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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/22467-h.zip b/22467-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..6b37f94 --- /dev/null +++ b/22467-h.zip diff --git a/22467-h/22467-h.htm b/22467-h/22467-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6866255 --- /dev/null +++ b/22467-h/22467-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2590 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Sand Doom, by Murray Leinster. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + a {text-decoration:none; color:blue;} + a:visited {color:gray;} + body {margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%;} + h1,h3 {text-align: center; clear: both;} + h3 {margin:0 auto 0 auto;} + hr {width:65%; margin:2em auto 2em auto; clear:both; text-align:center;} + hr.full {width: 100%;} + hr.minor {width: 45%; margin:1em auto 1em auto; clear:both;} + ins.corr {text-decoration:none; border-bottom: thin dotted gray;} + p {margin-top:.75em; text-align:justify; margin-bottom:.75em; text-indent:1.5em;} + table {margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto;} + .b {font-weight:bold;} + .bbox {border:solid 1px; padding:1em; margin:2em 10% 2em 10%;} + .blurb {padding:1em 1em 1em 1em; margin:2em 20% 2em 20%; border:6px ridge gray; font-family:sans-serif; font-size:90%;} + .c {text-align:center;} + .caption {font-weight:bold; font-size:75%;} + .figcenter {margin:auto; text-align:center;} + .figleft {float:left; clear:left; margin:1em 1em 1em 0; padding:0; text-align:center;} + .i {font-style:italic;} + .pagenum {position:absolute; left:95%; font-style:normal; font-size:smaller; text-align:right; text-indent:0;} + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align:left;} + .poem br {display:none;} + .poem .stanza {margin:1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display:block; margin-left:0em; padding-left:3em; text-indent:-3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display:block; margin-left:2em; padding-left:3em; text-indent:-3em;} + .poem span.i4 {display:block; margin-left:4em; padding-left:3em; text-indent:-3em;} + .sc {font-variant: small-caps;} + .sf50 {font-size:50%;} + .sf75 {font-size:75%;} + .u {text-decoration:underline;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sand Doom, by William Fitzgerald Jenkins + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Sand Doom + +Author: William Fitzgerald Jenkins + +Release Date: August 31, 2007 [EBook #22467] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAND DOOM *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 433px;"> +<img src="images/illus-cover.jpg" width="433" height="600" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></p> + +<div class='blurb'><p><i>The problem was as neat a circle as one could ask for; without repair +parts, they couldn’t bring in the ship that carried the repair +parts!</i></p></div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/illus-title.png" width="500" height="433" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<h1>SAND DOOM<br /> +<span class='sf75'>BY MURRAY LEINSTER</span><br /> +<span class='sf50'>Illustrated by Freas</span></h1> + +<p>Bordman knew there was something wrong when the throbbing, acutely +uncomfortable vibration of rocket blasts shook the ship. Rockets were +strictly emergency devices, these days, so when they were used there was +obviously an emergency.</p> + +<p>He sat still. He had been reading, in the passenger lounge of the +<i>Warlock</i>—a very small lounge indeed—but as a senior Colonial Survey +officer he was well-traveled enough to know when things did not go +right. He looked up from the bookscreen, waiting. Nobody came to explain +the eccentricity of a spaceship using rockets. It would have been +immediate, on a regular liner, but the <i>Warlock</i> was practically a +tramp. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> +This trip it carried just two passengers. Passenger service was +not yet authorized to the planet ahead, and would not be until Bordman +had made the report he was on his way to compile. At the moment, though, +the rockets blasted, and stopped, and blasted again. There was something +definitely wrong.</p> + +<p>The <i>Warlock’s</i> other passenger came out of her cabin. She looked +surprised. She was Aletha Redfeather, an unusually lovely Amerind. It +was extraordinary that a girl could be so self-sufficient on a tedious +space-voyage, and Bordman approved of her. She was making the journey to +Xosa II as a representative of the Amerind Historical Society, but +she’d brought her own bookreels and some elaborate fancywork +which—woman-fashion—she used to occupy her hands. She hadn’t +been at all a nuisance. Now she tilted her head on one side as she +looked inquiringly at Bordman.</p> + +<p>“I’m wondering, too,” he told her, just as an +especially sustained and violent shuddering of rocket-impulsion made his +chair legs thutter on the floor.</p> + +<p>There was a long period of stillness. Then another violent but much +shorter blast. A shorter one still. Presently there was a half-second +blast which must have been from a single rocket tube because of the mild +shaking it produced. After that there was nothing at all.</p> + +<p>Bordman frowned to himself. He’d been anticipating groundfall +within a matter of hours, certainly. He’d just gone through his +specbook carefully and re-familiarized himself with the work he was to +survey on Xosa II. It was a perfectly commonplace minerals-planet +development, and he’d expected to clear it FE—fully +established—and probably TP and NQ ratings as well, indicating that +tourists were permitted and no quarantine was necessary. Considering the +aridity of the planet, no bacteriological dangers could be expected to +exist, and if tourists wanted to view its monstrous deserts and +infernolike wind sculptures—why they should be welcome.</p> + +<p>But the ship had used rocket drive in the planet’s near vicinity. +Emergency. Which was ridiculous. This was a perfectly routine sort of +voyage. Its purpose was the delivery of heavy equipment—specifically a +smelter—and a senior Colonial Survey officer to report the completion +of primary development.</p> + +<p>Aletha waited, as if for more rocket blasts. Presently she smiled at +some thought that had occurred to her.</p> + +<p>“If this were an adventure tape,” she said humorously, +“the loudspeaker would now announce that the ship had established +itself in an orbit around the strange, uncharted planet first sighted +three days ago, and that volunteers were wanted for a boat +landing.”</p> + +<p>Bordman demanded impatiently:</p> + +<p>“Do you bother with adventure tapes? They’re nonsense! A +pure waste of time!”</p> + +<p>Aletha smiled again.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> +“My ancestors,” she told him, “used to hold tribal +dances and make medicine and boast about how many scalps they’d +taken and how they did it. It was satisfying—and educational for the +young. Adolescents became familiar with the idea of what we nowadays +call adventure. They were partly ready for it when it came. I suspect +your ancestors used to tell each other stories about hunting mammoths +and such. So I think it would be fun to hear that we were in orbit and +that a boat landing was in order.”</p> + +<p>Bordman grunted. There were no longer adventures. The universe was +settled; civilized. Of course there were still frontier planets—Xosa II +was one—but pioneers had only hardships. Not adventures.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>The ship-phone speaker clicked. It said curtly:</p> + +<p>“<i>Notice. We have arrived at Xosa II and have established an orbit +about it. A landing will be made by boat.</i>”</p> + +<p>Bordman’s mouth dropped open.</p> + +<p>“What the devil’s this?” he demanded.</p> + +<p>“Adventure, maybe,” said Aletha. Her eyes crinkled very +pleasantly when she smiled. She wore the modern Amerind dress—a sign of +pride in the ancestry which now implied such diverse occupations as +interstellar steel construction and animal husbandry and llano-planet +colonization. “If it were adventure, as the only girl on this ship +I’d have to be in the landing party, lest the tedium of orbital +waiting make the”—her smile widened to a grin—“the pent-up +restlessness of trouble-makers in the crew——”</p> + +<p>The ship-phone clicked again.</p> + +<p>“<i>Mr. Bordman. Miss Redfeather. According to advices from the +ground, the ship may have to stay in orbit for a considerable time. You +will accordingly be landed by boat. Will you make yourselves ready, +please, and report to the boat-blister?</i>” The voice paused and +added, “<i>Hand luggage only, please.</i>”</p> + +<p>Aletha’s eyes brightened. Bordman felt the shocked incredulity of +a man accustomed to routine when routine is impossibly broken. Of course +survey ships made boat landings from orbit, and colony ships let down +robot hulls by rocket when there was as yet no landing grid for the +handling of a ship. But never before in his experience had an ordinary +freighter, on a routine voyage to a colony ready for its final +degree-of-completion survey, ever landed anybody by boat.</p> + +<p>“This is ridiculous!” said Bordman, fuming.</p> + +<p>“Maybe it’s adventure,” said Aletha. “I’ll +pack.”</p> + +<p>She disappeared into her cabin. Bordman hesitated. Then he went into his +own. The colony on Xosa II had been established two years ago. Minimum +comfort conditions had been realized within six months. A temporary +landing grid for light supply ships was up within a year. It had +permitted stock-piling, and it had been taken down to be rebuilt +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span> +as a permanent grid with every possible contingency provided for. The +eight months since the last ship landing was more than enough for the +building of the gigantic, spidery, half-mile-high structure which would +handle this planet’s interstellar commerce. There was no excuse +for an emergency! A boat landing was nonsensical!</p> + +<p>But he surveyed the contents of his cabin. Most of the cargo of the +<i>Warlock</i> was smelter equipment which was to complete the outfitting of +the colony. It was to be unloaded first. By the time the ship’s +holds were wholly empty, the smelter would be operating. The ship would +wait for a full cargo of pig metal. Bordman had expected to live in this +cabin while he worked on the survey he’d come to make, and to +leave again with the ship.</p> + +<p>Now he was to go aground by boat. He fretted. The only emergency +equipment he could possibly need was a heat-suit. He doubted the urgency +of that. But he packed some clothing for indoors, and then defiantly +included his specbook and the volumes of definitive data to which +specifications for structures and colonial establishments always +referred. He’d get to work on his report immediately he landed.</p> + +<p>He went out of the passenger’s lounge to the boat-blister. An +engineer’s legs projected from the boat port. The engineer +withdrew, with a strip of tape from the boat’s computer. He +compared it dourly with a similar strip from the ship’s figurebox. +Bordman consciously acted according to the best traditions of +passengers.</p> + +<p>“What’s the trouble?” he asked.</p> + +<p>“We can’t land,” said the engineer shortly.</p> + +<p>He went away—according to the tradition by which ships’ crews are +always scornful of passengers.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>Bordman scowled. Then Aletha came, carrying a not-too-heavy bag. Bordman +put it in the boat, disapproving of the crampedness of the craft. But +this wasn’t a lifeboat. It was a landing boat. A lifeboat had +Lawlor drive and could travel light-years, but in the place of rockets +and rocket fuel it had air-purifiers and water-recovery units and +food-stores. It couldn’t land without a landing grid aground, but +it could get to a civilized planet. This landing boat could land without +a grid, but its air wouldn’t last long.</p> + +<p>“Whatever’s the matter,” said Bordman darkly, +“it’s incompetence somewhere!”</p> + +<p>But he couldn’t figure it out. This was a cargo ship. Cargo ships +neither took off nor landed under their own power. It was too costly of +fuel they would have to carry. So landing grids used local power—which +did not have to be lifted—to heave ships out into space, and again used +local power to draw them to ground again. Therefore ships carried fuel +only for actual space-flight, which was economy. Yet landing grids had +no moving parts, and while they did have to be monstrous structures they +actually <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> +drew power from planetary ionospheres. So with no moving parts to break +down and no possibility of the failure of a power source—landing +grids couldn’t fail! So there couldn’t be an emergency to +make a ship ride orbit around a planet which had a landing grid!</p> + +<p>The engineer came back. He carried a mail sack full of letter-reels. He +waved his hand. Aletha crawled into the landing-boat port. Bordman +followed. Four people, with a little crowding, could have gotten into +the little ship. Three pretty well filled it. The engineer followed them +and sealed the port.</p> + +<p>“Sealed off,” he said into the microphone before him.</p> + +<p>The exterior-pressure needle moved halfway across the dial. The +interior-pressure needle stayed steady.</p> + +<p>“All tight,” said the engineer.</p> + +<p>The exterior-pressure needle flicked to zero. There were clanking +sounds. The long halves of the boat-blister stirred and opened, and +abruptly the landing boat was in an elongated cup in the hull-plating, +and above them there were many, many stars. The enormous disk of a +nearby planet floated into view around the hull. It was monstrous and +blindingly bright. It was of a tawny color, with great, irregular areas +of yellow and patches of bluishness. But most of it was the color of +sand. And all its colors varied in shade—some places were lighter and +some darker—and over at one edge there was blinding whiteness which +could not be anything but an ice cap. But Bordman knew that there was no +ocean or sea or lake on all this whole planet, and the ice cap was more +nearly hoarfrost than such mile-deep glaciation as would be found at the +poles of a maximum-comfort world.</p> + +<p>“Strap in,” said the engineer over his shoulder. +“No-gravity coming, and then rocket-push. Settle your +heads.”</p> + +<p>Bordman irritably strapped himself in. He saw Aletha busy at the same +task, her eyes shining. Without warning, there came a sensation of acute +discomfort. It was the landing boat detaching itself from the ship and +the diminishment of the ship’s closely-confined artificial-gravity +field. That field suddenly dropped to nothingness, and Bordman had the +momentary sickish dizziness that flicked-off gravity always produces. At +the same time his heart pounded unbearably in the instinctive, +racial-memory reaction to the feel of falling.</p> + +<p>Then roarings. He was thrust savagely back against his seat. His tongue +tried to slide back into his throat. There was an enormous oppression on +his chest. He found himself thinking panicky profanity.</p> + +<p>Simultaneously the vision ports went black, because they were out of the +shadow of the ship. The landing boat turned—but there was no sensation +of centrifugal force—and they were in a vast obscurity with merely a +dim phantom of the planetary surface to be seen. But behind +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> +them a blue-white sun shone terribly. Its light was +warm—hot—even though it came through the polarized shielding +ports.</p> + +<p>“Did ... did you say,” panted Aletha happily—breathless +because of the acceleration—“that there weren’t any +adventures?”</p> + +<p>Bordman did not answer. But he did not count discomfort as an adventure.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>The engineer did not look out the ports at all. He watched the screen +before him. There was a vertical line across the side of the lighted +disk. A blip moved downward across it, showing their height in thousands +of miles. After a long time the blip reached the bottom, and the +vertical line became double and another blip began to descend. It +measured height in hundreds of miles. A bright spot—a square—appeared +at one side of the screen. A voice muttered metallically, and suddenly +seemed to shout, and then muttered again. Bordman looked out one of the +black ports and saw the planet as if through smoked glass. It was a +ghostly reddish thing which filled half the cosmos. It had mottlings. +Its edge was curved. That would be the horizon.</p> + +<p>The engineer moved controls and the white square moved. It went across +the screen. He moved more controls. It came back to the center. The +height-in-hundreds blip was at the bottom, now, and the vertical line +tripled and a tens-of-miles-height blip crawled downward.</p> + +<p>There were sudden, monstrous plungings of the landing boat. It had hit +the outermost fringes of atmosphere. The engineer said words it was not +appropriate for Aletha to hear. The plungings became more violent. +Bordman held on—to keep from being shaken to pieces despite the +straps—and stared at the murky surface of the planet. It seemed to be +fleeing from them and they to be trying to overtake it. Gradually, very +gradually, its flight appeared to slow. They were down to twenty miles, +then.</p> + +<p>Quite abruptly the landing boat steadied. The square spot bobbed about +in the center of the astrogation screen. The engineer worked controls to +steady it.</p> + +<p>The ports cleared a little. Bordman could see the ground below more +distinctly. There were patches of every tint that mineral coloring could +produce. There were vast stretches of tawny sand. A little while more, +and he could see the shadows of mountains. He made out mountain flanks +which should have had valleys between them and other mountain flanks +beyond, but they had tawny flatnesses between, instead. These, he knew, +would be the sand plateaus which had been observed on this planet and +which had only a still-disputed explanation. But he could see areas of +glistening yellow and dirty white, and splashes of pink and streaks of +ultramarine and gray and violet, and the incredible red of iron oxide +covering square miles—too much to be believed.</p> + +<p>The landing-boat’s rockets cut off. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +It coasted. Presently the horizon tilted and all the dazzling ground +below turned sedately beneath them. There came staccato instructions +from a voice-speaker, which the engineer obeyed. The landing boat swung +low—below the tips of giant mauve mountains with a sand plateau +beyond them—and its nose went up. It stalled.</p> + +<p>Then the rockets roared again—and now, with air about them and after a +momentary pause, they were horribly loud—and the boat settled down and +down upon its own tail of fire.</p> + +<p>There was a completely blinding mass of dust and rocket fumes which cut +off all sight of everything else. Then there was a crunching crash, and +the engineer swore peevishly to himself. He cut the rockets again. +Finally.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>Bordman found himself staring straight up, still strapped in his chair. +The boat had settled on its own tail fins, and his feet were higher than +his head, and he felt ridiculous. He saw the engineer at work +unstrapping himself. He duplicated the action, but it was absurdly +difficult to get out of the chair.</p> + +<p>Aletha managed more gracefully. She didn’t need help.</p> + +<p>“Wait,” said the engineer ungraciously, “till somebody +comes.”</p> + +<p>So they waited, using what had been chair backs for seats.</p> + +<p>The engineer moved a control and the windows cleared further. They saw +the surface of Xosa II. There was no living thing in sight. The ground +itself was pebbles and small rocks and minor boulders—all apparently +tumbled from the starkly magnificent mountains to one side. There were +monstrous, many-colored cliffs and mesas, every one eaten at in the +unmistakable fashion of wind-erosion. Through a notch in the mountain +wall before them a strange, fan-shaped, frozen formation appeared. If +such a thing had been credible, Bordman would have said that it was a +flow of sand simulating a waterfall. And everywhere there was blinding +brightness and the look and feel of blistering sunshine. But there was +not one single leaf or twig or blade of grass. This was pure desert. +This was Xosa II.</p> + +<p>Aletha regarded it with bright eyes.</p> + +<p>“Beautiful!” she said happily. “Isn’t it?”</p> + +<p>“Personally,” said Bordman, “I never saw a place that +looked less homelike or attractive.”</p> + +<p>Aletha laughed.</p> + +<p>“My eyes see it differently.”</p> + +<p>Which was true. It was accepted, nowadays, that humankind might be one +species but was many races, and each saw the cosmos in its own fashion. +On Kalmet III there was a dense, predominantly Asiatic population which +terraced its mountainsides for agriculture and deftly mingled modern +techniques with social customs not to be found on—say—Demeter I, where +there were many red-tiled stucco towns and very many olive +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> +groves. In the llano planets of the Equis cluster, +Amerinds—Aletha’s kin—zestfully rode over plains +dotted with the descendants of buffalo and antelope and cattle brought +from ancient Earth. On the oases of Rustam IV there were date palms and +riding camels and much argument about what should be substituted for the +direction of Mecca at the times for prayer, while wheat fields spanned +provinces on Canna I and highly civilized emigrants from the continent +of Africa on Earth stored jungle gums and lustrous gems in the +warehouses of their spaceport city of Timbuk.</p> + +<p>So it was natural for Aletha to look at this wind-carved wilderness +otherwise than as Bordman did. Her racial kindred were the pioneers of +the stars, these days. Their heritage made them less than appreciative +of urban life. Their inborn indifference to heights made them the +steel-construction men of the cosmos, and more than two-thirds of the +landing grids in the whole galaxy had their coup-feather symbols on the +key posts. But the planet government on Algonka V was housed in a +three-thousand-foot white stone tepee, and the best horses known to men +were raised by ranchers with bronze skins and high cheekbones on the +llano planet Chagan.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<div class="figleft" style="width: 350px;"> +<img src="images/illus-cousin.png" width="350" height="500" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>Now, here, in the <i>Warlock’s</i> landing boat, the engineer snorted. +A vehicle came around a cliff wall, clanking its way on those eccentric +caterwheels that new-founded colonies find so useful. The vehicle +glittered. It crawled over tumbled boulders, and flowed over fallen +scree. It came briskly toward them. The engineer snorted again.</p> + +<p>“That’s my cousin Ralph!” said Aletha in pleased +surprise.</p> + +<p>Bordman blinked and looked again. He did not quite believe his eyes. But +they told the truth. The figure controlling the ground car was +Indian—Amerind—wearing a breechcloth and thick-soled sandals and three +streamlined feathers in a band about his head. Moreover, he did not ride +in a seat. He sat astride a semi-cylindrical part of the ground car, +over which a gaily-colored blanket had been thrown.