They left Horng sitting dully at the edge of the Flat and retraced their steps through the Hirlaji ruins, still drawing no notice from the aliens. Rynason had been in some of the small planetfall towns where settlements had been established only to be abandoned by the main flow of interstellar traffic … those backwater areas where contact with the parent civilization was so slight that an entirely local culture had developed, almost as different from that of the mainstream Terran colonies as was this last vestige of the Hirlaji civilization. And in some of those areas interest in Earth was so slight that the offworlders were ignored, as the Earthmen were here … but he had never felt the total lack of attention that was here. It was not as though the Hirlaji had seen the Earthmen and grown used to them; Rynason had the feeling that to the Hirlaji the Earthmen were no more important than the winds or the dust beneath their feet.

As they passed through the settled portion of the ruins Rynason had to step around a Hirlaji who crossed his path. He walked silently past, his eyes not even flickering toward the Earthlings. Crazy grey hidepiles, Rynason thought, and he and Mara hurried out across the Flat toward the nearby Earth town.

On the outskirts of the town, where the packed-dirt streets faded into loose dust and garbage was already piled several feet high, they were met by Rene Malhomme. He sat long-legged with his back leaning against a weathered stone outcropping. He seemed old already, though he was not yet fifty; his windblown hair was almost the color of the surrounding grey dust and rock—perhaps because it was filled with that dust, Rynason thought. He stopped and looked down at the worn, tired man whose eyes belied that weariness.

“And have you communicated with God, Lee Rynason?” Malhomme asked with his rumbling, sardonic voice.

Rynason met his gaze, wondering what he wanted. He lowered the telepather pack from his shoulder and set it in the dust. Mara sat on a low rock beside him.

“Will an alien god do?” Rynason said.

Malhomme’s eyes rested on the telepather for a moment. “You spoke with Kor?” he asked.

Rynason nodded slowly. “I made a linkage with one of the Hirlaji, and tapped the race-memory. I suppose you could say I spoke with Kor.”

“You have touched the alien godhead,” Malhomme mused. “Then it’s real? Their god is real?”

“No,” said Rynason. “Kor is a machine.”

Malhomme’s head jerked up. “A machine? Deus ex machina, to quote an ancient curse. We make our own machines, and make gods of them.” The tired lines of his face relaxed. “Well, that’s a bit better. The gods remain a myth, and it’s better that way.”

Rynason stood over him on the windy Flat, still puzzled by his manner. He glanced at Mara, but she too was watching Malhomme, waiting for him to speak again.

Suddenly, Malhomme laughed, a dry laugh which almost rasped in his throat. “Lee Rynason, I have called men to God for so long that I almost began to believe it myself. And when the men started talking about the god of these aliens….” He shook his head, the spent laughter still drawing his mouth back into a grin. “Well, I’m glad it isn’t true. Religion wouldn’t be worth a damn if it were true.”

“How did the men find out about Kor?” Rynason asked.

Malhomme spread his hands. “Manning has been talking, as usual. He ridicules the Hirlaji, and their god. And at the same time he says they are a menace.”

“Why? Is he still trying to work the townsmen up against them?”

“Of course. Manning wants all the power he can get. If it means sacrificing the Hirlaji, he’ll do it.” Malhomme stood up, stretching himself. “He says they may be the Outsiders, and he’s stirring up all the fear he can. He’ll grab any excuse, no matter how impossible.”

“It’s not so impossible,” Rynason said. “Kor is an Outsiders machine.”

Malhomme stared at him. “You’re sure of that?”

He nodded. “There’s no doubt of it—I saw it from three feet away.” He told Malhomme of his linkage with Horng, the contact with the memories, the mind, Tebron, and of the interview with the machine that was Kor. Malhomme listened with fascination, his shaggy head tilted to one side, occasionally throwing in a comment or a question.

As he finished, Rynason said, “That race that Kor warned them about sounds remarkably like us. A warlike race that would crush them if they left the planet. We haven’t found any other intelligent life … just the Hirlaji, and us.”

“And the Outsiders,” said Malhomme.

“No. This was a race which was still growing from barbarism, at about the same level as the Hirlaji themselves. Remember, the Outsiders had already spread through a thousand star-systems long before this. No, we’re the race they were warned against.”

“What about the weapons?” Malhomme said. “Disintegrators. We haven’t got anything that powerful that a man can carry in his hand. And yet the Hirlaji had them thousands of years ago.”

“Yes, but for some reason they couldn’t duplicate them. It doesn’t make sense: those weapons were apparently beyond the technological level of the Hirlaji, but they had them.”

“Perhaps your aliens were the Outsiders,” Malhomme said. “Perhaps we see around us the remnants of a great race fallen.”

Rynason shook his head.

“But they must have had some contact with the Outsiders,” Mara said. “Sometime even before Tebron’s lifetime. The Outsiders could have left the disintegrators, and the machine that they thought was a god….”

