42
STARTLING STORIES
When he reached a Krex village, one he suspected—from satellite photos—marked the entry to the foothills, he sat down in the swirling, spiking sand and breathed a sigh of relief. The inhabitants of this neighborhood were definitely elsewhere.
The Krex dwellings described by Len-zini, those pure black artifices—some giant bulbs, some massive rectangles—were not there. Or at least, not exactly. It seemed to Luis that they were represented by the black puddles, some circular, some square, that dotted the landscape. When Krex weren’t home, their houses apparently melted, flu-idly flat. Luis passed other elements he ex-pected from reading Lenzini as well, all cur-rently inert.
His climb up the foothills was difficult but uneventful; the paths were not made for human fe