</p> + +<p>The ship’s engineer rumbled disgustedly. But then Bordman saw how +sane this method of riding was—here. The ground vehicle lurched and +swayed and rolled and pitched and tossed as it came over the uneven +ground. To sit in anything like a chair would have been foolish. A back +rest would throw one forward in a frontward lurch, and give no support +in case of a backward one. A sidewise tilt would tend to throw one out. +Riding a ground car as if in a saddle was sense!</p> + +<p>But Bordman was not so sure about the costume. The engineer opened the +port and spoke hostilely out of it:</p> + +<p>“D’you know there’s a lady in this thing?”</p> + +<p>The young Indian grinned. He waved his hand to Aletha, who pressed her +nose against a viewport. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +And just then Bordman did understand the costume or lack of it. Air +came in the open exit port. It was hot and <ins class='corr' +title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed +'dessicated'.">desiccated</ins>. It was furnace-like!</p> + +<p>“How, ’Letha,” called the rider on the caterwheel +steed. “Either dress for the climate or put on a heat-suit before +you come out of there!”</p> + +<p>Aletha chuckled. Bordman heard a stirring behind him. Then Aletha +climbed to the exit port and swung out. Bordman heard a dour muttering +from the engineer. Then he saw her greeting her cousin. She had slipped +out of the conventionalized Amerind outfit to which Bordman was +accustomed. Now she was clad as <ins class='corr' title="Transcriber's +Note: The original showed 'Anglo-Anglo-Saxon—girls'.">Anglo-Saxon girls</ins> +dressed for beaches on the cool-temperature planets.</p> + +<p>For a moment Bordman thought of sunstroke, with his own eyes dazzled by +the still-partly-filtered sunlight. But Aletha’s Amerind coloring +was perfectly suited to sunshine even of this intensity. Wind blowing +upon her body would cool her skin. Her thick, straight black hair was at +least as good protection against sunstroke as a heat-helmet. She might +feel hot, but she would be perfectly safe. She wouldn’t even +sunburn. But he, Bordman——</p> + +<p>He grimly stripped to underwear and put on the heat-suit from his bag. +He filled its canteens from the boat’s water tank. He turned on +the tiny, battery-powered motors. The suit ballooned out. It was +intended for short periods of intolerable heat. The motors kept it +inflated—away from his skin—and cooled its interior by the evaporation +of sweat plus water from its canteen tanks. It was a miniature +air-conditioning system for one man, and it should enable him to endure +temperatures otherwise lethal to someone with his skin and coloring. But +it would use a lot of water.</p> + +<p>He climbed to the exit port and went clumsily down the exterior ladder +to the tail fin. He adjusted his goggles. He went over to the chattering +young Indians, young man and girl. He held out his gloved hand.</p> + +<p>“I’m Bordman,” he said painfully. “Here to make +a degree-of-completion survey. What’s wrong that we had to land by +boat?”</p> + +<p>Aletha’s cousin shook hands cordially.</p> + +<p>“I’m Ralph Redfeather,” he said, introducing himself. +“Project engineer. About everything’s wrong. Our landing +grid’s gone. We couldn’t contact your ship in time to warn +it off. It was in our gravity field before it answered, and its Lawlor +drive couldn’t take it away—not working because of the field. Our +power, of course, went with the landing grid. The ship you came in +can’t get back, and we can’t send a distress message +anywhere, and our best estimate is that the colony will be wiped +out—thirst and starvation—in six months. I’m sorry you and +Aletha have to be included.”</p> + +<p>Then he turned to Aletha and said amiably:</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> +“How’s Mike Thundercloud and Sally Whitehorse and the gang +in general, ’Letha?”</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>The <i>Warlock</i> rolled on in her newly-established orbit about Xosa II. +The landing boat was aground, having removed the two passengers. It +would come back. Nobody on the ship wanted to stay aground, because they +knew the conditions and the situation below—unbearable heat and the +complete absence of hope. But nobody had anything to do! The ship had +been maintained in <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> +standard operating condition during its two-months’ voyage from +Trent to here. No repairs or overhaulings were needed. There was no +maintenance-work to speak of. There would be only stand-by watches until +something happened. There would be nothing to do on those watches. There +would be off-watch time for twenty-one out of every twenty-four hours, +and no purposeful activity to fill even half an hour of it. In a matter +of—probably—years, the <i>Warlock</i> should receive aid. She +might be towed out of her orbit to space in which the Lawlor drive could +function, or the crew might simply be taken off. But meanwhile, those on +board were as completely frustrated as the colony. They could not do +anything at all to help themselves.</p> + +<p>In one fashion the crewmen were worse off than the colonists. The +colonists had at least the colorful prospect of death before them. They +could prepare for it in their several ways. But the members of the +<i>Warlock</i>’s crew had nothing ahead but tedium.</p> + +<p>The skipper faced the future with extreme, grim distaste.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>The ride to the colony was torment. Aletha rode behind her cousin on the +saddle-blanket, and apparently suffered little if at all. But Bordman +could only ride in the ground-car’s cargo space, along with the +sack of mail from the ship. The ground was unbelievably rough and the +jolting intolerable. The heat was literally murderous. In the metal +cargo space, the temperature reached a hundred and sixty degrees in the +sunshine—and given enough time, food will cook in no more heat than +that. Of course a man has been known to enter an oven and stay there +while a roast was cooked, and to come out alive. But the oven +wasn’t throwing him violently about or bringing +sun-heated—blue-white-sun heated—metal to press his heat-suit against +him.</p> + +<p>The suit did make survival possible, but that was all. The contents of +its canteens gave out just before arrival, and for a short time Bordman +had only sweat for his suit to work with. It kept him alive by forced +ventilation, but he arrived in a state of collapse. He drank the iced +salt water they gave him and went to bed. He’d get back his +strength with a proper sodium level in his blood. But he slept for +twelve hours straight.</p> + +<p>When he got up, he was physically normal again, but abysmally ashamed. +It did no good to remind himself that Xosa II was rated minimum-comfort +class D—a blue-white sun and a mean temperature of one hundred and ten +degrees. Africans could take such a climate—with night-relief quarters. +Amerinds could do steel construction work in the open, protected only by +insulated shoes and gloves. But Bordman could not venture out-of-doors +except in a heat-suit. He couldn’t stay long then. It was not a +weakness.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span> +It was a matter of genetics. But he was ashamed.</p> + +<p>Aletha nodded to him when he found the Project Engineer’s office. +It occupied one of the hulls in which colony-establishment materials had +been lowered by rocket power. There were forty of the hulls, and they +had been emptied and arranged for inter-communication in three separate +communities, so that an individual could change his quarters and +ordinary associates from time to time and colony fever—frantic +irritation with one’s companions—was minimized.</p> + +<p>Aletha sat at a desk, busily making notes from a loose leaf volume +before her. The wall behind the desk was fairly lined with similar +volumes.</p> + +<p>“I made a spectacle of myself!” said Bordman, bitterly.</p> + +<p>“Not at all!” Aletha assured him. “It could happen to +anybody. I wouldn’t do too well on Timbuk.”</p> + +<p>There was no answer to that. Timbuk was essentially a jungle planet, +barely emerging from the carboniferous stage. Its colonists thrived +because their ancestors had lived on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea, +on Earth. But Anglos did not find its climate healthful, nor would many +other races. Amerinds died there quicker than most.</p> + +<p>“Ralph’s on the way here now,” added Aletha. “He +and Dr. Chuka were out picking a place to leave the records. The sand +dunes here are terrible, you know. When an explorer-ship does come to +find out what’s happened to us, these buildings could be covered +up completely. Any place could be. It isn’t easy to pick a +record-cache that’s quite sure to be found.”</p> + +<p>“When,” said Bordman skeptically, “there’s +nobody left alive to point it out. Is that it?”</p> + +<p>“That’s it,” agreed Aletha. “It’s pretty +bad all around. I didn’t plan to die just yet.”</p> + +<p>Her voice was perfectly normal. Bordman snorted. As a senior Colonial +Survey officer, he’d been around. But he’d never yet known a +human colony to be extinguished when it was properly equipped and after +a proper pre-settlement survey. He’d seen panic, but never real +cause for a matter-of-fact acceptance of doom.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>There was a clanking noise outside the hulk which was the Project +Engineer’s headquarters. Bordman couldn’t see clearly +through the filtered ports. He reached over and opened a door. The +brightness outside struck his eyes like a blow. He blinked them shut +instantly and turned away. But he’d seen a glistening, caterwheel +ground car stopping not far from the doorway.</p> + +<p>He stood wiping tears from his light-dazzled eyes as footsteps sounded +outside. Aletha’s cousin came in, followed by a huge man with +remarkably dark skin. The dark man wore eyeglasses with a curiously +thick, corklike nosepiece to insulate the necessary metal of the frame +from his skin. It would blister if it touched bare flesh.</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span> +“This is Dr. Chuka,” said Redfeather pleasantly, “Mr. +Bordman. Dr. Chuka’s the director of mining and mineralogy +here.”</p> + +<p>Bordman shook hands with the ebony-skinned man. He grinned, showing +startlingly white teeth. Then he began to shiver.</p> + +<p>“It’s like a freeze-box in here,” he said in a deep +voice. “I’ll get a robe and be with you.”</p> + +<p>He vanished through a doorway, his teeth chattering audibly. +Aletha’s cousin took half a dozen deliberate deep breaths and +grimaced.</p> + +<p>“I could shiver myself,” he admitted “but +Chuka’s really acclimated to Xosa. He was raised on Timbuk.”</p> + +<p>Bordman said curtly:</p> + +<p>“I’m sorry I collapsed on landing. It won’t happen +again. I came here to do a degree-of-completion survey that should open +the colony to normal commerce, let the colonists’ families move +in, tourists, and so on. But I was landed by boat instead of normally, +and I am told the colony is doomed. I would like an official statement +of the degree of completion of the colony’s facilities and an +explanation of the unusual points I have just mentioned.”</p> + +<p>The Indian blinked at him. Then he smiled faintly. The dark man came +back, zipping up an indoor warmth-garment. Redfeather dryly brought him +up to date by repeating what Bordman had just said. Chuka grinned and +sprawled comfortably in a chair.</p> + +<p>“I’d say,” he remarked humorously, in that +astonishingly deep-toned voice of his, “sand got in our hair. And +our colony. And the landing grid. There’s a lot of sand on Xosa. +Wouldn’t you say that was the trouble?”</p> + +<p>The Indian said with elaborate gravity:</p> + +<p>“Of course wind had something to do with it.”</p> + +<p>Bordman fumed.</p> + +<p>“I think you know,” he said fretfully, “that as a +senior Colonial Survey officer, I have authority to give any orders +needed for my work. I give one now. I want to see the landing grid—if +it is still standing. I take it that it didn’t fall down?”</p> + +<p>Redfeather flushed beneath the bronze pigment of his skin. It would be +hard to offend a steelman more than to suggest that his work did not +stand up.</p> + +<p>“I assure you,” he said politely, “that it did not +fall down.”</p> + +<p>“Your estimate of its degree of completion?”</p> + +<p>“Eighty per cent,” said Redfeather formally.</p> + +<p>“You’ve stopped work on it?”</p> + +<p>“Work on it has been stopped,” agreed the Indian.</p> + +<p>“Even though the colony can receive no more supplies until it is +completed?”</p> + +<p>“Just so,” said Redfeather without expression.</p> + +<p>“Then I issue a formal order that I be taken to the landing-grid +site immediately,” said Bordman angrily. “I want to see what +sort of incompetence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a></span> +is responsible! Will you arrange it—at once?”</p> + +<p>Redfeather said in a completely emotionless voice:</p> + +<p>“You want to see the site of the landing grid. Very good. +Immediately.”</p> + +<p>He turned and walked out into the incredible, blinding sunshine. Bordman +blinked at the momentary blast of light, and then began to pace up and +down the office. He fumed. He was still ashamed of his collapse from the +heat during the travel from the landed rocket-boat to the colony. +Therefore he was touchy and irritable. But the order he had given was +strictly justifiable.</p> + +<p>He heard a small noise. He whirled. Dr. Chuka, huge and black and +spectacled, rocked back and forth in his seat, suppressing laughter.</p> + +<p>“Now, what the devil does that mean?” demanded Bordman +suspiciously. “It certainly isn’t ridiculous to ask to see +the structure on which the life of the colony finally depends!”</p> + +<p>“Not ridiculous,” said Dr. Chuka. +“It’s—hilarious!”</p> + +<p>He boomed laughter in the office with the rounded ceiling of a remade +robot hull. Aletha smiled with him, though her eyes were grave.</p> + +<p>“You’d better put on a heat-suit,” she said to +Bordman.</p> + +<p>He fumed again, tempted to defy all common sense because its dictates +were not the same for everybody. But he marched away, back to the +cubbyhole in which he had awakened. Angrily, he donned the heat-suit +that had not protected him adequately before, but had certainly saved +his life. He filled the canteens topping full—he suspected he +hadn’t done so the last time. He went back to the Project +Engineer’s office with a feeling of being burdened and absurd.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<div class="figleft" style="width: 374px;"> +<img src="images/illus-talk.png" width="374" height="500" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>Out a filter-window, he saw that men with skins as dark as Dr. +Chuka’s were at work on a ground car. They were equipping it with +a sunshade and curious shields like wings. Somebody pushed a sort of +caterwheel handtruck toward it. They put big, heavy tanks into its cargo +space. Dr. Chuka had disappeared, but Aletha was back at work making +notes from the loose-leaf volume on the desk.</p> + +<p>“May I ask,” asked Bordman with some irony, “what your +work happens to be just now?”</p> + +<p>She looked up.</p> + +<p>“I thought you knew,” she said in surprise. “I’m +here for the Amerind Historical Society. I can certify coups. I’m +taking coup-records for the Society. They’ll go in the +record-cache Ralph and Dr. Chuka are arranging, so no matter what +happens to the colony, the record of the coups won’t be +lost.”</p> + +<p>“Coups?” demanded Bordman. He knew that Amerinds painted +feathers on the key-posts of steel structures they’d built, and he +knew that the posting of such “coup-marks” was a cherished +privilege and undoubtedly a survival or revival of some American Indian +tradition <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> +back on Earth. But he did not know what they meant.</p> + +<p>“Coups,” repeated Aletha matter-of-factly. “Ralph +wears three eagle-feathers. You saw them. He has three coups. Pinions, +too! He built the landing grids on Norlath and—Oh, you don’t +know!”</p> + +<p>“I don’t,” admitted Bordman, his temper not of the +best because of what seemed unnecessary condescensions on Xosa II.</p> + +<p>Aletha looked surprised.</p> + +<p>“In the old days,” she explained, “back on Earth, if a +man scalped an enemy, he counted coup. The first to strike an enemy in a +battle counted coup, too—a lesser one. Nowadays a man counts coups for +different things, but Ralph’s three eagle-feathers mean he’s +entitled to as much respect as a warrior in the old days who, three +separate times, had killed and scalped an enemy warrior in the middle of +his own camp. And he is, too!”</p> + +<p>Bordman grunted.</p> + +<p>“Barbarous, I’d say!”</p> + +<p>“If you like,” said Aletha. “But it’s something +to be proud of—and one doesn’t count coup for making a lot of +money!” Then she paused and said curtly: “The word +‘snobbish’ fits it better than ‘barbarous.’ We +are snobs! But when the head of a clan stands up in Council in the Big +Tepee on Algonka, representing his clan, and men have to carry the ends +of the feather headdress with all the coups the members of his clan have +earned—why one is proud to belong to that clan!” She added +defiantly, “Even watching it on a vision-screen!”</p> + +<p>Dr. Chuka opened the outer door. Blinding light poured in. He did not +enter—and his body glistened with sweat.</p> + +<p>“Ready for you, Mr. Bordman!”</p> + +<p>Bordman adjusted his goggles and turned on the motors of his heat-suit. +He went out the door.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>The heat and light outside were oppressive. He darkened the goggles +again and made his way heavily to the waiting, now-shaded ground car. He +noted that there were other changes beside the sunshade. The cover-deck +of the cargo space was gone, and there were cylindrical riding seats +like saddles in the back. The odd lower shields reached out sidewise +from the body, barely above the caterwheels. He could not make out their +purpose and irritably failed to ask.</p> + +<p>“All ready,” said Redfeather coldly. “Dr. +Chuka’s coming with us. If you’ll get in here, +please——”</p> + +<p>Bordman climbed awkwardly into the boxlike back of the car. He bestrode +one of the cylindrical arrangements. With a saddle on it, it would +undoubtedly have been a comfortable way to cover impossibly bad terrain +in a mechanical carrier. He waited. About him there were the squatty +hulls of the space-barges which had been towed here by a colony ship, +each one once equipped with rockets for landing. Emptied of their +cargoes, they had been huddled together into the three separate, +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> +adjoining communities. There were separate living quarters and mess +halls and recreation rooms for each, and any colonist lived in the +community of his choice and shifted at pleasure, or visited, or remained +solitary. For mental health a man has to be assured of his free will, +and over-regimentation is deadly in any society. With men +psychologically suited to colonize, it is fatal.</p> + +<p>Above—but at a distance, now—there was a monstrous scarp of mountains, +colored in glaring and unnatural tints. Immediately about there was raw +rock. But it was peculiarly smooth, as if sand grains had rubbed over it +for uncountable aeons and carefully worn away every trace of unevenness. +Half a mile to the left, dunes began and went away to the horizon. The +nearer ones were small, but they gained in size with distance from the +mountains—which evidently affected the surface-winds hereabouts—and +the edge of seeing was visibly not a straight line. The dunes yonder +must be gigantic. But of course on a world the size of ancient Earth, +and which was waterless save for snow-patches at its poles, the size to +which sand dunes could grow had no limit. The surface of Xosa II was a +sea of sand, on which islands and small continents of wind-swept rock +were merely minor features.</p> + +<p>Dr. Chuka adjusted a small metal object in his hand. It had a tube +dangling from it. He climbed into the cargo space and fastened it to one +of the two tanks previously loaded.</p> + +<p>“For you,” he told Bordman. “Those tanks are full of +compressed air at rather high pressure—a couple of thousand pounds. +Here’s a reduction-valve with an adiabatic expansion feature, to +supply extra air to your heat-suit. It will be pretty cold, expanding +from so high a pressure. Bring down the temperature a little +more.”</p> + +<p>Bordman again felt humiliated. Chuka and Redfeather, because of their +races, were able to move about nine-tenths naked in the open air on this +planet, and they thrived. But he needed a special refrigerated costume +to endure the heat. More, they provided him with sunshades and +refrigerated air that they did not need for themselves. They were +thoughtful of him. He was as much out of his element, where they fitted +perfectly, as he would have been making a degree-of-completion survey on +an underwater project. He had to wear what was practically a diving suit +and use a special air supply to survive!</p> + +<p>He choked down the irritation his own inadequacy produced.</p> + +<p>“I suppose we can go now,” he said as coldly as he could.</p> + +<p>Aletha’s cousin mounted the control-saddle—though it was no more +than a blanket—and Dr. Chuka mounted beside Bordman. The ground car got +under way. It headed for the mountains.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>The smoothness of the rock was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> +deceptive. The caterwheel car lurched and bumped and swayed and rocked. +It rolled and dipped and wallowed. Nobody could have remained in a +normal seat on such terrain, but Bordman felt hopelessly undignified +riding what amounted to a hobbyhorse. Under the sunshade it was +infuriatingly like a horse on a <ins class='corr' title="Transcriber's +Note: The original showed 'carrousel'.">carousel</ins>. That there were three +of them together made it look even more foolish. He stared about him, +trying to take his mind from his own absurdity. His goggles made the +light endurable, but he felt ashamed.</p> + +<p>“Those side-fins,” said Chuka’s deep voice pleasantly, +“the bottom ones, make things better for you. The shade overhead +cuts off direct sunlight, and they cut off the reflected glare. It would +blister your<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> +skin even if the sun never touched you directly.”</p> + +<p>Bordman did not answer. The caterwheel car went on. It came to a patch +of sand—tawny sand, heavily mineralized. There was a dune here. Not a +big one for Xosa II. It was no more than a hundred feet high. But they +went up its leeward, steeply slanting side. All the planet seemed to +tilt insanely as the caterwheels spun. They reached the dune’s +crest, where it tended to curl over and break like a water-comber, and +here the wheels struggled with sand precariously ready to fall, and +Bordman had a sudden perception of the sands of Xosa II as the oceans +that they really were. The dunes were waves which moved with infinite +slowness, but the irresistible force of storm-seas. Nothing could resist +them. Nothing!</p> + +<p>They traveled over similar dunes for two miles. Then they began to climb +the approaches to the mountains. And Bordman saw for the second +time—the first had been through the ports of the landing-boat—where +there was a notch in the mountain wall and sand had flowed out of it +like a waterfall, making a beautifully symmetrical cone-shaped heap +against the lower cliffs. There were many such falls. There was one +place where there was a sand-cascade. Sand had poured over a series of +rocky steps, piling up on each in turn to its very edge, and then +spilling again to the next.