“That’s just speculation,” Rynason said. “Tebron himself didn’t really know where they’d come from; they’d been passed down through the priesthood for a long time, and within the priesthood they did have some secrets. I suppose if I could search the race-memory long enough I might find another nice big block there hiding that secret. But it’s difficult.”

“And you may not have time,” Malhomme said. “When Manning hears that the Altar of Kor was an Outsiders machine, there’ll be no way left to stop him from slaughtering the Hirlaji.”

“I’m not sure there’ll be any real trouble,” Rynason said.

Malhomme’s lips drew back into the deep lines of his face. “There is always trouble. Always. Whoever or whatever spoke through the machine knew that much about us. The only way you could stop it, Lee, would be to hold back this information from Manning. And to do that, you would have to be sure, yourself, that there is no danger from the Hirlaji. You’re in the key position, right now.”

Rynason frowned. He knew Malhomme was right—it would be difficult to stop Manning if what he’d said about the man’s push for power was true. But could he be sure that the Hirlaji were as harmless as they seemed? He remembered the reassuring touch of Horng’s mind upon his own, the calmness he found in it, and the resignation … but he also remembered the fear, and the screaming, and the hot rush of anger that had touched him.

In the silence on the edge of the Flat, Mara spoke. “Lee, I think you should report it all to Manning.”

“Why?”

Her face was clouded. “I’m not sure. But … when I disconnected the wires of the telepather, Horng looked at me…. Have you ever looked into his eyes, up close? It’s frightening: it makes you remember how old they are, and how strong. Lee, that creature has muscles in his face as strong as most men’s arms!”

“He just looked at you?” said Rynason. “Nothing else?”

“That’s all. But those eyes … they were so deep, and so full. You don’t usually notice them, because they’re set so deeply in the shadows of his face, but his eyes are large.” She stopped, and shook her head in confusion. “I can’t really explain it. When I moved around him to the other side, I could see his eyes following me. He didn’t move, otherwise—it was as though only his eyes were alive. But they frightened me. There was much more in them than just … not seeing, or not caring. His eyes were alive.”

“That’s not much evidence to make you think the Hirlaji are dangerous.”

“Oh, I don’t know if they could be dangerous. But they’re not just … passive. They’re not vegetables. Not with those eyes.”

“All right,” Rynason said. “I’ll give Manning a full report, and we’ll put it in his hands.”

He picked up the telepather pack and slung it over his shoulder. Mara stood up, shaking away the dust which had blown against her feet.

“What will you do,” Malhomme asked, “if Manning decides that’s enough cause to kill the Hirlaji?”

“I’ll stop him,” Rynason said. “He’s not in control here, yet.”

Malhomme flashed his sardonic smile again. “Perhaps not … but if you need help, call to God. The books say nothing about alien races, but surely these must be God’s creatures too. And I’m always ready to break a few heads, if it will help.” He turned and spat into the dust. “Or even just for the hell of it,” he said.

Rynason found Manning that same afternoon, going over reports in his quarters. As soon as he began his description of the orders given to Tebron he found that Malhomme’s warnings had been correct.

“What did this machine say about us?” Manning asked sharply. “Why were the Hirlaji supposed to stay away from us?”

“Because we’re a warlike race. The idea was that if the Hirlaji stayed out of space they’d have about five thousand years before we found them.”

“How long ago was all this? I had your report here….”

“At least eight thousand years,” Rynason said. “They overestimated us.”

Manning stood up, scowling. There were heavy lines around his eyes and he hadn’t trimmed his thin beard. Whatever he was working on, Rynason thought, he was putting a lot of effort into it.

“This doesn’t make sense, Lee. Damn it, since when do machines make guesses? Wrong ones, at that?”

Rynason shrugged. “Well, you’ve got to remember that this was an alien machine; maybe that’s the way they built them.”

Manning threw a cold glance at him and poured a glass of Sector Three brandy for himself. “You’re not being amusing,” he said shortly. “Now, go on, and make some sense.”

“I’d like to,” Rynason said. “Frankly, my theory is that the machine was a communication-link with the Outsiders. It could explain a lot of things—maybe even the similarities in architecture.”

Manning scowled and turned away from him. He paced heavily across the room and looked out through the plasticene window at the nearly empty, dust-strewn street for a few moments; when he returned the frown was still on his face.

“Damn it, Lee, you’re not keeping your mind on the problems here. While you were looking into Horng’s mind, how do you know he wasn’t spying in yours? You had an equal hookup, right?”

Rynason nodded. “I couldn’t have prevented him in any case. Why? Are we supposed to be hiding anything?”

“I told you not to trust them!” Manning snapped. “Now if you can’t even match wits with a senile horsehead….”

“You were the one who said they might be more adept at telepathy than we are,” Rynason said. “It was a chance we had to take.”

