Yann cursed him good-naturedly. "I told you I know these people better than I know my own children! Come on, Trehearne, there's nothing to do in the factory. Don't you want to see something new?" Trehearne did. He was sick of the factory, after those long shifts of sweating labor. He shrugged, and made sure of the prismed shock-tube in his belt. It was customary, when the Vardda went abroad on strange worlds, for them to carry a weapon. They were sometimes needed. Yann noticed the gesture and grinned. His own belt-holster was empty. "I'd feel safer with one myself," he said, "but these people we're going to see are my friends. They'd be mortally offended if I came armed--a sign I didn't trust them, you see, and then look out!" He led the way down the muddy road, and Trehearne followed. Night came. The glorious sky of the Cluster crashed down on them, sown to bursting with stars as bright as moons. The crystalline trees took on opaline fires. The hut walls glittered. Around the two Vardda gathered a crowd of sloe-eyed children, silent and solemn, with hides of dusky green. Women watched them from the doorways. Human enough and pretty enough too, the younger ones, sleek and olive-colored, wearing bright silks from Llyrdis about their hips and baubles in their hair. Yann chattered happily as they went along the winding lanes, telling of his multifarious sins and adventurings and the clever ways in which he had cheated the factory. The hostile curious eyes of the women followed them and now and again a man spat expressively into the mud behind them. They came at last to a hut on the outskirts of the town. Beside it were chained four pairs of beasts the size of harriers, milk-white with dark muzzles and feet, the undulating bodies built light and long for speed. They made shrill barking sounds and leaped at the strangers, showing hungry fangs. Trehearne thought they looked like gigantic weasels--and quite as friendly. "Hounds," said Yann. "Kurat is a hunter. I had a private arrangement with him for skins." He winked hugely and lifted up his voice, shouting in the native tongue an obvious demand for Kurat to come out and welcome his brother. A lean, hard-muscled man emerged. He wore a loin-cloth of brilliant blue silk, not very clean, and a necklet of hammered metal. He greeted Yann with glad cries. Trehearne smiled inwardly. They were two of a kind, the Vardda and the hunter, a brace of happy scoundrels. Kurat welcomed him in the _lingua franca_ of the factory towns. A brother of Yann, it seemed, was his brother also. He swept Trehearne before him into the hut.