</p> + +<p>They went up a crazily slanting spur of stone, whose sides were too +steep for sand to lodge on, and whose narrow crest had a bare thin +coating of powder.</p> + +<p>The landscape looked like a nightmare. As the car went on, wabbling and +lurching and dipping on its way, the heights on either side made Bordman +tend to dizziness. The coloring was impossible. The aridness, the <ins +class='corr' title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed +'dessication'.">desiccation</ins>, the lifelessness of everything about was +somehow shocking. Bordman found himself straining his eyes for the +merest, scrubbiest of bushes and for however stunted and isolated a wisp +of grass.</p> + +<p>The journey went on for an hour. Then there came a straining climb up a +now-windswept ridge of eroded rock, and the attainment of its highest +point. The ground car went onward for a hundred yards and stopped.</p> + +<p>They had reached the top of the mountain range, and there was +doubtlessly another range beyond. But they could not see it. Here, at +the place to which they had climbed so effortfully, there were no more +rocks. There was no valley. There was no descending slope. There was +sand. This was one of the sand plateaus which were a unique feature of +Xosa II. And Bordman knew, now, that the disputed explanation was the +true one.</p> + +<p>Winds, blowing over the mountains, carried sand as on other worlds they +carried moisture and pollen and seeds and rain. Where two mountain +ranges ran across the course of long-blowing winds, the winds +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span> +eddied above the valley between. They dropped sand into it. The +equivalent of trade winds, Bordman considered, in time would fill a +valley to the mountain tops, just as trade winds provide moisture in +equal quantity on other worlds, and civilizations have been built upon +it. But——</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/illus-grid.png" width="500" height="332" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p>“Well?” said Bordman challengingly.</p> + +<p>“This is the site of the landing grid,” said Redfeather.</p> + +<p>“Where?”</p> + +<p>“Here,” said the Indian dryly. “A few months ago there +was a valley here. The landing grid had eighteen hundred feet of height +built. There was to be four hundred feet more—the lighter top +construction justifies my figure of eighty per cent completion. Then +there was a storm.”</p> + +<p>It was hot. Horribly, terribly hot, even here on a plateau at +mountaintop height. Dr. Chuka looked at Bordman’s face and bent +down in the vehicle. He turned a stopcock on one of the air tanks +brought for Bordman’s necessity. Immediately Bordman felt cooler. +His skin was dry, of course. The circulated air dried sweat as fast as +it appeared. But he had the dazed, feverish feeling of a man in an +artificial-fever box. He’d been fighting it for some time. Now the +coolness of the expanded air was almost deliriously refreshing.</p> + +<p>Dr. Chuka produced a canteen. Bordman drank thirstily. The water was +slightly salted to replace salt lost in sweat.</p> + +<p>“A storm, eh?” asked Bordman, after a time of contemplation +of his inner sensations as well as the scene of disaster before him. +There’d be some hundreds of millions of tons of sand in even a +section of this plateau. It was unthinkable that it could be removed +except by a long-time sweep of changed trade winds along the length of +the valley. “But what has a storm to do——”</p> + +<p>“It was a sandstorm,” said Redfeather coldly. +“Probably there was a sunspot flare-up. We don’t know. But +the pre-colonization survey spoke of sandstorms. The survey team even +made estimates of sandfall in various places as so many inches per year. +Here all storms drop sand instead of rain. But there must have been a +sunspot flare because this storm blew for”—his voice went flat +and deliberate because it was stating the unbelievable—“for two +months. We did not see the sun in all that time. And we couldn’t +work, naturally. The sand would flay a man’s skin off his body in +minutes. So we waited it out.</p> + +<p>“When it ended, there was this sand plateau where the survey had +ordered the landing grid to be built. The grid was under it. It is under +it. The top of eighteen hundred feet of steel is still buried two +hundred feet down in the sand you see. Our unfabricated building-steel +is piled ready for erection—under two thousand feet of sand. +Without anything but stored power it is hardly +practical”—Redfeather’s<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> +tone was sardonic—“for us to try to dig it out. There are +hundreds of millions of tons of stuff to be moved. If we could get the +sand away, we could finish the grid. If we could finish the grid, +we’d have power enough to get the sand away—in a few years, +and if we could replace the machinery that wore out handling it. And if +there wasn’t another sandstorm.”</p> + +<p>He paused. Bordman took deep breaths of the cooler air. He could think +more clearly.</p> + +<p>“If you will accept photographs,” said Redfeather politely, +“you can check that we actually did the work.”</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>Bordman saw the implications. The colony had been formed of Amerinds for +the steel work and Africans for the labor the Amerinds were congenitally +averse to—the handling of complex mining-machinery underground and the +control of modern high-speed smelting operations. Both races could +endure this climate and work in it—provided that they had cooled +sleeping quarters. But they had to have power. Power not only to work +with, but to live by. The air-cooling machinery that made sleep possible +also condensed from the cooled air the minute trace of water vapor it +contained and that they needed for drink. But without power they would +thirst. Without the landing grid and the power it took from the +ionosphere, they could not receive supplies from the rest of the +universe. So they would starve.</p> + +<p>And the <i>Warlock</i>, now in orbit somewhere overhead, was well within the +planet’s gravitational field and could not use its Lawlor drive to +escape with news of their predicament. In the normal course of events it +would be years before a colony ship capable of landing or blasting out +of a planetary gravitational field by rocket-power was dispatched to +find out why there was no news from Xosa II. There was no such thing as +interstellar signaling, of course. Ships themselves travel faster than +any signal that could be sent, and distances were so great that mere +communication took enormous lengths of time. A letter sent to Earth from +the Rim even now took ten years to make the journey, and another ten for +a reply. Even the much shorter distances involved in Xosa II’s +predicament still ruled out all hope. The colony was strictly on its +own.</p> + +<p>Bordman said heavily:</p> + +<p>“I’ll accept the photographs. I even accept the statement +that the colony will die. I will prepare my report for the cache Aletha +tells me you’re preparing. And I apologize for any affront I may +have offered you.”</p> + +<p>Dr. Chuka nodded approvingly. He regarded Bordman with benign warmth. +Ralph Redfeather said cordially enough:</p> + +<p>“That’s perfectly all right. No harm done.”</p> + +<p>“And now,” said Bordman shortly, “<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> +since I have authority to give any orders needed for my work, I want to +survey the steps you’ve taken to carry out those parts of your +instructions dealing with emergencies. I want to see right away what +you’ve done to beat this state of things. I know they can’t +be beaten, but I intend to leave a report on what you’ve +tried!”</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>The <i>Warlock</i> swung in emptiness around the planet Xosa II. It was +barely five thousand miles above the surface, so the mottled terrain of +the dry world flowed swiftly and perpetually beneath it. It did not seem +beneath, of course. It simply seemed out—away—removed from the ship. +And in the ship’s hull there was artificial gravity, and light, +and there were the humming sounds of fans which kept the air in motion +and flowing through the air apparatus. Also there was food, and adequate +water, and the temperature was admirably controlled. But nothing +happened. Moreover, nothing could be expected to happen. There were +eight men in the crew, and they were accustomed to space-voyages which +lasted from one month to three. But they had traveled a good two months +from their last port. They had exhausted the visireels, playing them +over and over until they were intolerable. They had read and reread all +the bookreels they could bear. On previous voyages they had played chess +and similar games until it was completely predictable who would beat +whom in every possible contest.</p> + +<p>Now they viewed the future with bitterness. The ship could not land, +because there was no landing grid in operation on the planet below them. +They could not depart, because the Lawlor drive simply does not work +within five diameters of an Earth-gravity planet. Space is warped only +infinitesimally by so thin a field, but a Lawlor drive needs almost +perfectly unstressed emptiness if it is to take hold. They did not have +fuel enough to blast out the necessary thirty-odd thousand miles against +gravity. The same consideration made their lifeboats useless. They could +not escape by rocket-power and their Lawlor drives, also, were +ineffective.</p> + +<p>The crew of the <i>Warlock</i> was bored. The worst of the boredom was that +it promised to last without limit. They had food and water and physical +comfort, but they were exactly in the situation of men sentenced to +prison for an unknown but enormous length of time. There was no escape. +There could be no alleviation. The prospect invited frenzy by +anticipation.</p> + +<p>A fist fight broke out in the crew’s quarters within two hours +after the <i>Warlock</i> had established its orbit—as a first reaction to +their catastrophe. The skipper went through the ship and painstakingly +confiscated every weapon. He locked them up. He, himself, already felt +the nagging effect of jangling nerves. There was nothing to do. He +didn’t know when<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a></span> +there would ever be anything to do. It was a condition to produce +hysteria.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>There was night. Outside and above the colony there were uncountable +myriads of stars. They were not the stars of Earth, of course, but +Bordman had never been on Earth. He was used to unfamiliar +constellations. He stared out a port at the sky, and noted that there +were no moons. He remembered, when he thought, that Xosa II had no +moons. There was a rustling of paper behind him. Aletha Redfeather +turned a page in a loose-leaf volume and painstakingly made a note. The +wall behind her held many more such books. From them could be extracted +the detailed history of every bit of work that had been done by the +colony-preparation crews. Separate, tersely-phrased items could be +assembled to make a record of individual men.</p> + +<p>There had been incredible hardships, at first. There were heroic feats. +There had been an attempt to ferry water supplies down from the pole by +aircraft. It was not practical, even to build up a reserve of fluid. +Winds carried sand particles here as on other worlds they carried +moisture. Aircraft were abraded as they flew. The last working flier +made a forced landing five hundred miles from the colony. A caterwheel +expedition went out and brought the crew in. The caterwheel trucks were +armored with silicone plastic, resistant to abrasion, but when they got +back they had to be scrapped. There had been men lost in sudden +sand-squalls, and heroic searches for them, and once or twice rescues. +There had been cave-ins in the mines. There had been accidents. There +had been magnificent feats of endurance and achievement.</p> + +<p>Bordman went to the door of the hull which was Ralph Redfeather’s +Project Engineer office. He opened it. He stepped outside.</p> + +<p>It was like stepping into an oven. The sand was still hot from the +sunshine just ended. The air was so utterly dry that Bordman instantly +felt it sucking at the moisture of his nasal passages. In ten seconds +his feet—clad in indoor footwear—were uncomfortably hot. In twenty the +soles of his feet felt as if they were blistering. He would die of the +heat at night, here! Perhaps he could endure the outside near dawn, but +he raged a little. Here where Amerinds and Africans lived and throve, he +could live unprotected for no more than an hour or two—and that at one +special time of the planet’s rotation!</p> + +<p>He went back in, ashamed of the discomfort of his feet and angrily +letting them feel scorched rather than admit to it.</p> + +<p>Aletha turned another page.</p> + +<p>“Look, here!” said Bordman angrily. “No matter what +you say, you’re going to go back on the <i>Warlock</i> +before——”</p> + +<p>She raised her eyes.</p> + +<p>“We’ll worry about that when the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> +time comes. But I think not. I’d rather stay here.”</p> + +<p>“For the present, perhaps,” snapped Bordman. “But +before things get too bad you go back to the ship! They’ve rocket +fuel enough for half a dozen landings of the landing boat. They can lift +you out of here!”</p> + +<p>Aletha shrugged.</p> + +<p>“Why leave here to board a <ins class='corr' title="Transcriber's +Note: The original showed 'derelect'.">derelict</ins>? The <i>Warlock</i>’s +practically that. What’s your honest estimate of the time before a +ship equipped to help us gets here?”</p> + +<p>Bordman would not answer. He’d done some figuring. It had been a +two-month journey from Trent—the nearest Survey base—to here. The +<i>Warlock</i> had been expected to remain aground until the smelter it +brought could load it with pig metal. Which could be as little as two +weeks, but would surprise nobody if it was two months instead. So the +ship would not be considered due back on Trent for four months. It would +not be considered overdue for at least two more. It would be six months +before anybody seriously wondered why it wasn’t back with its +cargo. There’d be a wait for lifeboats to come in, should there +have been a mishap in space. There’d eventually be a report of +noncommunication to the Colony Survey headquarters on Canna III. But it +would take three months for that report to be received, and six more for +a confirmation—even if ships made the voyages exactly at the most +favorable intervals—and then there should at least be a complaint from +the colony. There were lifeboats aground on Xosa II, for emergency +communication, and if a lifeboat didn’t bring news of a planetary +crisis, no crisis would be considered to exist. Nobody could imagine a +landing grid failing!</p> + +<p>Maybe in a year somebody would think that maybe somebody ought to ask +around about Xosa II. It would be much longer before somebody put a note +on somebody else’s desk that would suggest that when, or if, a +suitable ship passed near Xosa II, or if one should be available for the +inquiry, it might be worth while to have the noncommunication from the +planet looked into. Actually, to guess at three years before another +ship arrived would be the most optimistic of estimates.</p> + +<p>“You’re a civilian,” said Bordman shortly. “When +the food and water run low, you go back to the ship. You’ll at +least be alive when somebody does come to see what’s the matter +here!”</p> + +<p>Aletha said mildly:</p> + +<p>“Maybe I’d rather not be alive. Will you go back to the +ship?”</p> + +<p>Bordman flushed. He wouldn’t. But he said doggedly;</p> + +<p>“I can order you sent on board, and your cousin will carry out the +order!”</p> + +<p>“I doubt it very much,” said Aletha pleasantly.</p> + +<p>She returned to her task.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>There were crunching footsteps outside the hulk. Bordman winced a +little. With insulated sandals, it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> +was normal for these colonists to move from one part of the colony to +another in the open, even by daylight. He, Bordman, couldn’t take +out-of-doors at night! His lips twisted bitterly.</p> + +<p>Men came in. There were dark men with rippling muscles under glistening +skin, and bronze Amerinds with coarse straight hair. Ralph Redfeather +was with them. Dr. Chuka came in last of all.</p> + +<p>“Here we are,” said Redfeather. “These are our +foremen. Among us, I think we can answer any questions you want to +ask.”</p> + +<p>He made introductions. Bordman didn’t try to remember the names. +Abeokuta and Northwind and Sutata and Tallgrass and T’ckka and +Spottedhorse and Lewanika—— They were names which in combination would +only be found in a very raw, new colony. But the men who crowded into +the office were wholly at ease, in their own minds as well as in the +presence of a senior Colonial Survey officer. They nodded as they were +named, and the nearest shook hands. Bordman knew that he’d have +liked their looks under other circumstances. But he was humiliated by +the conditions on this planet. They were not. They were apparently only +sentenced to death by them.</p> + +<p>“I have to leave a report,” said Bordman curtly—and he was +somehow astonished to know that he did expect to leave a report rather +than make one; he accepted the hopelessness of the colony’s +future—“on the degree-of-completion of the work here. But since +there’s an emergency, I have also to leave a report on the +measures taken to meet it.”</p> + +<p>The report would be futile, of course. As futile as the coup-records +Aletha was compiling, which would be read only after everybody on the +planet was dead. But Bordman knew he’d write it. It was +unthinkable that he shouldn’t.</p> + +<p>“Redfeather tells me,” he added, again curtly, “that +the power in storage can be used to cool the colony buildings—and +therefore condense drinking water from the air—for just about six +months. There is food for about six months. If one lets the buildings +warm up a little, to stretch the fuel, there won’t be enough water +to drink. Go on half rations to stretch the food, and there won’t +be enough water to last and the power will give out anyhow. No profit +there!”</p> + +<p>There were nods. The matter had been thrashed out long before.</p> + +<p>“There’s food in the <i>Warlock</i> overhead,” Bordman went +on coldly, “but they can’t use the landing boat more than a +few times. It can’t use ship fuel. No refrigeration to hold it +stable. They couldn’t land more than a ton of supplies all told. +There are five hundred of us here. No help there!”</p> + +<p>He looked from one to another.</p> + +<p>“So we live comfortably,” he told them with irony, +“until our food and water and minimum night-comfort run out +together. Anything we do to try to stretch anything is useless because +of what happens to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> +something else. Redfeather tells me you accept the situation. What are +you doing—since you accept it?”</p> + +<p>Dr. Chuka said amiably:</p> + +<p>“We’ve picked a storage place for our records, and our +miners are blasting out space in which to put away the record of our +actions to the last possible moment. It will be sandproof. Our mechanics +are building a broadcast unit we’ll spare a tiny bit of fuel for. +It will run twenty-odd years, broadcasting directions so it can be found +regardless of how the terrain is changed by drifting sand.”</p> + +<p>“And,” said Bordman, “the fact that nobody will be +here to give directions.”</p> + +<p>Chuka added benignly:</p> + +<p>“We’re doing a great deal of singing, too. My people are ... +ah ... religious. When we are ... ah ... no longer here ... there have +been boastings that there’ll be a well-practiced choir ready to go +to work in the next world.”</p> + +<p>White teeth showed in grins. Bordman was almost envious of men who could +grin at such a thought. But he went on grimly:</p> + +<p>“And I understand that athletics have also been much +practiced.”</p> + +<p>Redfeather said:</p> + +<p>“There’s been time for it. Climbing teams have counted coup +on all the worst mountains within three hundred miles. There’s +been a new record set for the javelin, adjusted for gravity constant, +and Johnny Cornstalk did a hundred yards in eight point four seconds. +Aletha has the records and has certified them.”</p> + +<p>“Very useful!” said Bordman sardonically. Then he disliked +himself for saying it even before the bronze-skinned men’s faces +grew studiedly impassive.</p> + +<p>Chuka waved his hand.</p> + +<p>“Wait, Ralph! Lewanika’s nephew will beat that within a +week!”</p> + +<p>Bordman was ashamed again because Chuka had spoken to cover up his own +ill-nature.</p> + +<p>“I take it back!” he said irritably. “What I said was +uncalled for. I shouldn’t have said it! But I came here to do a +completion survey and what you’ve been giving me is material for +an estimate of morale! It’s not my line! I’m a technician, +first and foremost! We’re faced with a technical problem!”</p> + +<p>Aletha spoke suddenly from behind him.</p> + +<p>“But these are men, first and foremost, Mr. Bordman. And +they’re faced with a very human problem—how to die well. They +seem to be rather good at it, so far.”</p> + +<p>Bordman ground his teeth. He was again humiliated. In his own fashion he +was attempting the same thing. But just as he was genetically not +qualified to endure the climate of this planet, he was not prepared for +a fatalistic or pious acceptance of disaster. Amerind and African, +alike, these men instinctively held to their own ideas of what the +dignity of a man called upon him to do when he could not do anything but +die. But Bordman’s idea of his human dignity required him to be +still fighting: still scratching at the eyes of fate or<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span> +destiny when he was slain. It was in his blood or genes or the result +of training. He simply could not, with self-respect, accept any physical +situation as hopeless even when his mind assured him that it was.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>“I agree,” he said coldly, “but still I have to think +in technical terms. You might say that we are going to die because we +cannot land the <i>Warlock</i> with food and equipment. We cannot land the +<i>Warlock</i> because we have no landing grid. We have no landing grid +because it and all the material to complete it is buried under millions +of tons of sand. We cannot make a new light-supply-ship type of landing +grid because we have no smelter to make beams, nor power to run it if we +had, yet if we had the beams we could get the power to run the smelter +we haven’t got to make the beams. And we have no smelter, hence no +beams, no power, no prospect of food or help because we can’t land +the <i>Warlock</i>. It is strictly a circular problem. Break it at any point +and all of it is solved.”</p> + +<p>One of the dark men muttered something under his breath to those near +him. There were chuckles.</p> + +<p>“Like Mr. Woodchuck,” explained the man, when +Bordman’s eyes fell on him. “When I was a little boy there +was a story like that.”</p> + +<p>Bordman said icily:</p> + +<p>“The problem of coolness and water and food is the same sort of +problem. In six months we could raise food—if we had power to condense +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span> +moisture. We’ve chemicals for hydroponics—if we could keep +the plants from roasting as they grew. Refrigeration and water and food +are practically another circular problem.”