"What do you mean--appointed to him?" "To try to learn his language, and try to teach him ours." Eckert felt his interest rising. Jathong, then, must have known Pendleton fairly well. "Did he have any enemies that you know of?" "Enemies?" Jathong seemed ignorant of the meaning of the word, so Eckert explained. "No, he had no enemies. He would naturally have none such on Tunpesh." Templin leaned forward, tense. "If he had no enemies, why did he have no friends? You, for example, knew him longer and better than most. Why is it that you weren't his friend?" Jathong looked unhappy, as if being forced to say something he wanted not to say. "Pendleton was _kava_--I cannot explain it. The concept is difficult. You would not understand." He might be running the danger of throwing too many questions at Jathong, Eckert realized, and having him freeze up or turn vague. But it couldn't be helped. They had made no progress at all by subtlety, and time would eventually run out. He tried to broach the next question delicately. "Did Pendleton know any of the women of your race?" "He knew some of the women, as he knew the men." The answer didn't tell Eckert what he wanted to know. "Was he in love with any woman?" It sounded crude the way he put it, but it was hard to think of any other way of asking it. * * * * * Jathong looked at him incredulously, as if Eckert had asked him if Pendleton had had two heads. "That would have been impossible. None of our women would have--could have--been in love with _menshar_ Pendleton." _One line of inquiry just gone phht_, Eckert thought. _But Pendleton wasn't one to let a broken heart get him down anyway._ "Why not?" Templin cut in harshly. "He wasn't hard to look at and he would have made a good husband." Jathong diplomatically turned around to face Templin. "I have told you once--Pendleton was _kava_. It would have been quite impossible." The answer to what had happened to Pendleton probably lay in Jathong's inability to explain his own terms, Eckert believed. One could get just so close, and then the definitions became vague and useless. He asked a few more questions and finally dismissed Jathong. The interview, like all the others he and Templin had held during the last week, had been worthless. They knew nothing more than they had when they landed. "I still think they're lying," Templin said almost savagely. "Or perhaps the ones who really know something haven't come around." * * * * * Eckert got his pipe and sat near the doorway, letting the sunlight streaming through the foliage of a nearby tree dapple his face with a checkerboard pattern of modulated lights and velvety shadows. "If they're evading us or if they're lying, then the society is a dangerous one for us. But I still can't believe it. They're not warlike. They don't seem to have many weapons and definitely none of an advanced type." "How could anybody know for sure?"