“There’s a difference between taking chances and handing them information on a silver platter,” Manning said angrily. “Did you make any effort at all to keep him from finding out too much about us?”

Rynason shrugged. “I kept him pretty busy. All of the time I was running through Tebron’s memories I could feel Horng screaming somewhere; he must have been too upset to do any probing in my mind.”

Manning was silent for a moment. “Let’s hope so,” he said shortly. “If they find out how weak we are, how long it would take us to get reinforcements out here….”

“They’re still just a dying race, remember,” Rynason said. “They’re not the Outsiders. What makes you so sure that they’re dangerous?”

“Oh, come on, Lee! Think! They’re in contact with the Outsiders; you said so yourself. And just remember this: the Outsiders obviously considered it inevitable that there would be war between us. Now put those two facts together and tell me the horses aren’t dangerous!”

Rynason said slowly, “It isn’t as simple as that. The order given to Tebron was to stop all scientific progress and stifle any military development, and he seems to have done just that. The idea was that if the Hirlaji were harmless when we found them there might be no need for fighting.”

“Perhaps. But we weren’t supposed to know that they were in contact with the Outsiders, either—that was probably part of the purpose of the block in the race-memory. But we got through the block, and they know it, and presumably by now the Outsiders know it. That changes the picture, and I’d like to know just how much it changes it.”

“They’re not in contact with the Outsiders any longer,” said Rynason.

“What makes you so sure of that?”

“Tebron broke the contact—that was in the orders too. The priesthood, which had been the connecting link with the Outsiders through the machine, was disbanded. When Tebron died he didn’t appoint a successor; the machine hasn’t been used since.”

Manning thought about that, still frowning. “Where is the machine?”

“I don’t know. If it hasn’t been kept in repair it might not even be usable any more, wherever it is.”

“I’ll tell you something, Lee,” said Manning. “There’s still too much that we don’t know—and too much that the Hirlaji do know, now. Whether or not your horse-buddy was picking your brains, they know we’re not as strong as they thought we were. It took us eight thousand years to get here instead of five thousand. Let’s just hope they don’t think about that too much.”

He stopped, and paced to the window again. “Look around you, Lee—out on the street, in the town. We’ve hardly put our feet down on this planet; we’ve got very little in the way of weapons with us and it will take weeks to get any more in here; there’s practically no organization here yet. We could be wiped off this planet before we knew what hit us. We’re sitting ducks.”

He came back to stand before Rynason. “And what about the Outsiders? They think of us strictly in terms of war, and they’ve been keeping themselves away from us all this time. That’s obviously why they pulled out of this sector of space. Up until now we’d thought they were dead. But now we find they’ve been in contact with this planet … all right, it was eight thousand years ago. But that’s a lot more recent than the last evidences we’ve had of them, and they’ve obviously been watching us.

“Now, you’ve been in direct contact with the horses’ minds; you’ve practically been one of them yourself, for awhile. All right, what’s their reaction going to be when they realize that the Outsiders, their god, overestimated us? What will they do?”

Rynason thought about that. He tried to remember the minds he had touched during the linkage with Horng: Tebron, the ancient warrior-king, and the young Hirlaji staring at the buildings of one of the ancient cities, and the old, dying one who had decided not to plant again one year … and Horng himself, tired and calm on the edge of the Flat, amid the ruins of a city. He remembered the others in that crumbling last home of an entire race … slow, quiet, uncaring.

“I don’t think they’ll do anything. They wouldn’t see any point to it.” He paused, remembering. “They lost all their purpose eight thousand years ago,” he said quietly.

Manning grunted. “Somehow I lack your touching faith in them.”

“And somehow,” Rynason said, “I lack your burning ambition to find an enemy, a handy menace to crush. You argue too hard, Manning.”

Manning raised an eyebrow. “I suppose I haven’t even put a doubt in your mind about them? Not one doubt?”

Rynason turned away and didn’t answer.

Manning sighed. “Maybe it’s time I went out there myself and had a seance with the horses.” He set down his glass of brandy, which he had been turning in his hand as he spoke. “Lee, I want you to check back here with me in two hours … by then I should have things straightened up and ready to go.”

He strode to the supply closet at one end of the room and took from it a belt and holster, from which he removed a recent-model regulation stunner. “This is as powerful a weapon as we have here so far, except for the heavy stuff. I hope we never have to use any of that—clearing it for use is a lot of red tape.” He looked up and saw the cold expression on Rynason’s face. “Of course, I hope we don’t have to use the stunners, either,” he said calmly.

Rynason turned without a word and went to the door. He stopped there for a moment and watched Manning checking over the weapon. He was thinking of the disintegrators he had seen on the steps of the Temple of Kor, and of the shell of a body tumbling out of the shadows.

“I’ll see you at 600,” he said.