</p> + +<p>Aletha said tentatively:</p> + +<p>“Mr. Bordman——”</p> + +<p>He turned, annoyed. Aletha said almost apologetically:</p> + +<p>“On Chagan there was a—you might call it a woman’s coup +given to a woman I know. Her husband raises horses. He’s mad about +them. And they live in a sort of home on caterwheels out on the +plains—the llanos. Sometimes they’re months away from a +settlement. And she loves ice cream and refrigeration isn’t too +simple. But she has a Doctorate in Human History. So she had her husband +make an insulated tray on the roof of their trailer and she makes her +ice cream there.”</p> + +<p>Men looked at her. Her cousin said amusedly:</p> + +<p>“That should rate some sort of technical-coup feather!”</p> + +<p>“The Council gave her a brass pot—official,” said Aletha. +“Domestic science achievement.” To Bordman she explained: +“Her husband put a tray on the roof of their house, insulated from +the heat of the house below. During the day there’s an insulated +cover on top of it, insulating it from the heat of the sun. At night she +takes off the top cover and pours her custard, thin, in the tray. Then +she goes to bed. She has to get up before daybreak to scrape it up, but +by then the ice cream is frozen. Even on a warm night.” She looked +from one to another. “I don’t know why. She said it was done +in a place called Babylonia on Earth, many thousands of years +ago.”</p> + +<p>Bordman blinked. Then he said decisively:</p> + +<p>“Damn! Who knows how much the ground-temperature drops here before +dawn?”</p> + +<p>“I do,” said Aletha’s cousin, mildly. “The +top-sand temperature falls forty-odd degrees. Warmer underneath, of +course. But the air here is almost cool when the sun rises. Why?”</p> + +<p>“Nights are cooler on all planets,” said Bordman, +“because every night the dark side radiates heat to empty space. +There’d be frost everywhere every morning if the ground +didn’t store up heat during the day. If we prevent daytime +heat-storage—cover a patch of ground before dawn and leave it covered +all day—and uncover it all night while shielding it from warm winds—— +We’ve got refrigeration! The night sky is empty space itself! Two +hundred and eighty below zero!”</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>There was a murmur. Then argument. The foremen of the Xosa II +colony-preparation crew were strictly practical men, but they had the +habit of knowing why some things were practical. One does not do modern +steel construction in contempt of theory, nor handle modern mining tools +without knowing why as well as how they work. This proposal sounded like +something that was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span> +based on reason—that should work to some degree. But how well? +Anybody could guess that it should cool something at least twice as much +as the normal night temperature-drop. But somebody produced a slipstick +and began to juggle it expertly. He astonishedly announced his results. +Others questioned, and then verified it. Nobody paid much attention to +Bordman. But there was a hum of absorbed discussion, in which Redfeather +and Chuka were immediately included. By calculation, it astoundingly +appeared that if the air on Xosa II was really as clear as the bright +stars and deep day-sky color indicated, every second night a total drop +of one hundred and eighty degrees temperature could be secured by +radiation to interstellar space—if there were no +convection-currents, and they could be prevented by——</p> + +<p>It was the convection-current problem which broke the assembly into +groups with different solutions. But it was Dr. Chuka who boomed at all +of them to try all three solutions and have them ready before daybreak, +so the assembly left the hulk, still disputing enthusiastically. But +somebody had recalled that there were dewponds in the one arid area on +Timbuk, and somebody else remembered that irrigation on Delmos III was +accomplished that same way. And they recalled how it was done——</p> + +<p>Voices went away in the ovenlike night outside. Bordman grimaced, and +again said:</p> + +<p>“Damn! Why didn’t I think of that myself?”</p> + +<p>“Because,” said Aletha, smiling, “you aren’t a +Doctor of Human History with a horse-raising husband and a fondness for +ice cream. Even so, a technician was needed to break down the problem +here into really simple terms.” Then she said, “I think Bob +Running Antelope might approve of you, Mr. Bordman.”</p> + +<p>Bordman fumed to himself.</p> + +<p>“Who’s he? Just what does that whole comment mean?”</p> + +<p>“I’ll tell you,” said Aletha, “when you’ve +solved one or two more problems.”</p> + +<p>Her cousin came back into the room. He said with gratification:</p> + +<p>“Chuka can turn out silicone-wool insulation, he says. Plenty of +material, and he’ll use a solar mirror to get the heat he needs. +Plenty of temperature to make silicones! How much area will we need to +pull in four thousand gallons of water a night?”</p> + +<p>“How do I know?” demanded Bordman. “What’s the +moisture-content of the air here, anyhow?” Then he said vexedly, +“Tell me! Are you using heat-exchangers to help cool the air you +pump into the buildings, before you use power to refrigerate it? It +would save some power——”</p> + +<p>The Indian project engineer said absorbedly:</p> + +<p>“Let’s get to work on this! I’m a steel man myself, +but——”</p> + +<p>They settled down. Aletha turned a page.</p> + +<p>The <i>Warlock</i> spun around the planet. The members of its crew +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +withdrew into themselves. In even two months of routine tedious +voyaging to this planet, there had been the beginnings of irritation +with the mannerisms of other men. Now there would be years of it. At the +beginning, every man tended to become a hermit so that he could postpone +as long as possible the time when he would hate his shipmates. Monotony +was already so familiar that its continuance was a foreknown evil. The +crew of the <i>Warlock</i> already knew how intolerable they would presently +be to each other, and the foreknowledge tended to make them intolerable +now.</p> + +<p>Within two days of its establishment in orbit, the <i>Warlock</i> was manned +by men already morbidly resentful of fate; with the psychology of +prisoners doomed to close confinement for an indeterminate but ghastly +period. On the third day there was a second fist fight. A bitter one.</p> + +<p>Fist fights are not healthy symptoms in a spaceship which cannot hope to +make port for a matter of years.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>Most human problems are circular and fall apart when a single trivial +part of them is solved. There used to be enmity between races because +they were different, and they tended to be different because they were +enemies, so there was enmity—The big problem of interstellar flight was +that nothing could travel faster than light, and nothing could travel +faster than light because mass increased with speed, and mass increased +with speed—obviously!—because ships remained in the same time-slot, +and ships remained in the same time-slot long after a one-second shift +was possible because nobody realized that it meant traveling faster than +light. And even before there was interstellar travel, there was +practically no interplanetary commerce because it took so much fuel to +take off and land. And it took more fuel to carry the fuel to take off +and land, and more still to carry the fuel for that, until somebody used +power on the ground for heave-off instead of take-off, and again on the +ground for landing. And then interplanetary ships carried cargoes. And +on Xosa II there was an emergency because a sandstorm had buried the +almost completed landing grid under some megatons of sand, and it +couldn’t be completed because there was only storage power because +it wasn’t completed, because there was only storage power +because——</p> + +<p>But it took three weeks for the problem to be seen as the ultimately +simple thing it really was. Bordman had called it a circular problem, +but he hadn’t seen its true circularity. It was actually—like all +circular problems—inherently an unstable set of conditions. It began to +fall apart when he saw that mere refrigeration would break its solidity.</p> + +<p>In one week there were ten acres of desert covered with +silicone-wool-felt in great strips. By day a reflective surface was +uppermost, and at <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a></span> +sundown caterwheel trucks hooked on to towlines and neatly pulled it +over on its back, to expose gridded black-body surfaces to the +starlight. And the gridding was precisely designed so that winds blowing +across it did not make eddies in the grid-squares, and the chilled air +in those pockets remained undisturbed and there was no conduction of +heat downward by eddy currents, while there was admirable radiation of +heat out to space. And this was in the manner of the night sides of all +planets, only somewhat more efficient.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>In two weeks there was a water yield of three thousand gallons per +night, and in three weeks more there were similar grids over the colony +houses and a vast roofed cooling-shed for pre-chilling of air to be used +by the refrigeration systems themselves. The fuel-store—stored +power—was thereupon stretched to three times its former calculated +usefulness. The situation was no longer a simple and neat equation of +despair.</p> + +<p>Then something else happened. One of Dr. Chuka’s assistants was +curious about a certain mineral. He used the solar furnace that had made +the silicone wool to smelt it. And Dr. Chuka saw him. And after one +blank moment he bellowed laughter and went to see Ralph Redfeather. +Whereupon Amerind steel-workers sawed apart a robot hull that was no +longer a fuel tank because its fuel was gone, and they built a +demountable solar mirror some sixty feet across—which African mechanics +deftly powered—and suddenly there was a spot of incandescence even +brighter than the sun of Xosa II, down on the planet’s surface. It +played upon a mineral cliff, and monstrous smells developed and even the +African mining-technicians put on goggles because of the brightness, and +presently there were threads of molten metal and slag trickling—and +separating as they trickled—hesitantly down the cliff-side.</p> + +<p>And Dr. Chuka beamed and slapped his sweating thighs, and Bordman went +out in a caterwheel truck, wearing a heat-suit, to watch it for all of +twenty minutes. When he got back to the Project Engineer’s office +he gulped iced salt water and dug out the books he’d brought down +from the ship. There was the specbook for Xosa II, and there were the +other volumes of definitions issued by the Colonial Survey. They were +definitions of the exact meanings of terms used in briefer +specifications, for items of equipment sometimes ordered by the Colony +Office.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>When Chuka came into the office, presently, he carried the first crude +pig of Xosa II iron in his gloved hand. He gloated. Bordman was then +absent, and Ralph Redfeather worked feverishly at his desk.</p> + +<p>“Where’s Bordman?” demanded Chuka in that resonant +bass voice of his. “I’m ready to report for +degree-of-completion credit that the mining <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> +properties on Xosa II are prepared as of today to deliver pig iron, +cobalt, zirconium and beryllium in commercial quantities! We require one +day’s notice to begin delivery of metal other than iron at the +moment, because we’re short of equipment, but we can furnish +chromium and manganese on two days’ notice—the deposits are +farther away.”</p> + +<p>He dumped the pig of metal on the second desk, where Aletha sat with her +perpetual loose-leafed volumes before her. The metal smoked and began to +char the desk-top. He picked it up again and tossed it from one gloved +hand to the other.</p> + +<p>“There y’are, Ralph!” he boasted. “You Indians +go after your coups! Match this coup for me! Without fuel and minus all +equipment except of our own making—I credit an assist on the mirror, +but that’s all—we’re set to load the first ship that comes +in for cargo! Now what are you going to do for the record? I think +we’ve wiped your eye for you!”</p> + +<p>Ralph hardly looked up. His eyes were very bright. Bordman had shown him +and he was copying feverishly the figures and formulae from a section of +the definition book of the Colonial Survey. The books started with the +specifications for antibiotic growth equipment for colonies with +problems in local bacteria. It ended with definitions of the required +strength-of-material and the designs stipulated for cages in zoos for +motile fauna, subdivided into flying, marine, and solid-ground +creatures: sub-sub-divided into carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores, +with the special specifications for enclosures to contain abyssal +creatures requiring extreme pressures, and the equipment for maintaining +a healthfully re-poisoned atmosphere for creatures from methane planets.</p> + +<p>Redfeather had the third volume open at, “Landing Grids, Lightest +Emergency, Commerce Refuges, For Use Of.” There were some dozens +of non-colonized planets along the most-traveled spaceways on which +refuges for shipwrecked spacemen were maintained. Small forces of Patrol +personnel manned them. Space lifeboats serviced them. They had the +minimum installations which could draw on their planets’ +ionospheres for power, and they were not expected to handle anything +bigger than a twenty-ton lifeboat. But the specifications for the +equipment of such refuges were included in the reference volumes for +Bordman’s use in the making of Colonial surveys. They were +compiled for the information of contractors who wanted to bid on +Colonial Survey installations, and for the guidance of people like +Bordman who checked up on the work. So they contained all the data for +the building of a landing grid, lightest emergency, commerce refuge for +use of, in case of need. Redfeather copied feverishly.</p> + +<p>Chuka ceased his boasting, but still he grinned.</p> + +<p>“I know we’re stuck, Ralph,” he <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> +said amiably, “but it’s nice stuff to go in the records. +Too bad we don’t keep coup-records like you Indians!”</p> + +<p>Aletha’s cousin—Project Engineer—said crisply:</p> + +<p>“Go away! Who made your solar mirror? It was more than an assist! +You get set to cast beams for us! Girders! I’m going to get a +lifeboat aloft and away to Trent! Build a minimum size landing grid! +Build a fire under somebody so they’ll send us a colony ship with +supplies! If there’s no new sandstorm to bury the radiation +refrigerators Bordman brought to mind, we can keep alive with +hydroponics until a ship can arrive with something useful!”</p> + +<p>Chuka stared.</p> + +<p>“You don’t mean we might actually live through this! +Really?”</p> + +<p>Aletha regarded the two of them with impartial irony.</p> + +<p>“Dr. Chuka,” she said gently, “you accomplished the +impossible. Ralph, here, is planning to attempt the preposterous. Does +it occur to you that Mr. Bordman is nagging himself to achieve the +inconceivable? It is inconceivable, even to him, but he’s trying +to do it!”</p> + +<p>“What’s he trying to do?” demanded Chuka, wary but +amused.</p> + +<p>“He’s trying,” said Aletha, “to prove to himself +that he’s the best man on this planet. Because he’s +physically least capable of living here! His vanity’s hurt. +Don’t underestimate him!”</p> + +<p>“He the best man here?” demanded Chuka blankly. “In +his way he’s all right. The refrigeration proves that! But he +can’t walk out-of-doors without a heat-suit!”</p> + +<p>Ralph Redfeather said dryly, without ceasing his feverish work:</p> + +<p>“Nonsense, Aletha. He has courage. I give him that. But he +couldn’t walk a beam twelve hundred feet up. In his own way, yes. +He’s capable. But the best man——”</p> + +<p>“I’m sure,” agreed Aletha, ”that he +couldn’t sing as well as the worst of your singing crew, Dr. +Chuka, and any Amerind could outrun him. Even I could! But he’s +got something we haven’t got, just as we have qualities he +hasn’t. We’re secure in our competences. We know what we can +do, and that we can do it better than any—” her eyes +twinkled—“paleface. But he doubts himself. All the time and in +every way. And that’s why he may be the best man on this planet! +I’ll bet he does prove it!”</p> + +<p>Redfeather said scornfully:</p> + +<p>“You suggested radiation refrigeration! What does it prove that he +applied it?”</p> + +<p>“That,” said Aletha, “he couldn’t face the +disaster that was here without trying to do something about it—even +when it was impossible. He couldn’t face the deadly facts. He had +to torment himself by seeing that they wouldn’t be deadly if only +this one or that or the other were twisted a little. His vanity was hurt +because nature had beaten men. His dignity was offended. And a man with +easily-hurt dignity won’t ever be happy, but he can be pretty +good!”</p> + +<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> +Chuka raised his ebony bulk from the chair in which he still shifted the +iron pig from gloved hand to gloved hand.</p> + +<p>“You’re kind,” he said, chuckling. “Too kind! I +don’t want to hurt his feelings. I wouldn’t, for the world! +But really ... I’ve never heard a man praised for his vanity +before, or admired for being touchy about his dignity! If you’re +right ... why ... it’s been convenient. It might even mean hope. +But ... hm-m-m—— Would you want to marry a man like that?”</p> + +<p>“Great Manitou forbid!” said Aletha firmly. She grimaced at +the bare idea. “I’m an Amerind. I’ll want my husband +to be contented. I want to be contented along with him. Mr. Bordman will +never be either happy or content. No paleface husband for me! But I +don’t think he’s through here yet. Sending for help +won’t satisfy him. It’s a further hurt to his vanity. +He’ll be miserable if he doesn’t prove himself—to +himself—a better man than that!”</p> + +<p>Chuka shrugged his massive shoulders. Redfeather tracked down the last +item he needed and fairly bounced to his feet.</p> + +<p>“What tonnage of iron can you get out, Chuka?” he demanded. +“What can you do in the way of castings? What’s the elastic +modulus—how much carbon in this iron? And when can you start making +castings? Big ones?”</p> + +<p>“Let’s go talk to my foremen,” said Chuka +complacently. “We’ll see how fast my ... ah ... mineral +spring is trickling metal down the cliff-face. If you can really launch +a lifeboat, we might get some help here in a year and a half instead of +five——”</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>They went out-of-doors together. There was a small sound in the next +office. Aletha was suddenly very, very still. She sat motionless for a +long half-minute. Then she turned her head.</p> + +<p>“I owe you an apology, Mr. Bordman,” she said ruefully. +“It won’t take back the discourtesy, but—I’m very +sorry.”</p> + +<p>Bordman came into the office from the next room. He was rather pale. He +said wryly:</p> + +<p>“Eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves, eh? Actually I was +on the way in here when I heard—references to myself it would embarrass +Chuka and your cousin to know I heard. So I stopped. Not to listen, but +to keep them from knowing I’d heard their private opinions of me. +I’ll be obliged if you don’t tell them. They’re +entitled to their opinions of me. I’ve mine of them.” He +added grimly, “Apparently I think more highly of them than they do +of me!”</p> + +<p>Aletha said contritely:</p> + +<p>“It must have sounded horrible! But they ... we ... all of us +think better of you than you do of yourself!”</p> + +<p>Bordman shrugged.</p> + +<p>“You in particular. ‘Would you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +marry someone like me? Great Manitou, no!’”</p> + +<p>“For an excellent reason,” said Aletha firmly. “When I +get back from here—<i>if</i> I get back from here—I’m going to marry +Bob Running Antelope. He’s nice. I like the idea of marrying him. +I want to! But I look forward not only to happiness but to contentment. +To me that’s important. It isn’t to you, or to the woman you +ought to marry. And I ... well ... I simply don’t envy either of +you a bit!”</p> + +<p>“I see,” said Bordman with irony. He didn’t. “I +wish you all the contentment you look for.” Then he snapped: +“But what’s this business about expecting more from me? What +spectacular idea do you expect me to pull out of somebody’s hat +now? Because I’m frantically vain!”</p> + +<p>“I haven’t the least idea,” said Aletha calmly. +“But I think you’ll come up with something we couldn’t +possibly imagine. And I didn’t say it was because you were vain, +but because you are discontented with yourself. It’s born in you! +And there you are!”</p> + +<p>“If you mean neurotic,” snapped Bordman, “you’re +all wrong. I’m not neurotic! I’m not. I’m annoyed. +I’ll get hopelessly behind schedule because of this mess! But +that’s all!”</p> + +<p>Aletha stood up and shrugged her shoulders ruefully.</p> + +<p>“I repeat my apology,” she told him, “and leave you +the office. But I also repeat that I think you’ll turn up +something nobody else expects—and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> +I’ve no idea what it will be. But you’ll do it now to prove +that I’m wrong about how your mind works.”</p> + +<p>She went out. Bordman clamped his jaws tightly. He felt that especially +haunting discomfort which comes of suspecting that one has been told +something about himself which may be true.</p> + +<p>“Idiotic!” he fumed, all alone. “Me neurotic? Me +wanting to prove I’m the best man here out of vanity?” He +made a scornful noise. He sat impatiently at the desk. +“Absurd!” he muttered wrathfully. “Why should I need +to prove to myself I’m capable? What would I do if I felt such a +need, anyhow?”</p> + +<p>Scowling, he stared at the wall. It was irritating. It was a nagging +sort of question. What would he do if she were right? If he did need +constantly to prove to himself——</p> + +<p>He stiffened, suddenly. A look of intense surprise came upon his face. +He’d thought of what a self-doubtful, discontented man would try +to do, here on Xosa II at this juncture.</p> + +<p>The surprise was because he had also thought of how it could be done.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>The <i>Warlock</i> came to life. Her skipper gloomily answered the emergency +call from Xosa II. He listened. He clicked off the communicator and +hastened to an exterior port, deeply darkened against those times when +the blue-white sun of Xosa shone upon this side of the hull. He moved +the manual control to make it more transparent. He stared down at the +monstrous, tawny, mottled surface of the planet five thousand miles +away. He searched for the spot he bitterly knew was the colony’s +site.</p> + +<p>He saw what he’d been told he’d see. It was an infinitely +fine, threadlike projection from the surface of the planet. It rose at a +slight angle—it leaned toward the planet’s west—and it expanded +and widened and formed an extraordinary sort of mushroom-shaped object +that was completely impossible. It could not be. Humans do not create +visible objects twenty miles high, which at their tops expand like +toadstools on excessively slender stalks, and which drift westward and +fray and grow thin, and are constantly renewed.</p> + +<p>But it was true. The skipper of the <i>Warlock</i> gazed until he was +completely sure. It was no atomic bomb, because it continued to exist. +It faded, but was constantly replenished. There was no such thing!