"Your race does not forget," he said softly. "Why can't you remember
this conversation?"
Horng's four-digited hands clasped tightly and the powerful tendons
stood out starkly on the heavy wrists as Horng drew in long breaths of
air, the sound of his breathing loud in the great space under the dome.
THERE IS NOTHING CLEAR. THERE IS NOTHING CLEAR.
TWO
The Earthman called the town Hirlaj too, because the spaceport was
there. It was a new town, only a few months old, but the gleaming alloys
of the buildings were already coated with dirt and pitted by the
frequent dust storms that swept through. Garbage littered the alleys;
its odor was strange but still foul in the alien atmosphere. The small,
darting creatures were here too, foraging in the alleys and the
outskirts of the town, where the streets ended in garbage heaps and new
cemeteries or faded into the trackless flat where the spacers touched
down.
The Earthmen filled the streets ... drinking, fighting, laughing and
cursing, arguing over money or power or, sometimes, women.
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