Facing them about twenty feet away, seated in a chair remarkably like a throne, was an old man. He looked as if he were alive . . . and he reminded Jill of an old goat on the farm where she had spent childhood summers—out-thrust lower lip, the whiskers, the fierce, brooding eyes. Jill felt her skin prickle; Archangel Foster made her uneasy. Mike said in Martian, “My brother, this is an Old One?” “I don’t know, Mike. They say he is.” He answered, “I do not grok an Old one.” “I don’t know, I tell you.” “I grok wrongness.”