</p> + +<p>He went through the ship, bellowing, and faced mutinous snarlings. But +when the <i>Warlock</i> was around on that side of the planet again, the +members of the crew saw the strange appearance, too. They examined it +with telescopes. They grew hysterically happy. They went frantically to +work to clear away the signs of a month and a half of mutiny and +despair.</p> + +<p>It took them three days to get the ship to tidiness again, and during +all that time the peculiar tawny jet remained. On the sixth day the jet +was fainter. On the seventh it was <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span> +larger than before. It continued larger. And telescopes at highest +magnification verified what the emergency communication had said.</p> + +<p>Then the crew began to experience frantic impatience. It was worse, +waiting those last three or four days, than even all the hopeless time +before. But there was no reason to hate anybody, now. The skipper was +very much relieved.</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>There was eighteen hundred feet of steel grid overhead. It made a +crisscross, ring-shaped wall more than a quarter-mile high and almost to +the top of the surrounding mountains. But the valley was not exactly a +normal one. It was a crater, now: a steeply sloping, conical pit whose +walls descended smoothly to the outer girders of the red-painted, +glistening steel structure. More girders for the completion of the grid +projected from the sand just outside its half-mile circle. And in the +landing grid there was now a smaller, elaborate, truss-braced object. It +rested on the rocky ground, and it was not painted, and it was quite +small. A hundred feet high, perhaps, and no more than three hundred +across. But it was visibly a miniature of the great, now-uncovered, +re-painted landing grid which was qualified to handle interstellar cargo +ships and all the proper space-traffic of a minerals-colony planet.</p> + +<p>A caterwheel truck came lurching and rolling and rumbling down the side +of the pit. It had a sunshade and ground-reflector wings, and Bordman +rode tiredly on a hobbyhorse saddle in its back cargo section. He wore a +heat-suit.</p> + +<p>The truck reached the pit’s bottom. There was a tool shed there. +The caterwheel-truck bumped up to it and stopped. Bordman got out, +visibly cramped by the jolting, rocking, +exhausting-to-unaccustomed-muscles ride.</p> + +<p>“Do you want to go in the shed and cool off?” asked Chuka +brightly.</p> + +<p>“I’m all right,” said Bordman curtly. “I’m +quite comfortable, so long as you feed me that expanded air.” It +was plain that he resented needing even a special air supply. +“What’s all this about? Bringing the <i>Warlock</i> in? Why the +insistence on my being here?”</p> + +<p>“Ralph has a problem,” said Chuka blandly. “He’s +up there. See? He needs you. There’s a hoist. You’ve got to +check degree-of-completion anyhow. You might take a look around while +you’re up there. But he’s anxious for you to see something. +There where you see the little knot of people. The platform.”</p> + +<p>Bordman grimaced. When one was well started on a survey, one got used to +heights and depths and all sorts of environments. But he hadn’t +been up on steel-work in a good many months. Not since a survey on Kalka +IV nearly a year ago. He would be dizzy at first.</p> + +<p>He accompanied Chuka to the spot where a steel cable dangled from an +almost invisibly thin beam high above. There was a strictly improvised +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span> +cage to ascend in—planks and a handrail forming an insecure +platform that might hold four people. He got into it, and Dr. Chuka got +in beside him. Chuka waved his hand. The cage started up.</p> + +<p>Bordman winced as the ground dropped away below. It was ghastly to be +dangling in emptiness like this. He wanted to close his eyes. The cage +went up and up and up. It took many long minutes to reach the top.</p> + +<p>There was a platform there. Newly-made. The sunlight was blindingly +bright. The landscape was an intolerable glare. Bordman adjusted his +goggles to maximum darkness and stepped gingerly from the swaying cage +to the hardly more solid-seeming area. Here he was in mid-air on a +platform barely ten feet square. It was rather more than twice the +height of a metropolitan skyscraper from the ground. There were actual +mountain-crests only half a mile away and not much higher. Bordman was +acutely uncomfortable. He would get used to it, but——</p> + +<hr class='minor' /> + +<p>“Well?” he asked fretfully. “Chuka said you needed me +here. What’s the matter?”</p> + +<p>Ralph Redfeather nodded very formally. Aletha was here, too, and two of +Chuka’s foremen—one did not look happy—and four of the Amerind +steel-workers. They grinned at Bordman.</p> + +<p>“I wanted you to see,” said Aletha’s cousin, +“before we threw on the current. It doesn’t look like that +little grid could handle the sand it took care of. But Lewanika wants to +report.”</p> + +<p>A dark man who worked under Chuka—and looked as if he belonged on solid +ground—said carefully:</p> + +<p>“We cast the beams for the small landing grid, Mr. Bordman. We +melted the metal out of the cliffs and ran it into molds as it flowed +down.”</p> + +<p>He stopped. One of the Indians said:</p> + +<p>“We made the girders into the small landing grid. It bothered us +because we built it on the sand that had buried the big grid. We +didn’t understand why you ordered it there. But we built +it.”</p> + +<p>The second dark man said with a trace of swagger:</p> + +<p>“We made the coils, Mr. Bordman. We made the small grid so it +would work the same as the big one when it was finished. And then we +made the big grid work, finished or not!”</p> + +<p>Bordman said impatiently:</p> + +<p>“All right. Very good. But what is this? A ceremony?”</p> + +<p>“Just so,” said Aletha, smiling. “Be patient, Mr. +Bordman!”</p> + +<p>Her cousin said conversationally:</p> + +<p>“We built the small grid on the top of the sand. And it tapped the +ionosphere for power. No lack of power then! And we’d set it to +heave up sand instead of ships. Not to heave it out into space, but to +give it up to mile a second vertical velocity. Then we turned it +on.”</p> + +<p>“And we rode it down, that little <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span> +grid,” said one of the remaining Indians, grinning. “What a +party! Manitou!”</p> + +<p>Redfeather frowned at him and took up the narrative.</p> + +<p>“It hurled the sand up from its center. As you said it would, the +<ins class='corr' title="Transcriber's Note: The original showed 'sand-swept'.">sand swept</ins> +air with it. It made a whirlwind, bringing more sand from outside the +grid into its field. It was a whirlwind with fifteen megakilowatts of +power to drive it. Some of the sand went twenty miles high. Then it made +a mushroom-head and the winds up yonder blew it to the west. It came +down a long way off, Mr. Bordman. We’ve made a new dune-area ten +miles downwind. And the little grid sank as the sand went away from +around it. We had to stop it three times, because it leaned. We had to +dig under parts of it to get it straight up again. But it went down into +the valley.”</p> + +<p>Bordman turned up the power to his heat-suit motors. He felt +uncomfortably warm.</p> + +<p>“In six days,” said Ralph, almost ceremonially, “it +had uncovered half the original grid we’d built. Then we were able +to modify that to heave sand and to let it tap the ionosphere. We were +able to use a good many times the power the little grid could apply to +sand-lifting! In two days more the landing grid was clear. The valley +bottom was clean. We shifted some hundreds of millions of tons of sand +by landing grid, and now it is possible to land the <i>Warlock</i>, and +receive her supplies, and the solar-power furnace is already turning out +pigs for her loading. We wanted you to see what we have done. The colony +is no longer in danger, and we shall have the grid completely finished +for your inspection before the ship is ready to return.”</p> + +<p>Bordman said uncomfortably:</p> + +<p>“That’s very good. It’s excellent. I’ll put it +in my survey report.”</p> + +<p>“But,” said Ralph, more ceremonially still, “we have +the right to count coup for the members of our tribe and clan. +Now——”</p> + +<p>Then there was confusion. Aletha’s cousin was saying syllables +that did not mean anything at all. The other Indians joined in at +intervals, speaking gibberish. Aletha’s eyes were shining and she +looked incredibly pleased and satisfied.</p> + +<p>“But what ... what’s this?” demanded Bordman when they +stopped.</p> + +<p>Aletha spoke proudly.</p> + +<p>“Ralph just formally adopted you into the tribe, Mr. Bordman—and +into his clan and mine! He gave you a name I’ll have to write down +for you, but it means, +‘Man-who-believes-not-his-own-wisdom.’ And now——”</p> + +<p>Ralph Redfeather—licensed interstellar engineer, graduate of the +stiffest technical university in this quarter of the galaxy, wearer of +three eagle-pinion feathers and clad in a pair of insulated sandals and +a breechcloth—whipped out a small paint-pot and a brush from somewhere +and began carefully to paint on a section of girder ready for the +<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> +next tier of steel. He painted a feather on the metal.</p> + +<p>“It’s a coup,” he told Bordman over his shoulder. +“Your coup. Placed where it was earned—up here. Aletha is +authorized to certify it. And the head of the clan will add an +eagle-feather to the headdress he wears in council in the Big Tepee on +Algonka, and—your clan-brothers will be proud!”</p> + +<p>Then he straightened up and held out his hand.</p> + +<p>Chuka said benignly:</p> + +<p>“Being civilized men, Mr. Bordman, we Africans do not go in for +uncivilized feathers. But we ... ah ... rather approve of you, too. And +we plan a corroboree at the colony after the <i>Warlock</i> is down, when +there will be some excellently practiced singing. There is ... ah ... a +song, a sort of choral calypso, about this ... ah ... adventure you have +brought to so satisfying a conclusion. It is quite a good calypso. +It’s likely to be popular on a good many planets.”</p> + +<p>Bordman swallowed. He was acutely uncomfortable. He felt that he ought +to say something, and he did not know what.</p> + +<p>But just then there was a deep-toned humming in the air. It was a +vibrant tone, instinct with limitless power. It was the +eighteen-hundred-foot landing grid, giving off that profoundly bass and +vibrant, note it uttered while operating. Bordman looked up.</p> + +<p>The <i>Warlock</i> was coming down.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/illus-last.png" width="500" height="357" alt="" title="" /> +</div> + +<p class='b c'>THE END</p> +<hr class='minor' /> +<div class='bbox'> +<h3>Transcriber's Notes & Errata</h3> + +<p>This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction +December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any +evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was +renewed.</p> + +<p>The original page numbers from the magazine have been retained.</p> + +<p>Illustrations have been moved to their appropriate places in +the text.</p> + +<p>The following typographical errors have been corrected.</p> + +<div class='center'> +<table border="1" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary=""> +<tr class='b'><td align='left'>Page</td><td align='left'>Error</td><td align='left'>Correction</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>14</td><td align='left'>dessicated</td><td align='left'>desiccated</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>14</td><td align='left'>Anglo-Anglo-Saxon--girls</td><td align='left'>Anglo-Saxon girls</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>22</td><td align='left'>carrousel</td><td align='left'>carousel</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>23</td><td align='left'>dessication</td><td align='left'>desiccation</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>28</td><td align='left'>derelect</td><td align='left'>derelict</td></tr> +<tr><td align='right'>43</td><td align='left'>sand-swept</td><td align='left'>sand swept</td></tr> +</table></div></div> +<hr class='full' /> + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sand Doom, by William Fitzgerald Jenkins + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAND DOOM *** + +***** This file should be named 22467-h.htm or 22467-h.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/2/4/6/22467/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Gutenberg EBook of Sand Doom, by William Fitzgerald Jenkins + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Sand Doom + +Author: William Fitzgerald Jenkins + +Release Date: August 31, 2007 [EBook #22467] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAND DOOM *** + + + + +Produced by Greg Weeks, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + + + + +[Illustration: Cover Page] + + + + +[Illustration] +SAND DOOM + +BY MURRAY LEINSTER + +Illustrated by Freas + + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + | _The problem was as neat a circle as one could ask for; | + | without repair parts, they couldn't bring in the ship that | + | carried the repair parts!_ | + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + + +Bordman knew there was something wrong when the throbbing, acutely +uncomfortable vibration of rocket blasts shook the ship. Rockets were +strictly emergency devices, these days, so when they were used there was +obviously an emergency. + +He sat still. He had been reading, in the passenger lounge of the +_Warlock_--a very small lounge indeed--but as a senior Colonial Survey +officer he was well-traveled enough to know when things did not go +right. He looked up from the bookscreen, waiting. Nobody came to explain +the eccentricity of a spaceship using rockets. It would have been +immediate, on a regular liner, but the _Warlock_ was practically a +tramp. This trip it carried just two passengers. Passenger service was +not yet authorized to the planet ahead, and would not be until Bordman +had made the report he was on his way to compile. At the moment, though, +the rockets blasted, and stopped, and blasted again. There was something +definitely wrong. + +The _Warlock's_ other passenger came out of her cabin. She looked +surprised. She was Aletha Redfeather, an unusually lovely Amerind. +It was extraordinary that a girl could be so self-sufficient on a +tedious space-voyage, and Bordman approved of her. She was making the +journey to Xosa II as a representative of the Amerind Historical +Society, but she'd brought her own bookreels and some elaborate +fancywork which--woman-fashion--she used to occupy her hands. She +hadn't been at all a nuisance. Now she tilted her head on one side +as she looked inquiringly at Bordman. + +"I'm wondering, too," he told her, just as an especially sustained and +violent shuddering of rocket-impulsion made his chair legs thutter on +the floor. + +There was a long period of stillness. Then another violent but much +shorter blast. A shorter one still. Presently there was a half-second +blast which must have been from a single rocket tube because of the mild +shaking it produced. After that there was nothing at all. + +Bordman frowned to himself. He'd been anticipating groundfall within a +matter of hours, certainly. He'd just gone through his specbook +carefully and re-familiarized himself with the work he was to survey on +Xosa II. It was a perfectly commonplace minerals-planet development, and +he'd expected to clear it FE--fully established--and probably TP and NQ +ratings as well, indicating that tourists were permitted and no +quarantine was necessary. Considering the aridity of the planet, no +bacteriological dangers could be expected to exist, and if tourists +wanted to view its monstrous deserts and infernolike wind +sculptures--why they should be welcome. + +But the ship had used rocket drive in the planet's near vicinity. +Emergency. Which was ridiculous. This was a perfectly routine sort of +voyage. Its purpose was the delivery of heavy equipment--specifically a +smelter--and a senior Colonial Survey officer to report the completion +of primary development. + +Aletha waited, as if for more rocket blasts. Presently she smiled at +some thought that had occurred to her. + +"If this were an adventure tape," she said humorously, "the loudspeaker +would now announce that the ship had established itself in an orbit +around the strange, uncharted planet first sighted three days ago, and +that volunteers were wanted for a boat landing." + +Bordman demanded impatiently: + +"Do you bother with adventure tapes? They're nonsense! A pure waste of +time!" + +Aletha smiled again. + +"My ancestors," she told him, "used to hold tribal dances and make +medicine and boast about how many scalps they'd taken and how they did +it. It was satisfying--and educational for the young. Adolescents became +familiar with the idea of what we nowadays call adventure. They were +partly ready for it when it came. I suspect your ancestors used to tell +each other stories about hunting mammoths and such. So I think it would +be fun to hear that we were in orbit and that a boat landing was in +order." + +Bordman grunted. There were no longer adventures. The universe was +settled; civilized. Of course there were still frontier planets--Xosa II +was one--but pioneers had only hardships. Not adventures. + + * * * * * + +The ship-phone speaker clicked. It said curtly: + +"_Notice. We have arrived at Xosa II and have established an orbit about +it. A landing will be made by boat._" + +Bordman's mouth dropped open. + +"What the devil's this?" he demanded. + +"Adventure, maybe," said Aletha. Her eyes crinkled very pleasantly when +she smiled. She wore the modern Amerind dress--a sign of pride in the +ancestry which now implied such diverse occupations as interstellar +steel construction and animal husbandry and llano-planet colonization. +"If it were adventure, as the only girl on this ship I'd have to be in +the landing party, lest the tedium of orbital waiting make the"--her +smile widened to a grin--"the pent-up restlessness of trouble-makers in +the crew----" + +The ship-phone clicked again. + +"_Mr. Bordman. Miss Redfeather. According to advices from the ground, +the ship may have to stay in orbit for a considerable time. You will +accordingly be landed by boat. Will you make yourselves ready, please, +and report to the boat-blister?_" The voice paused and added, "_Hand +luggage only, please._" + +Aletha's eyes brightened. Bordman felt the shocked incredulity of a man +accustomed to routine when routine is impossibly broken. Of course +survey ships made boat landings from orbit, and colony ships let down +robot hulls by rocket when there was as yet no landing grid for the +handling of a ship. But never before in his experience had an ordinary +freighter, on a routine voyage to a colony ready for its final +degree-of-completion survey, ever landed anybody by boat. + +"This is ridiculous!" said Bordman, fuming. + +"Maybe it's adventure," said Aletha. "I'll pack." + +She disappeared into her cabin. Bordman hesitated. Then he went into his +own. The colony on Xosa II had been established two years ago. Minimum +comfort conditions had been realized within six months. A temporary +landing grid for light supply ships was up within a year. It had +permitted stock-piling, and it had been taken down to be rebuilt as a +permanent grid with every possible contingency provided for. The eight +months since the last ship landing was more than enough for the building +of the gigantic, spidery, half-mile-high structure which would handle +this planet's interstellar commerce. There was no excuse for an +emergency! A boat landing was nonsensical! + +But he surveyed the contents of his cabin. Most of the cargo of the +_Warlock_ was smelter equipment which was to complete the outfitting of +the colony. It was to be unloaded first. By the time the ship's holds +were wholly empty, the smelter would be operating. The ship would wait +for a full cargo of pig metal. Bordman had expected to live in this +cabin while he worked on the survey he'd come to make, and to leave +again with the ship. + +Now he was to go aground by boat. He fretted. The only emergency +equipment he could possibly need was a heat-suit. He doubted the urgency +of that. But he packed some clothing for indoors, and then defiantly +included his specbook and the volumes of definitive data to which +specifications for structures and colonial establishments always +referred. He'd get to work on his report immediately he landed. + +He went out of the passenger's lounge to the boat-blister. An engineer's +legs projected from the boat port. The engineer withdrew, with a strip +of tape from the boat's computer. He compared it dourly with a similar +strip from the ship's figurebox. Bordman consciously acted according to +the best traditions of passengers. + +"What's the trouble?" he asked. + +"We can't land," said the engineer shortly. + +He went away--according to the tradition by which ships' crews are +always scornful of passengers. + + * * * * * + +Bordman scowled. Then Aletha came, carrying a not-too-heavy bag. Bordman +put it in the boat, disapproving of the crampedness of the craft. But +this wasn't a lifeboat. It was a landing boat. A lifeboat had Lawlor +drive and could travel light-years, but in the place of rockets and +rocket fuel it had air-purifiers and water-recovery units and +food-stores. It couldn't land without a landing grid aground, but it +could get to a civilized planet. This landing boat could land without a +grid, but its air wouldn't last long. + +"Whatever's the matter," said Bordman darkly, "it's incompetence +somewhere!" + +But he couldn't figure it out. This was a cargo ship. Cargo ships +neither took off nor landed under their own power. It was too costly of +fuel they would have to carry. So landing grids used local power--which +did not have to be lifted--to heave ships out into space, and again used +local power to draw them to ground again. Therefore ships carried fuel +only for actual space-flight, which was economy. Yet landing grids had +no moving parts, and while they did have to be monstrous structures they +actually drew power from planetary ionospheres. So with no moving parts +to break down and no possibility of the failure of a power +source--landing grids couldn't fail! So there couldn't be an emergency +to make a ship ride orbit around a planet which had a landing grid! + +The engineer came back. He carried a mail sack full of letter-reels. He +waved his hand. Aletha crawled into the landing-boat port. Bordman +followed. Four people, with a little crowding, could have gotten into +the little ship. Three pretty well filled it. The engineer followed them +and sealed the port. + +"Sealed off," he said into the microphone before him. + +The exterior-pressure needle moved halfway across the dial. The +interior-pressure needle stayed steady. + +"All tight," said the engineer. + +The exterior-pressure needle flicked to zero. There were clanking +sounds. The long halves of the boat-blister stirred and opened, and +abruptly the landing boat was in an elongated cup in the hull-plating, +and above them there were many, many stars. The enormous disk of a +nearby planet floated into view around the hull. It was monstrous and +blindingly bright. It was of a tawny color, with great, irregular areas +of yellow and patches of bluishness. But most of it was the color of +sand. And all its colors varied in shade--some places were lighter and +some darker--and over at one edge there was blinding whiteness