"I don't know. They were hunting him, too. He came to help me. I couldn't have escaped without him. He killed the hawks. But...." She hesitated, choosing her words carefully. "He says he came from beyond the mountains. He knows of Earth and speaks our tongue. And when he killed the hawks he smashed the skull of one and took the sun-stone." All six started at that. And the tallest of them, a young man with a face as bleak and craggy as the rocks around them, came toward Trevor. "Why did you take the sun-stone?" he asked. His voice held an ugly edge. Trevor stared at him. "Why the devil do you suppose? Because it's valuable." The man held out his hand. "Give it to me." "The hell I will!" cried Trevor furiously. He backed away, just a little, getting set. The young man came on, and his face was dark and dangerous. "Saul, wait!" cried Jen. Saul didn't wait. He kept right on coming. Trevor let him get close before he swung, and he put every ounce of his strength behind the blow. The smashing fist took Saul squarely in the belly and sent him backward, doubled up. Trevor stood with hunched shoulders, breathing hard, watching the others with feral eyes. "What are you?" he snarled. "A bunch of thieves? All right, come on! I got that stone the hard way and I'm going to keep it!" Big words. A big anger. And a big fear behind them. The men were around him in a ring now. There was no chance of breaking away. Even if he did he was so winded they could pull him down in minutes. The stone weighed heavy in his pocket, heavy as half a lifetime of sweat and hunger and hard work, on the rockpiles of Mercury. Saul straightened up. His face was still gray, but he bent again and picked up a sharp-pointed implement of rock that he had dropped. Then he moved forward. And the others closed in, at the same time, quite silently. There was a bitter taste in Trevor's mouth as he waited for them. To get his hands on a sun-stone at last, and then to lose it and probably his life too, to this crowd of savages! It was more than anybody ought to be asked to bear. "Saul, wait!" cried Jen again, pushing in front of him. "He saved my life! You can't just...." "He's a Korin. A spy." "He can't be! There's no stone in his forehead. Not even a scar." Saul's voice was flat and relentless. "He took a sun-stone. Only a Korin would touch one of the cursed things." "But he says he's from outside the valley! From Earth, Saul. From _Earth_! Things would be different there." Jen's insistence on that point had at least halted the men temporarily. And Trevor, looking at Saul's face, had suddenly begun to understand something. "You think the sun-stones are evil," he said. Saul gave him a sombre glance. "They are. And the one you have is going to be destroyed. Now."