
move either forward or backward, and the feet had four stubby but
powerful toes radiating from the center. The Hirlaji wore a dark garment
of something which looked like wood-fibre, hanging from the head and
gathered together by a cord just below the chest-wall.

Rynason, since arriving on the planet three weeks before as one of a
team of fifteen archaeological workers, had been interviewing Horng
almost every day, but still he often found himself remembering only with
difficulty that this was an intelligent being; Horng was so slow-moving
and uncommunicative most of the time that he almost seemed like a mound
of leather, like a pile of hides thrown together in a corner. But he was
intelligent, and in his mind he held