which +could not be anything but an ice cap. But Bordman knew that there was no +ocean or sea or lake on all this whole planet, and the ice cap was more +nearly hoarfrost than such mile-deep glaciation as would be found at the +poles of a maximum-comfort world. + +"Strap in," said the engineer over his shoulder. "No-gravity coming, and +then rocket-push. Settle your heads." + +Bordman irritably strapped himself in. He saw Aletha busy at the same +task, her eyes shining. Without warning, there came a sensation of acute +discomfort. It was the landing boat detaching itself from the ship and +the diminishment of the ship's closely-confined artificial-gravity +field. That field suddenly dropped to nothingness, and Bordman had the +momentary sickish dizziness that flicked-off gravity always produces. At +the same time his heart pounded unbearably in the instinctive, +racial-memory reaction to the feel of falling. + +Then roarings. He was thrust savagely back against his seat. His tongue +tried to slide back into his throat. There was an enormous oppression on +his chest. He found himself thinking panicky profanity. + +Simultaneously the vision ports went black, because they were out of the +shadow of the ship. The landing boat turned--but there was no sensation +of centrifugal force--and they were in a vast obscurity with merely a +dim phantom of the planetary surface to be seen. But behind them a +blue-white sun shone terribly. Its light was warm--hot--even though it +came through the polarized shielding ports. + +"Did ... did you say," panted Aletha happily--breathless because of the +acceleration--"that there weren't any adventures?" + +Bordman did not answer. But he did not count discomfort as an adventure. + + * * * * * + +The engineer did not look out the ports at all. He watched the screen +before him. There was a vertical line across the side of the lighted +disk. A blip moved downward across it, showing their height in thousands +of miles. After a long time the blip reached the bottom, and the +vertical line became double and another blip began to descend. It +measured height in hundreds of miles. A bright spot--a square--appeared +at one side of the screen. A voice muttered metallically, and suddenly +seemed to shout, and then muttered again. Bordman looked out one of the +black ports and saw the planet as if through smoked glass. It was a +ghostly reddish thing which filled half the cosmos. It had mottlings. +Its edge was curved. That would be the horizon. + +The engineer moved controls and the white square moved. It went across +the screen. He moved more controls. It came back to the center. The +height-in-hundreds blip was at the bottom, now, and the vertical line +tripled and a tens-of-miles-height blip crawled downward. + +There were sudden, monstrous plungings of the landing boat. It had hit +the outermost fringes of atmosphere. The engineer said words it was not +appropriate for Aletha to hear. The plungings became more violent. +Bordman held on--to keep from being shaken to pieces despite the +straps--and stared at the murky surface of the planet. It seemed to be +fleeing from them and they to be trying to overtake it. Gradually, very +gradually, its flight appeared to slow. They were down to twenty miles, +then. + +Quite abruptly the landing boat steadied. The square spot bobbed about +in the center of the astrogation screen. The engineer worked controls to +steady it. + +The ports cleared a little. Bordman could see the ground below more +distinctly. There were patches of every tint that mineral coloring could +produce. There were vast stretches of tawny sand. A little while more, +and he could see the shadows of mountains. He made out mountain flanks +which should have had valleys between them and other mountain flanks +beyond, but they had tawny flatnesses between, instead. These, he knew, +would be the sand plateaus which had been observed on this planet and +which had only a still-disputed explanation. But he could see areas of +glistening yellow and dirty white, and splashes of pink and streaks of +ultramarine and gray and violet, and the incredible red of iron oxide +covering square miles--too much to be believed. + +The landing-boat's rockets cut off. It coasted. Presently the horizon +tilted and all the dazzling ground below turned sedately beneath them. +There came staccato instructions from a voice-speaker, which the +engineer obeyed. The landing boat swung low--below the tips of giant +mauve mountains with a sand plateau beyond them--and its nose went up. +It stalled. + +Then the rockets roared again--and now, with air about them and after a +momentary pause, they were horribly loud--and the boat settled down and +down upon its own tail of fire. + +There was a completely blinding mass of dust and rocket fumes which cut +off all sight of everything else. Then there was a crunching crash, and +the engineer swore peevishly to himself. He cut the rockets again. +Finally. + + * * * * * + +Bordman found himself staring straight up, still strapped in his chair. +The boat had settled on its own tail fins, and his feet were higher than +his head, and he felt ridiculous. He saw the engineer at work +unstrapping himself. He duplicated the action, but it was absurdly +difficult to get out of the chair. + +Aletha managed more gracefully. She didn't need help. + +"Wait," said the engineer ungraciously, "till somebody comes." + +So they waited, using what had been chair backs for seats. + +The engineer moved a control and the windows cleared further. They saw +the surface of Xosa II. There was no living thing in sight. The ground +itself was pebbles and small rocks and minor boulders--all apparently +tumbled from the starkly magnificent mountains to one side. There were +monstrous, many-colored cliffs and mesas, every one eaten at in the +unmistakable fashion of wind-erosion. Through a notch in the mountain +wall before them a strange, fan-shaped, frozen formation appeared. If +such a thing had been credible, Bordman would have said that it was a +flow of sand simulating a waterfall. And everywhere there was blinding +brightness and the look and feel of blistering sunshine. But there was +not one single leaf or twig or blade of grass. This was pure desert. +This was Xosa II. + +Aletha regarded it with bright eyes. + +"Beautiful!" she said happily. "Isn't it?" + +"Personally," said Bordman, "I never saw a place that looked less +homelike or attractive." + +Aletha laughed. + +"My eyes see it differently." + +Which was true. It was accepted, nowadays, that humankind might be one +species but was many races, and each saw the cosmos in its own fashion. +On Kalmet III there was a dense, predominantly Asiatic population which +terraced its mountainsides for agriculture and deftly mingled modern +techniques with social customs not to be found on--say--Demeter I, where +there were many red-tiled stucco towns and very many olive groves. In +the llano planets of the Equis cluster, Amerinds--Aletha's +kin--zestfully rode over plains dotted with the descendants of buffalo +and antelope and cattle brought from ancient Earth. On the oases of +Rustam IV there were date palms and riding camels and much argument +about what should be substituted for the direction of Mecca at the times +for prayer, while wheat fields spanned provinces on Canna I and highly +civilized emigrants from the continent of Africa on Earth stored jungle +gums and lustrous gems in the warehouses of their spaceport city of +Timbuk. + +So it was natural for Aletha to look at this wind-carved wilderness +otherwise than as Bordman did. Her racial kindred were the pioneers of +the stars, these days. Their heritage made them less than appreciative +of urban life. Their inborn indifference to heights made them the +steel-construction men of the cosmos, and more than two-thirds of the +landing grids in the whole galaxy had their coup-feather symbols on the +key posts. But the planet government on Algonka V was housed in a +three-thousand-foot white stone tepee, and the best horses known to men +were raised by ranchers with bronze skins and high cheekbones on the +llano planet Chagan. + + * * * * * + +Now, here, in the _Warlock's_ landing boat, the engineer snorted. A +vehicle came around a cliff wall, clanking its way on those eccentric +caterwheels that new-founded colonies find so useful. The vehicle +glittered. It crawled over tumbled boulders, and flowed over fallen +scree. It came briskly toward them. The engineer snorted again. + +"That's my cousin Ralph!" said Aletha in pleased surprise. + +Bordman blinked and looked again. He did not quite believe his eyes. But +they told the truth. The figure controlling the ground car was +Indian--Amerind--wearing a breechcloth and thick-soled sandals and three +streamlined feathers in a band about his head. Moreover, he did not ride +in a seat. He sat astride a semi-cylindrical part of the ground car, +over which a gaily-colored blanket had been thrown. + +[Illustration] + +The ship's engineer rumbled disgustedly. But then Bordman saw how sane +this method of riding was--here. The ground vehicle lurched and swayed +and rolled and pitched and tossed as it came over the uneven ground. To +sit in anything like a chair would have been foolish. A back rest would +throw one forward in a frontward lurch, and give no support in case of a +backward one. A sidewise tilt would tend to throw one out. Riding a +ground car as if in a saddle was sense! + +But Bordman was not so sure about the costume. The engineer opened the +port and spoke hostilely out of it: + +"D'you know there's a lady in this thing?" + +The young Indian grinned. He waved his hand to Aletha, who pressed her +nose against a viewport. And just then Bordman did understand the +costume or lack of it. Air came in the open exit port. It was hot and +desiccated. It was furnace-like! + +"How, 'Letha," called the rider on the caterwheel steed. "Either dress +for the climate or put on a heat-suit before you come out of there!" + +Aletha chuckled. Bordman heard a stirring behind him. Then Aletha +climbed to the exit port and swung out. Bordman heard a dour muttering +from the engineer. Then he saw her greeting her cousin. She had slipped +out of the conventionalized Amerind outfit to which Bordman was +accustomed. Now she was clad as Anglo-Saxon girls dressed for beaches on +the cool-temperature planets. + +For a moment Bordman thought of sunstroke, with his own eyes dazzled by +the still-partly-filtered sunlight. But Aletha's Amerind coloring was +perfectly suited to sunshine even of this intensity. Wind blowing upon +her body would cool her skin. Her thick, straight black hair was at +least as good protection against sunstroke as a heat-helmet. She might +feel hot, but she would be perfectly safe. She wouldn't even sunburn. +But he, Bordman---- + +He grimly stripped to underwear and put on the heat-suit from his bag. +He filled its canteens from the boat's water tank. He turned on the +tiny, battery-powered motors. The suit ballooned out. It was intended +for short periods of intolerable heat. The motors kept it inflated--away +from his skin--and cooled its interior by the evaporation of sweat plus +water from its canteen tanks. It was a miniature air-conditioning system +for one man, and it should enable him to endure temperatures otherwise +lethal to someone with his skin and coloring. But it would use a lot of +water. + +He climbed to the exit port and went clumsily down the exterior ladder +to the tail fin. He adjusted his goggles. He went over to the chattering +young Indians, young man and girl. He held out his gloved hand. + +"I'm Bordman," he said painfully. "Here to make a degree-of-completion +survey. What's wrong that we had to land by boat?" + +Aletha's cousin shook hands cordially. + +"I'm Ralph Redfeather," he said, introducing himself. "Project engineer. +About everything's wrong. Our landing grid's gone. We couldn't contact +your ship in time to warn it off. It was in our gravity field before it +answered, and its Lawlor drive couldn't take it away--not working +because of the field. Our power, of course, went with the landing grid. +The ship you came in can't get back, and we can't send a distress +message anywhere, and our best estimate is that the colony will be wiped +out--thirst and starvation--in six months. I'm sorry you and Aletha have +to be included." + +Then he turned to Aletha and said amiably: + +"How's Mike Thundercloud and Sally Whitehorse and the gang in general, +'Letha?" + + * * * * * + +The _Warlock_ rolled on in her newly-established orbit about Xosa II. +The landing boat was aground, having removed the two passengers. It +would come back. Nobody on the ship wanted to stay aground, because they +knew the conditions and the situation below--unbearable heat and the +complete absence of hope. But nobody had anything to do! The ship had +been maintained in standard operating condition during its two-months' +voyage from Trent to here. No repairs or overhaulings were needed. There +was no maintenance-work to speak of. There would be only stand-by +watches until something happened. There would be nothing to do on those +watches. There would be off-watch time for twenty-one out of every +twenty-four hours, and no purposeful activity to fill even half an hour +of it. In a matter of--probably--years, the _Warlock_ should receive +aid. She might be towed out of her orbit to space in which the Lawlor +drive could function, or the crew might simply be taken off. But +meanwhile, those on board were as completely frustrated as the colony. +They could not do anything at all to help themselves. + +In one fashion the crewmen were worse off than the colonists. The +colonists had at least the colorful prospect of death before them. They +could prepare for it in their several ways. But the members of the +_Warlock_'s crew had nothing ahead but tedium. + +The skipper faced the future with extreme, grim distaste. + + * * * * * + +The ride to the colony was torment. Aletha rode behind her cousin on the +saddle-blanket, and apparently suffered little if at all. But Bordman +could only ride in the ground-car's cargo space, along with the sack of +mail from the ship. The ground was unbelievably rough and the jolting +intolerable. The heat was literally murderous. In the metal cargo space, +the temperature reached a hundred and sixty degrees in the sunshine--and +given enough time, food will cook in no more heat than that. Of course a +man has been known to enter an oven and stay there while a roast was +cooked, and to come out alive. But the oven wasn't throwing him +violently about or bringing sun-heated--blue-white-sun heated--metal to +press his heat-suit against him. + +The suit did make survival possible, but that was all. The contents of +its canteens gave out just before arrival, and for a short time Bordman +had only sweat for his suit to work with. It kept him alive by forced +ventilation, but he arrived in a state of collapse. He drank the iced +salt water they gave him and went to bed. He'd get back his strength +with a proper sodium level in his blood. But he slept for twelve hours +straight. + +When he got up, he was physically normal again, but abysmally ashamed. +It did no good to remind himself that Xosa II was rated minimum-comfort +class D--a blue-white sun and a mean temperature of one hundred and ten +degrees. Africans could take such a climate--with night-relief quarters. +Amerinds could do steel construction work in the open, protected only by +insulated shoes and gloves. But Bordman could not venture out-of-doors +except in a heat-suit. He couldn't stay long then. It was not a +weakness. It was a matter of genetics. But he was ashamed. + +Aletha nodded to him when he found the Project Engineer's office. It +occupied one of the hulls in which colony-establishment materials had +been lowered by rocket power. There were forty of the hulls, and they +had been emptied and arranged for inter-communication in three separate +communities, so that an individual could change his quarters and +ordinary associates from time to time and colony fever--frantic +irritation with one's companions--was minimized. + +Aletha sat at a desk, busily making notes from a loose leaf volume +before her. The wall behind the desk was fairly lined with similar +volumes. + +"I made a spectacle of myself!" said Bordman, bitterly. + +"Not at all!" Aletha assured him. "It could happen to anybody. I +wouldn't do too well on Timbuk." + +There was no answer to that. Timbuk was essentially a jungle planet, +barely emerging from the carboniferous stage. Its colonists thrived +because their ancestors had lived on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea, +on Earth. But Anglos did not find its climate healthful, nor would many +other races. Amerinds died there quicker than most. + +"Ralph's on the way here now," added Aletha. "He and Dr. Chuka were out +picking a place to leave the records. The sand dunes here are terrible, +you know. When an explorer-ship does come to find out what's happened to +us, these buildings could be covered up completely. Any place could be. +It isn't easy to pick a record-cache that's quite sure to be found." + +"When," said Bordman skeptically, "there's nobody left alive to point it +out. Is that it?" + +"That's it," agreed Aletha. "It's pretty bad all around. I didn't plan +to die just yet." + +Her voice was perfectly normal. Bordman snorted. As a senior Colonial +Survey officer, he'd been around. But he'd never yet known a human +colony to be extinguished when it was properly equipped and after a +proper pre-settlement survey. He'd seen panic, but never real cause for +a matter-of-fact acceptance of doom. + + * * * * * + +There was a clanking noise outside the hulk which was the Project +Engineer's headquarters. Bordman couldn't see clearly through the +filtered ports. He reached over and opened a door. The brightness +outside struck his eyes like a blow. He blinked them shut instantly and +turned away. But he'd seen a glistening, caterwheel ground car stopping +not far from the doorway. + +He stood wiping tears from his light-dazzled eyes as footsteps sounded +outside. Aletha's cousin came in, followed by a huge man with remarkably +dark skin. The dark man wore eyeglasses with a curiously thick, corklike +nosepiece to insulate the necessary metal of the frame from his skin. It +would blister if it touched bare flesh. + +"This is Dr. Chuka," said Redfeather pleasantly, "Mr. Bordman. Dr. +Chuka's the director of mining and mineralogy here." + +Bordman shook hands with the ebony-skinned man. He grinned, showing +startlingly white teeth. Then he began to shiver. + +"It's like a freeze-box in here," he said in a deep voice. "I'll get a +robe and be with you." + +He vanished through a doorway, his teeth chattering audibly. Aletha's +cousin took half a dozen deliberate deep breaths and grimaced. + +"I could shiver myself," he admitted "but Chuka's really acclimated to +Xosa. He was raised on Timbuk." + +Bordman said curtly: + +"I'm sorry I collapsed on landing. It won't happen again. I came here to +do a degree-of-completion survey that should open the colony to normal +commerce, let the colonists' families move in, tourists, and so on. But +I was landed by boat instead of normally, and I am told the colony is +doomed. I would like an official statement of the degree of completion +of the colony's facilities and an explanation of the unusual points I +have just mentioned." + +The Indian blinked at him. Then he smiled faintly. The dark man came +back, zipping up an indoor warmth-garment. Redfeather dryly brought him +up to date by repeating what Bordman had just said. Chuka grinned and +sprawled comfortably in a chair. + +"I'd say," he remarked humorously, in that astonishingly deep-toned +voice of his, "sand got in our hair. And our colony. And the landing +grid. There's a lot of sand on Xosa. Wouldn't you say that was the +trouble?" + +The Indian said with elaborate gravity: + +"Of course wind had something to do with it." + +Bordman fumed. + +"I think you know," he said fretfully, "that as a senior Colonial Survey +officer, I have authority to give any orders needed for my work. I give +one now. I want to see the landing grid--if it is still standing. I take +it that it didn't fall down?" + +Redfeather flushed beneath the bronze pigment of his skin. It would be +hard to offend a steelman more than to suggest that his work did not +stand up. + +"I assure you," he said politely, "that it did not fall down." + +"Your estimate of its degree of completion?" + +"Eighty per cent," said Redfeather formally. + +"You've stopped work on it?" + +"Work on it has been stopped," agreed the Indian. + +"Even though the colony can receive no more supplies until it is +completed?" + +"Just so," said Redfeather without expression. + +"Then I issue a formal order that I be taken to the landing-grid site +immediately," said Bordman angrily. "I want to see what sort of +incompetence is responsible! Will you arrange it--at once?" + +Redfeather said in a completely emotionless voice: + +"You want to see the site of the landing grid. Very good. Immediately." + +He turned and walked out into the incredible, blinding sunshine. Bordman +blinked at the momentary blast of light, and then began to pace up and +down the office. He fumed. He was still ashamed of his collapse from the +heat during the travel from the landed rocket-boat to the colony. +Therefore he was touchy and irritable. But the order he had given was +strictly justifiable. + +He heard a small noise. He whirled. Dr. Chuka, huge and black and +spectacled, rocked back and forth in his seat, suppressing laughter. + +"Now, what the devil does that mean?" demanded Bordman suspiciously. "It +certainly isn't ridiculous to ask to see the structure on which the life +of the colony finally depends!" + +"Not ridiculous," said Dr. Chuka. "It's--hilarious!" + +He boomed laughter in the office with the rounded ceiling of a remade +robot hull. Aletha smiled with him, though her eyes were grave. + +"You'd better put on a heat-suit," she said to Bordman. + +He fumed again, tempted to defy all common sense because its dictates +were not the same for everybody. But he marched away, back to the +cubbyhole in which he had awakened. Angrily, he donned the heat-suit +that had not protected him adequately before, but had certainly saved +his life. He filled the canteens topping full--he suspected he hadn't +done so the last time. He went back to the Project Engineer's office +with a feeling of being burdened and absurd. + + * * * * * + +Out a filter-window, he saw that men with skins as dark as Dr. Chuka's +were at work on a ground car. They were equipping it with a sunshade and +curious shields like wings. Somebody pushed a sort of caterwheel +handtruck toward it. They put big, heavy tanks into its cargo space. Dr. +Chuka had disappeared, but Aletha was back at work making notes from the +loose-leaf volume on the desk. + +[Illustration] + +"May I ask," asked Bordman with some irony, "what your work happens to +be just now?" + +She looked up. + +"I thought you knew," she said in surprise. "I'm here for the Amerind +Historical Society. I can certify coups. I'm taking coup-records for the +Society. They'll go in the record-cache Ralph and Dr. Chuka are +arranging, so no matter what happens to the colony, the record of the +coups won't be lost." + +"Coups?" demanded Bordman. He knew that Amerinds painted feathers on the +key-posts of steel structures they'd built, and he knew that the posting +of such "coup-marks" was a cherished privilege and undoubtedly a +survival or revival of some American Indian tradition back on Earth. +But he did not know what they meant. + +"Coups," repeated Aletha matter-of-factly. "Ralph wears three +eagle-feathers. You saw them. He has three coups. Pinions, too! He