The staircase moved slowly, and Bart had plenty of time to see
everything. On the step immediately in front of him, two Lhari were
standing; with their backs turned, they might almost have been men.
Unusually tall, unusually thin, but men. Then Bart amended that
mentally. The Lhari had two arms, two legs and a head apiece--they were
that much like men. Their faces had two eyes, two ears, and a nose and
mouth, all in the right places. But the similarity ended there.
They had skin of a curious pale silvery gray, and pale, pure-white hair
rising in what looked like a feathery crest. The eyes were long and
slanting, the forehead high and narrow, the nose delicately thin and
chiseled with long vertically slit nostrils, the ears long, pointed and
lobeless. The mouth looked almost human, though the chin was abnormally
pointed. The hands would almost have passed inspection as human
hands--except for the long, triangular nails curved over the fingertips
like the claws of a cat. They wore skin-tight clothes of some metallic
silky stuff, and long flowing gleaming silvery capes. They looked
unearthly, elfin and strange, and in their own way they were beautiful.
The two Lhari in front of Bart had been talking softly, in their fast
twittering speech; but as the hum of the crowds on the upper levels grew
louder, they raised their voices, and Bart could hear what they were
saying. He was a little surprised to find that he could still understand
the Lhari language. He hadn't heard a word of it in years--not since his
Mentorian mother died. The Lhari would never guess that he could
understand their speech. Not one human in a million could speak or
understand a dozen words of Lhari, except the Mentorians.
"Do you really think that human--" the first Lhari spoke the word as
if it were a filthy insult--"will have the temerity to come in by this
ship?"
"No reasonable being can tell what humans will do," said the second
Lhari. "But then, no reasonable being can tell what our own Port
Authorities will do either! If the message had only reached us sooner,
it would have been easier. Now I suppose it will have to clear through a
dozen officials and a dozen different kinds of formalities."
The younger Lhari sounded angry. "And we have only a description--no
name, nothing! How do they expect us to do anything under those
conditions? What I can't understand is how it ever happened, or how the
man managed to get away. What worries me is the possibility that he may
have communicated with others we don't know about. Those bungling fools
who let the first man get away can't even be sure--"