built +the landing grids on Norlath and--Oh, you don't know!" + +"I don't," admitted Bordman, his temper not of the best because of what +seemed unnecessary condescensions on Xosa II. + +Aletha looked surprised. + +"In the old days," she explained, "back on Earth, if a man scalped an +enemy, he counted coup. The first to strike an enemy in a battle counted +coup, too--a lesser one. Nowadays a man counts coups for different +things, but Ralph's three eagle-feathers mean he's entitled to as much +respect as a warrior in the old days who, three separate times, had +killed and scalped an enemy warrior in the middle of his own camp. And +he is, too!" + +Bordman grunted. + +"Barbarous, I'd say!" + +"If you like," said Aletha. "But it's something to be proud of--and one +doesn't count coup for making a lot of money!" Then she paused and said +curtly: "The word 'snobbish' fits it better than 'barbarous.' We are +snobs! But when the head of a clan stands up in Council in the Big Tepee +on Algonka, representing his clan, and men have to carry the ends of the +feather headdress with all the coups the members of his clan have +earned--why one is proud to belong to that clan!" She added defiantly, +"Even watching it on a vision-screen!" + +Dr. Chuka opened the outer door. Blinding light poured in. He did not +enter--and his body glistened with sweat. + +"Ready for you, Mr. Bordman!" + +Bordman adjusted his goggles and turned on the motors of his heat-suit. +He went out the door. + + * * * * * + +The heat and light outside were oppressive. He darkened the goggles +again and made his way heavily to the waiting, now-shaded ground car. He +noted that there were other changes beside the sunshade. The cover-deck +of the cargo space was gone, and there were cylindrical riding seats +like saddles in the back. The odd lower shields reached out sidewise +from the body, barely above the caterwheels. He could not make out their +purpose and irritably failed to ask. + +"All ready," said Redfeather coldly. "Dr. Chuka's coming with us. If +you'll get in here, please----" + +Bordman climbed awkwardly into the boxlike back of the car. He bestrode +one of the cylindrical arrangements. With a saddle on it, it would +undoubtedly have been a comfortable way to cover impossibly bad terrain +in a mechanical carrier. He waited. About him there were the squatty +hulls of the space-barges which had been towed here by a colony ship, +each one once equipped with rockets for landing. Emptied of their +cargoes, they had been huddled together into the three separate, +adjoining communities. There were separate living quarters and mess +halls and recreation rooms for each, and any colonist lived in the +community of his choice and shifted at pleasure, or visited, or remained +solitary. For mental health a man has to be assured of his free will, +and over-regimentation is deadly in any society. With men +psychologically suited to colonize, it is fatal. + +Above--but at a distance, now--there was a monstrous scarp of mountains, +colored in glaring and unnatural tints. Immediately about there was raw +rock. But it was peculiarly smooth, as if sand grains had rubbed over it +for uncountable aeons and carefully worn away every trace of unevenness. +Half a mile to the left, dunes began and went away to the horizon. The +nearer ones were small, but they gained in size with distance from the +mountains--which evidently affected the surface-winds hereabouts--and +the edge of seeing was visibly not a straight line. The dunes yonder +must be gigantic. But of course on a world the size of ancient Earth, +and which was waterless save for snow-patches at its poles, the size to +which sand dunes could grow had no limit. The surface of Xosa II was a +sea of sand, on which islands and small continents of wind-swept rock +were merely minor features. + +Dr. Chuka adjusted a small metal object in his hand. It had a tube +dangling from it. He climbed into the cargo space and fastened it to one +of the two tanks previously loaded. + +"For you," he told Bordman. "Those tanks are full of compressed air at +rather high pressure--a couple of thousand pounds. Here's a +reduction-valve with an adiabatic expansion feature, to supply extra air +to your heat-suit. It will be pretty cold, expanding from so high a +pressure. Bring down the temperature a little more." + +Bordman again felt humiliated. Chuka and Redfeather, because of their +races, were able to move about nine-tenths naked in the open air on this +planet, and they thrived. But he needed a special refrigerated costume +to endure the heat. More, they provided him with sunshades and +refrigerated air that they did not need for themselves. They were +thoughtful of him. He was as much out of his element, where they fitted +perfectly, as he would have been making a degree-of-completion survey on +an underwater project. He had to wear what was practically a diving suit +and use a special air supply to survive! + +He choked down the irritation his own inadequacy produced. + +"I suppose we can go now," he said as coldly as he could. + +Aletha's cousin mounted the control-saddle--though it was no more than a +blanket--and Dr. Chuka mounted beside Bordman. The ground car got under +way. It headed for the mountains. + + * * * * * + +The smoothness of the rock was deceptive. The caterwheel car lurched +and bumped and swayed and rocked. It rolled and dipped and wallowed. +Nobody could have remained in a normal seat on such terrain, but Bordman +felt hopelessly undignified riding what amounted to a hobbyhorse. Under +the sunshade it was infuriatingly like a horse on a carousel. That there +were three of them together made it look even more foolish. He stared +about him, trying to take his mind from his own absurdity. His goggles +made the light endurable, but he felt ashamed. + +"Those side-fins," said Chuka's deep voice pleasantly, "the bottom ones, +make things better for you. The shade overhead cuts off direct sunlight, +and they cut off the reflected glare. It would blister your skin even +if the sun never touched you directly." + +Bordman did not answer. The caterwheel car went on. It came to a patch +of sand--tawny sand, heavily mineralized. There was a dune here. Not a +big one for Xosa II. It was no more than a hundred feet high. But they +went up its leeward, steeply slanting side. All the planet seemed to +tilt insanely as the caterwheels spun. They reached the dune's crest, +where it tended to curl over and break like a water-comber, and here the +wheels struggled with sand precariously ready to fall, and Bordman had a +sudden perception of the sands of Xosa II as the oceans that they really +were. The dunes were waves which moved with infinite slowness, but the +irresistible force of storm-seas. Nothing could resist them. Nothing! + +They traveled over similar dunes for two miles. Then they began to climb +the approaches to the mountains. And Bordman saw for the second +time--the first had been through the ports of the landing-boat--where +there was a notch in the mountain wall and sand had flowed out of it +like a waterfall, making a beautifully symmetrical cone-shaped heap +against the lower cliffs. There were many such falls. There was one +place where there was a sand-cascade. Sand had poured over a series of +rocky steps, piling up on each in turn to its very edge, and then +spilling again to the next. + +They went up a crazily slanting spur of stone, whose sides were too +steep for sand to lodge on, and whose narrow crest had a bare thin +coating of powder. + +The landscape looked like a nightmare. As the car went on, wabbling and +lurching and dipping on its way, the heights on either side made Bordman +tend to dizziness. The coloring was impossible. The aridness, the +desiccation, the lifelessness of everything about was somehow shocking. +Bordman found himself straining his eyes for the merest, scrubbiest of +bushes and for however stunted and isolated a wisp of grass. + +The journey went on for an hour. Then there came a straining climb up a +now-windswept ridge of eroded rock, and the attainment of its highest +point. The ground car went onward for a hundred yards and stopped. + +They had reached the top of the mountain range, and there was +doubtlessly another range beyond. But they could not see it. Here, at +the place to which they had climbed so effortfully, there were no more +rocks. There was no valley. There was no descending slope. There was +sand. This was one of the sand plateaus which were a unique feature of +Xosa II. And Bordman knew, now, that the disputed explanation was the +true one. + +Winds, blowing over the mountains, carried sand as on other worlds they +carried moisture and pollen and seeds and rain. Where two mountain +ranges ran across the course of long-blowing winds, the winds eddied +above the valley between. They dropped sand into it. The equivalent of +trade winds, Bordman considered, in time would fill a valley to the +mountain tops, just as trade winds provide moisture in equal quantity on +other worlds, and civilizations have been built upon it. But---- + + * * * * * + +"Well?" said Bordman challengingly. + +"This is the site of the landing grid," said Redfeather. + +"Where?" + +"Here," said the Indian dryly. "A few months ago there was a valley +here. The landing grid had eighteen hundred feet of height built. There +was to be four hundred feet more--the lighter top construction justifies +my figure of eighty per cent completion. Then there was a storm." + +[Illustration] + +It was hot. Horribly, terribly hot, even here on a plateau at +mountaintop height. Dr. Chuka looked at Bordman's face and bent down in +the vehicle. He turned a stopcock on one of the air tanks brought for +Bordman's necessity. Immediately Bordman felt cooler. His skin was dry, +of course. The circulated air dried sweat as fast as it appeared. But he +had the dazed, feverish feeling of a man in an artificial-fever box. +He'd been fighting it for some time. Now the coolness of the expanded +air was almost deliriously refreshing. + +Dr. Chuka produced a canteen. Bordman drank thirstily. The water was +slightly salted to replace salt lost in sweat. + +"A storm, eh?" asked Bordman, after a time of contemplation of his inner +sensations as well as the scene of disaster before him. There'd be some +hundreds of millions of tons of sand in even a section of this plateau. +It was unthinkable that it could be removed except by a long-time sweep +of changed trade winds along the length of the valley. "But what has a +storm to do----" + +"It was a sandstorm," said Redfeather coldly. "Probably there was a +sunspot flare-up. We don't know. But the pre-colonization survey spoke +of sandstorms. The survey team even made estimates of sandfall in +various places as so many inches per year. Here all storms drop sand +instead of rain. But there must have been a sunspot flare because this +storm blew for"--his voice went flat and deliberate because it was +stating the unbelievable--"for two months. We did not see the sun in all +that time. And we couldn't work, naturally. The sand would flay a man's +skin off his body in minutes. So we waited it out. + +"When it ended, there was this sand plateau where the survey had ordered +the landing grid to be built. The grid was under it. It is under it. The +top of eighteen hundred feet of steel is still buried two hundred feet +down in the sand you see. Our unfabricated building-steel is piled ready +for erection--under two thousand feet of sand. Without anything but +stored power it is hardly practical"--Redfeather's tone was +sardonic--"for us to try to dig it out. There are hundreds of millions +of tons of stuff to be moved. If we could get the sand away, we could +finish the grid. If we could finish the grid, we'd have power enough to +get the sand away--in a few years, and if we could replace the machinery +that wore out handling it. And if there wasn't another sandstorm." + +He paused. Bordman took deep breaths of the cooler air. He could think +more clearly. + +"If you will accept photographs," said Redfeather politely, "you can +check that we actually did the work." + + * * * * * + +Bordman saw the implications. The colony had been formed of Amerinds for +the steel work and Africans for the labor the Amerinds were congenitally +averse to--the handling of complex mining-machinery underground and the +control of modern high-speed smelting operations. Both races could +endure this climate and work in it--provided that they had cooled +sleeping quarters. But they had to have power. Power not only to work +with, but to live by. The air-cooling machinery that made sleep possible +also condensed from the cooled air the minute trace of water vapor it +contained and that they needed for drink. But without power they would +thirst. Without the landing grid and the power it took from the +ionosphere, they could not receive supplies from the rest of the +universe. So they would starve. + +And the _Warlock_, now in orbit somewhere overhead, was well within the +planet's gravitational field and could not use its Lawlor drive to +escape with news of their predicament. In the normal course of events it +would be years before a colony ship capable of landing or blasting out +of a planetary gravitational field by rocket-power was dispatched to +find out why there was no news from Xosa II. There was no such thing as +interstellar signaling, of course. Ships themselves travel faster than +any signal that could be sent, and distances were so great that mere +communication took enormous lengths of time. A letter sent to Earth from +the Rim even now took ten years to make the journey, and another ten for +a reply. Even the much shorter distances involved in Xosa II's +predicament still ruled out all hope. The colony was strictly on its +own. + +Bordman said heavily: + +"I'll accept the photographs. I even accept the statement that the +colony will die. I will prepare my report for the cache Aletha tells me +you're preparing. And I apologize for any affront I may have offered +you." + +Dr. Chuka nodded approvingly. He regarded Bordman with benign warmth. +Ralph Redfeather said cordially enough: + +"That's perfectly all right. No harm done." + +"And now," said Bordman shortly, "since I have authority to give any +orders needed for my work, I want to survey the steps you've taken to +carry out those parts of your instructions dealing with emergencies. I +want to see right away what you've done to beat this state of things. I +know they can't be beaten, but I intend to leave a report on what you've +tried!" + + * * * * * + +The _Warlock_ swung in emptiness around the planet Xosa II. It was +barely five thousand miles above the surface, so the mottled terrain of +the dry world flowed swiftly and perpetually beneath it. It did not seem +beneath, of course. It simply seemed out--away--removed from the ship. +And in the ship's hull there was artificial gravity, and light, and +there were the humming sounds of fans which kept the air in motion and +flowing through the air apparatus. Also there was food, and adequate +water, and the temperature was admirably controlled. But nothing +happened. Moreover, nothing could be expected to happen. There were +eight men in the crew, and they were accustomed to space-voyages which +lasted from one month to three. But they had traveled a good two months +from their last port. They had exhausted the visireels, playing them +over and over until they were intolerable. They had read and reread all +the bookreels they could bear. On previous voyages they had played chess +and similar games until it was completely predictable who would beat +whom in every possible contest. + +Now they viewed the future with bitterness. The ship could not land, +because there was no landing grid in operation on the planet below them. +They could not depart, because the Lawlor drive simply does not work +within five diameters of an Earth-gravity planet. Space is warped only +infinitesimally by so thin a field, but a Lawlor drive needs almost +perfectly unstressed emptiness if it is to take hold. They did not have +fuel enough to blast out the necessary thirty-odd thousand miles against +gravity. The same consideration made their lifeboats useless. They could +not escape by rocket-power and their Lawlor drives, also, were +ineffective. + +The crew of the _Warlock_ was bored. The worst of the boredom was that +it promised to last without limit. They had food and water and physical +comfort, but they were exactly in the situation of men sentenced to +prison for an unknown but enormous length of time. There was no escape. +There could be no alleviation. The prospect invited frenzy by +anticipation. + +A fist fight broke out in the crew's quarters within two hours after the +_Warlock_ had established its orbit--as a first reaction to their +catastrophe. The skipper went through the ship and painstakingly +confiscated every weapon. He locked them up. He, himself, already felt +the nagging effect of jangling nerves. There was nothing to do. He +didn't know when there would ever be anything to do. It was a condition +to produce hysteria. + + * * * * * + +There was night. Outside and above the colony there were uncountable +myriads of stars. They were not the stars of Earth, of course, but +Bordman had never been on Earth. He was used to unfamiliar +constellations. He stared out a port at the sky, and noted that there +were no moons. He remembered, when he thought, that Xosa II had no +moons. There was a rustling of paper behind him. Aletha Redfeather +turned a page in a loose-leaf volume and painstakingly made a note. The +wall behind her held many more such books. From them could be extracted +the detailed history of every bit of work that had been done by the +colony-preparation crews. Separate, tersely-phrased items could be +assembled to make a record of individual men. + +There had been incredible hardships, at first. There were heroic feats. +There had been an attempt to ferry water supplies down from the pole by +aircraft. It was not practical, even to build up a reserve of fluid. +Winds carried sand particles here as on other worlds they carried +moisture. Aircraft were abraded as they flew. The last working flier +made a forced landing five hundred miles from the colony. A caterwheel +expedition went out and brought the crew in. The caterwheel trucks were +armored with silicone plastic, resistant to abrasion, but when they got +back they had to be scrapped. There had been men lost in sudden +sand-squalls, and heroic searches for them, and once or twice rescues. +There had been cave-ins in the mines. There had been accidents. There +had been magnificent feats of endurance and achievement. + +Bordman went to the door of the hull which was Ralph Redfeather's +Project Engineer office. He opened it. He stepped outside. + +It was like stepping into an oven. The sand was still hot from the +sunshine just ended. The air was so utterly dry that Bordman instantly +felt it sucking at the moisture of his nasal passages. In ten seconds +his feet--clad in indoor footwear--were uncomfortably hot. In twenty the +soles of his feet felt as if they were blistering. He would die of the +heat at night, here! Perhaps he could endure the outside near dawn, but +he raged a little. Here where Amerinds and Africans lived and throve, he +could live unprotected for no more than an hour or two--and that at one +special time of the planet's rotation! + +He went back in, ashamed of the discomfort of his feet and angrily +letting them feel scorched rather than admit to it. + +Aletha turned another page. + +"Look, here!" said Bordman angrily. "No matter what you say, you're +going to go back on the _Warlock_ before----" + +She raised her eyes. + +"We'll worry about that when the time comes. But I think not. I'd +rather stay here." + +"For the present, perhaps," snapped Bordman. "But before things get too +bad you go back to the ship! They've rocket fuel enough for half a dozen +landings of the landing boat. They can lift you out of here!" + +Aletha shrugged. + +"Why leave here to board a derelict? The _Warlock_'s practically that. +What's your honest estimate of the time before a ship equipped to help +us gets here?" + +Bordman would not answer. He'd done some figuring. It had been a +two-month journey from Trent--the nearest Survey base--to here. The +_Warlock_ had been expected to remain aground until the smelter it +brought could load it with pig metal. Which could be as little as two +weeks, but would surprise nobody if it was two months instead. So the +ship would not be considered due back on Trent for four months. It would +not be considered overdue for at least two more. It would be six months +before anybody seriously wondered why it wasn't back with its cargo. +There'd be a wait for lifeboats to come in, should there have been a +mishap in space. There'd eventually be a report of noncommunication to +the Colony Survey headquarters on Canna III. But it would take three +months for that report to be received, and six more for a +confirmation--even if ships made the voyages exactly at the most +favorable intervals--and then there should at least be a complaint from +the colony. There were lifeboats aground on Xosa II, for emergency +communication, and if a lifeboat didn't bring news of a planetary +crisis, no crisis would be considered to exist. Nobody could imagine a +landing grid failing! + +Maybe in a year somebody would think that maybe somebody ought to ask +around about Xosa II. It would be much longer before somebody put a note +on somebody else's desk that would suggest that when, or if, a suitable +ship passed near Xosa II, or if one should be available for the inquiry, +it might be worth while to have the noncommunication from the planet +looked into. Actually, to guess at three years before another ship +arrived would be the most optimistic of estimates. + +"You're a civilian," said Bordman shortly. "When the food and water run +low, you go back to the ship. You'll at least be alive when somebody +does come to see what's the matter here!" + +Aletha said mildly: + +"Maybe I'd rather not be alive. Will you go back to the ship?" + +Bordman flushed. He wouldn't. But he said doggedly; + +"I can order you sent on board, and your cousin will carry out the +order!" + +"I doubt it very much," said Aletha pleasantly. + +She returned to her task. + + * * * * * + +There were crunching footsteps outside the hulk. Bordman winced a +little. With insulated sandals, it was normal for these colonists to +move from one part of the colony to another in the open, even by +daylight. He, Bordman, couldn't take out-of-doors at night! His lips +twisted bitterly. + +Men came in. There were dark men with rippling muscles under glistening +skin, and bronze Amerinds with coarse straight hair. Ralph Redfeather +was with them. Dr. Chuka came in last of all. + +"Here we are," said Redfeather. "These are our foremen. Among us, I +think we can answer any questions you want to ask." + +He made introductions. Bordman didn't try to remember the names. +Abeokuta and Northwind and Sutata and Tallgrass and T'ckka and +Spottedhorse and Lewanika---- They were names which in combination would +only be found in a very raw, new colony. But the men who crowded into +the office were wholly at ease, in their own minds as well as in the +presence of a senior Colonial Survey officer. They nodded as they were +named, and the nearest shook hands. Bordman knew that he'd have liked +their looks under other circumstances. But he was humiliated by the +conditions on this planet. They were not. They were apparently only +sentenced to death by them. + +"I have to leave a report," said Bordman curtly--and he was somehow +astonished to know that he did expect to leave a report rather than make +one; he accepted the hopelessness of the colony's future--"on the +degree-of-completion of the work here. But since there's an emergency, I +have also to leave a report on the measures taken to meet it." + +The report would be futile, of course. As futile as the coup-records +Aletha was compiling, which would be read only after everybody on the +planet was dead. But Bordman knew he'd write it. It was unthinkable that +he shouldn't. + +"Redfeather tells me," he added, again curtly, "that the power in +storage can be used to cool the colony buildings--and therefore condense +drinking water from the air--for just about six months. There is food +for about six months. If one lets the buildings warm up a little, to +stretch the fuel, there won't be enough water to drink. Go on half +rations to stretch the food, and there won't be enough water to last and +the power will give out anyhow. No profit there!" + +There were nods. The matter had been thrashed out long before. + +"There's food in the _Warlock_ overhead," Bordman went on coldly, "but +they can't use the landing boat more than a few times. It can't use ship +fuel. No refrigeration to hold it stable. They couldn't land more than a +ton of supplies all told. There are five hundred of us here. No help +there!" + +He looked from one to another. + +"So we live comfortably," he told them with irony, "until our food and +water and minimum night-comfort run out together. Anything we do to try +to stretch anything is useless because of what happens to something +else. Redfeather tells me you accept the situation. What are you +doing--since you accept it?" + +Dr. Chuka said amiably: + +"We've picked a storage place for our records, and our miners are +blasting out space in which to put away the record of our actions to the +last possible moment. It will be sandproof. Our mechanics are building a +broadcast unit we'll spare a tiny bit of fuel for. It will run +twenty-odd years, broadcasting directions so it can be found regardless +of how the terrain is changed by drifting sand." + +"And," said Bordman, "the fact that nobody will be here to give +directions." + +Chuka added benignly: + +"We're doing a great deal of singing, too. My people are ... ah ... +religious. When we are ... ah ... no longer here ... there have been +boastings that there'll be a well-practiced choir ready to go to work in +the next world." + +White teeth showed in grins. Bordman was almost envious of men who could +grin at such a thought. But he went on grimly: + +"And I understand that athletics have also been much practiced." + +Redfeather said: + +"There's been time for it. Climbing teams have counted coup on all the +worst mountains within three hundred miles. There's been a new record +set for the javelin, adjusted for gravity constant, and Johnny Cornstalk +did a hundred yards in eight point four seconds. Aletha has the records +and has certified them." + +"Very useful!" said Bordman sardonically. Then he disliked himself for +saying it even before the bronze-skinned men's faces grew studiedly +impassive. + +Chuka waved his hand. + +"Wait, Ralph! Lewanika's nephew will beat that within a week!" + +Bordman was ashamed again because Chuka had spoken to cover up his own +ill-nature. + +"I take it back!" he said irritably. "What I said was uncalled for. I +shouldn't have said it! But I came here to do a completion survey and +what you've been giving me is material for an estimate of morale! It's +not my line! I'm a technician, first and foremost! We're faced with a +technical problem!" + +Aletha spoke suddenly from behind him. + +"But these are men, first and foremost, Mr. Bordman. And they're faced +with a very human problem--how to die well. They seem to be rather good +at it, so far." + +Bordman ground his teeth. He was again humiliated. In his own fashion he +was attempting the same thing. But just as he was genetically not +qualified to endure the climate of this planet, he was not prepared for +a fatalistic or pious acceptance of disaster. Amerind and African, +alike, these men instinctively held to their own ideas of what the +dignity of a man called upon him to do when he could not do anything but +die. But Bordman's idea of his human dignity required him to be still +fighting: still scratching at the eyes of fate or destiny when he was +slain. It was in his blood or genes or the result of training. He simply +could not, with self-respect, accept any physical situation as hopeless +even when his mind assured him that it was. + + * * * * * + +"I agree," he said coldly, "but still I have to think in technical +terms. You might say that we are going to die because we cannot land the +_Warlock_ with food and equipment. We cannot land the _Warlock_ because +we have no landing grid. We have no landing grid because it and all the +material to complete it is buried under millions of tons of sand. We +cannot make a new light-supply-ship type of landing grid because we have +no smelter to make beams, nor power to run it if we had, yet if we had +the beams we could get the power to run the smelter we haven't got to +make the beams. And we have no smelter, hence no beams, no power, no +prospect of food or help because we can't land the _Warlock_. It is +strictly a circular problem. Break it at any point and all of it is +solved." + +One of the dark men muttered something under his breath to those near +him. There were chuckles. + +"Like Mr. Woodchuck," explained the man, when Bordman's eyes fell on +him. "When I was a little boy there was a story like that." + +Bordman said icily: + +"The problem of coolness and water and food is the same sort of problem. +In six months we could raise food--if we had power to condense +moisture. We've chemicals for hydroponics--if we could keep the plants +from roasting as they grew. Refrigeration and water and food are +practically another circular problem." + +Aletha said tentatively: + +"Mr. Bordman----" + +He turned, annoyed. Aletha said almost apologetically: + +"On Chagan there was a--you might call it a woman's coup given to a +woman I know. Her husband raises horses. He's mad about them. And they +live in a sort of home on caterwheels out on the plains--the llanos. +Sometimes they're months away from a settlement. And she loves ice cream +and refrigeration isn't too simple. But she has a Doctorate in Human +History. So she had her husband make an insulated tray on the roof of +their trailer and she makes her ice cream there." + +Men looked at her. Her cousin said amusedly: + +"That should rate some sort of technical-coup feather!" + +"The Council gave her a brass pot--official," said Aletha. "Domestic +science achievement." To Bordman she explained: "Her husband put a tray +on the roof of their house, insulated from the heat of the house below. +During the day there's an insulated cover on top of it, insulating it +from the heat of the sun. At night she takes off the top cover and pours +her custard, thin, in the tray. Then she goes to bed. She has to get up +before daybreak to scrape it up, but by then the ice cream is frozen. +Even on a warm night." She looked from one to another. "I don't know +why. She said it was done in a place called Babylonia on Earth, many +thousands of years ago." + +Bordman blinked. Then he said decisively: + +"Damn! Who knows how much the ground-temperature drops here before +dawn?" + +"I do," said Aletha's cousin, mildly. "The top-sand temperature falls +forty-odd degrees. Warmer underneath, of course. But the air here is +almost cool when the sun rises. Why?" + +"Nights are cooler on all planets," said Bordman, "because every night +the dark side radiates heat to empty space. There'd be frost everywhere +every morning if the ground didn't store up heat during the day. If we +prevent daytime heat-storage--cover a patch of ground before dawn and +leave it covered all day--and uncover it all night while shielding it +from warm winds---- We've got refrigeration! The night sky is empty +space itself! Two hundred and eighty below zero!" + + * * * * * + +There was a murmur. Then argument. The foremen of the Xosa II +colony-preparation crew were strictly practical men, but they had the +habit of knowing why some things were practical. One does not do modern +steel construction in contempt of theory, nor handle modern mining tools +without knowing why as well as how they work. This proposal sounded like +something that was based on reason--that should work to some degree. +But how well? Anybody could guess that it should cool something at least +twice as much as the normal night temperature-drop. But somebody +produced a slipstick and began to juggle it expertly. He astonishedly +announced his results. Others questioned, and then verified it. Nobody +paid much attention to Bordman. But there was a hum of absorbed +discussion, in which Redfeather and Chuka were immediately included. By +calculation, it astoundingly appeared that if the air on Xosa II was +really as clear as the bright stars and deep day-sky color indicated, +every second night a total drop of one hundred and eighty degrees +temperature could be secured by radiation to interstellar space--if +there were no convection-currents, and they could be prevented by---- + +It was the convection-current problem which broke the assembly into +groups with different solutions. But it was Dr. Chuka who boomed at all +of them to try all three solutions and have them ready before daybreak, +so the assembly left the hulk, still disputing enthusiastically. But +somebody had recalled that there were dewponds in the one arid area on +Timbuk, and somebody else remembered that irrigation on Delmos III was +accomplished that same way. And they recalled how it was done---- + +Voices went away in the ovenlike night outside. Bordman grimaced, and +again said: + +"Damn! Why didn't I think of that myself?" + +"Because," said Aletha, smiling, "you aren't a Doctor of Human History +with a horse-raising husband and a fondness for ice cream. Even so, a +technician was needed to break down the problem here into really simple +terms." Then she said, "I think Bob Running Antelope might approve of +you, Mr. Bordman." + +Bordman fumed to himself. + +"Who's he? Just what does that whole comment mean?" + +"I'll tell you," said Aletha, "when you've solved one or two more +problems." + +Her cousin came back into the room. He said with gratification: + +"Chuka can turn out silicone-wool insulation, he says. Plenty of +material, and he'll use a solar mirror to get the heat he needs. Plenty +of temperature to make silicones! How much area will we need to pull in +four thousand gallons of water a night?" + +"How do I know?" demanded Bordman. "What's the moisture-content of the +air here, anyhow?" Then he said vexedly, "Tell me! Are you using +heat-exchangers to help cool the air you pump into the buildings, before +you use power to refrigerate it? It would save some power----" + +The Indian project engineer said absorbedly: + +"Let's get to work on this! I'm a steel man myself, but----" + +They settled down. Aletha turned a page. + +The _Warlock_ spun around the planet. The members of its crew withdrew +into themselves. In even two months of routine tedious voyaging to this +planet, there had been the beginnings of irritation with the mannerisms +of other men. Now there would be years of it. At the beginning, every +man tended to become a hermit so that he could postpone as long as +possible the time when he would hate his shipmates. Monotony was already +so familiar that its continuance was a foreknown evil. The crew of the +_Warlock_ already knew how intolerable they would presently be to each +other, and the foreknowledge tended to make them intolerable now. + +Within two days of its establishment in orbit, the _Warlock_ was manned +by men already morbidly resentful of fate; with the psychology of +prisoners doomed to close confinement for an indeterminate but ghastly +period. On the third day there was a second fist fight. A bitter one. + +Fist fights are not healthy symptoms in a spaceship which cannot hope to +make port for a matter of years. + + * * * * * + +Most human problems are circular and fall apart when a single trivial +part of them is solved. There used to be enmity between races because +they were different, and they tended to be different because they were +enemies, so there was enmity--The big problem of interstellar flight was +that nothing could travel faster than light, and nothing could travel +faster than light because mass increased with speed, and mass increased +with speed--obviously!--because ships remained in the same time-slot, +and ships remained in the same time-slot long after a one-second shift +was possible because nobody realized that it meant traveling faster than +light. And even before there was interstellar travel, there was +practically no interplanetary commerce because it took so much fuel to +take off and land. And it took more fuel to carry the fuel to take off +and land, and more still to carry the fuel for that, until somebody used +power on the ground for heave-off instead of take-off, and again on the +ground for landing. And then interplanetary ships carried cargoes. And +on Xosa II there was an emergency because a sandstorm had buried the +almost completed landing grid under some megatons of sand, and it +couldn't be completed because there was only storage power because it +wasn't completed, because there was only storage power because---- + +But it took three weeks for the problem to be seen as the ultimately +simple thing it really was. Bordman had called it a circular problem, +but he hadn't seen its true circularity. It was actually--like all +circular problems--inherently an unstable set of conditions. It began to +fall apart when he saw that mere refrigeration would break its solidity. + +In one week there were ten acres of desert covered with +silicone-wool-felt in great strips. By day a reflective surface was +uppermost, and at sundown caterwheel trucks hooked on to towlines and +neatly pulled it over on its back, to expose gridded black-body surfaces +to the starlight. And the gridding was precisely designed so that winds +blowing across it did not make eddies in the grid-squares, and the +chilled air in those pockets remained undisturbed and there was no +conduction of heat downward by eddy currents, while there was admirable +radiation of heat out to space. And this was in the manner of the night +sides of all planets, only somewhat more efficient. + + * * * * * + +In two weeks there was a water yield of three thousand gallons per +night, and in three weeks more there were similar grids over the colony +houses and a vast roofed cooling-shed for pre-chilling of air to be used +by the refrigeration systems themselves. The fuel-store--stored +power--was thereupon stretched to three times its former calculated +usefulness. The situation was no longer a simple and neat equation of +despair. + +Then something else happened. One of Dr. Chuka's assistants was curious +about a certain mineral. He used the solar furnace that had made the +silicone wool to smelt it. And Dr. Chuka saw him. And after one blank +moment he bellowed laughter and went to see Ralph Redfeather. Whereupon +Amerind steel-workers sawed apart a robot hull that was no longer a fuel +tank because its fuel was gone, and they built a demountable solar +mirror some sixty feet across--which African mechanics deftly +powered--and suddenly there was a spot of incandescence even brighter +than the sun of Xosa II, down on the planet's surface. It played upon a +mineral cliff, and monstrous smells developed and even the African +mining-technicians put on goggles because of the brightness, and +presently there were threads of molten metal and slag trickling--and +separating as they trickled--hesitantly down the cliff-side. + +And Dr. Chuka beamed and slapped his sweating thighs, and Bordman went +out in a caterwheel truck, wearing a heat-suit, to watch it for all of +twenty minutes. When he got back to the Project Engineer's office he +gulped iced salt water and dug out the books he'd brought down from the +ship. There was the specbook for Xosa II, and there were the other +volumes of definitions issued by the Colonial Survey. They were +definitions of the exact meanings of terms used in briefer +specifications, for items of equipment sometimes ordered by the Colony +Office. + + * * * * * + +When Chuka came into the office, presently, he carried the first crude +pig of Xosa II iron in his gloved hand. He gloated. Bordman was then +absent, and Ralph Redfeather worked feverishly at his desk. + +"Where's Bordman?" demanded Chuka in that resonant bass voice of his. +"I'm ready to report for degree-of-completion credit that the mining +properties on Xosa II are prepared as of today to deliver pig iron, +cobalt, zirconium and beryllium in commercial quantities! We require one +day's notice to begin delivery of metal other than iron at the moment, +because we're short of equipment, but we can furnish chromium and +manganese on two days' notice--the deposits are farther away." + +He dumped the pig of metal on the second desk, where Aletha sat with her +perpetual loose-leafed volumes before her. The metal smoked and began to +char the desk-top. He picked it up again and tossed it from one gloved +hand to the other. + +"There y'are, Ralph!" he boasted. "You Indians go after your coups! +Match this coup for me! Without fuel and minus all equipment except of +our own making--I credit an assist on the mirror, but that's all--we're +set to load the first ship that comes in for cargo! Now what are you +going to do for the record? I think we've wiped your eye for you!" + +Ralph hardly looked up. His eyes were very bright. Bordman had shown him +and he was copying feverishly the figures and formulae from a section of +the definition book of the Colonial Survey. The books started with the +specifications for antibiotic growth equipment for colonies with +problems in local bacteria. It ended with definitions of the required +strength-of-material and the designs stipulated for cages in zoos for +motile fauna, subdivided into flying, marine, and solid-ground +creatures: sub-sub-divided into carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores, +with the special specifications for enclosures to contain abyssal +creatures requiring extreme pressures, and the equipment for maintaining +a healthfully re-poisoned atmosphere for creatures from methane planets. + +Redfeather had the third volume open at, "Landing Grids, Lightest +Emergency, Commerce Refuges, For Use Of." There were some dozens of +non-colonized planets along the most-traveled spaceways on which refuges +for shipwrecked spacemen were maintained. Small forces of Patrol +personnel manned them. Space lifeboats serviced them. They had the +minimum installations which could draw on their planets' ionospheres for +power, and they were not expected to handle anything bigger than a +twenty-ton lifeboat. But the specifications for the equipment of such +refuges were included in the reference volumes for Bordman's use in the +making of Colonial surveys. They were compiled for the information of +contractors who wanted to bid on Colonial Survey installations, and for +the guidance of people like Bordman who checked up on the work. So they +contained all the data for the building of a landing grid, lightest +emergency, commerce refuge for use of, in case of need. Redfeather +copied feverishly. + +Chuka ceased his boasting, but still he grinned. + +"I know we're stuck, Ralph," he said amiably, "but it's nice stuff to +go in the records. Too bad we don't keep coup-records like you Indians!" + +Aletha's cousin--Project Engineer--said crisply: + +"Go away! Who made your solar mirror? It was more than an assist! You +get set to cast beams for us! Girders! I'm going to get a lifeboat aloft +and away to Trent! Build a minimum size landing grid! Build a fire under +somebody so they'll send us a colony ship with supplies! If there's no +new sandstorm to bury the radiation refrigerators Bordman brought to +mind, we can keep alive with hydroponics until a ship can arrive with +something useful!" + +Chuka stared. + +"You don't mean we might actually live through this! Really?" + +Aletha regarded the two of them with impartial irony. + +"Dr. Chuka," she said gently, "you accomplished the impossible. Ralph, +here, is planning to attempt the preposterous. Does it occur to you that +Mr. Bordman is nagging himself to achieve the inconceivable? It is +inconceivable, even to him, but he's trying to do it!" + +"What's he trying to do?" demanded Chuka, wary but amused. + +"He's trying," said Aletha, "to prove to himself that he's the best man +on this planet. Because he's physically least capable of living here! +His vanity's hurt. Don't underestimate him!" + +"He the best man here?" demanded Chuka blankly. "In his way he's all +right. The refrigeration proves that! But he can't walk out-of-doors +without a heat-suit!" + +Ralph Redfeather said dryly, without ceasing his feverish work: + +"Nonsense, Aletha. He has courage. I give him that. But he couldn't walk +a beam twelve hundred feet up. In his own way, yes. He's capable. But +the best man----" + +"I'm sure," agreed Aletha, "that he couldn't sing as well as the worst +of your singing crew, Dr. Chuka, and any Amerind could outrun him. Even +I could! But he's got something we haven't got, just as we have +qualities he hasn't. We're secure in our competences. We know what we +can do, and that we can do it better than any--" her eyes +twinkled--"paleface. But he doubts himself. All the time and in every +way. And that's why he may be the best man on this planet! I'll bet he +does prove it!" + +Redfeather said scornfully: + +"You suggested radiation refrigeration! What does it prove that he +applied it?" + +"That," said Aletha, "he couldn't face the disaster that was here +without trying to do something about it--even when it was impossible. He +couldn't face the deadly facts. He had to torment himself by seeing that +they wouldn't be deadly if only this one or that or the other were +twisted a little. His vanity was hurt because nature had beaten men. His +dignity was offended. And a man with easily-hurt dignity won't ever be +happy, but he can be pretty good!" + +Chuka raised his ebony bulk from the chair in which he still shifted the +iron pig from gloved hand to gloved hand. + +"You're kind," he said, chuckling. "Too kind! I don't want to hurt his +feelings. I wouldn't, for the world! But really ... I've never heard a +man praised for his vanity before, or admired for being touchy about his +dignity! If you're right ... why ... it's been convenient. It might even +mean hope. But ... hm-m-m---- Would you want to marry a man like that?" + +"Great Manitou forbid!" said Aletha firmly. She grimaced at the bare +idea. "I'm an Amerind. I'll want my husband to be contented. I want to +be contented along with him. Mr. Bordman will never be either happy or +content. No paleface husband for me! But I don't think he's through here +yet. Sending for help won't satisfy him. It's a further hurt to his +vanity. He'll be miserable if he doesn't prove himself--to himself--a +better man than that!" + +Chuka shrugged his massive shoulders. Redfeather tracked down the last +item he needed and fairly bounced to his feet. + +"What tonnage of iron can you get out, Chuka?" he demanded. "What can +you do in the way of castings? What's the elastic modulus--how much +carbon in this iron? And when can you start making castings? Big ones?" + +"Let's go talk to my foremen," said Chuka complacently. "We'll see how +fast my ... ah ... mineral spring is trickling metal down the +cliff-face. If you can really launch a lifeboat, we might get some help +here in a year and a half instead of five----" + + * * * * * + +They went out-of-doors together. There was a small sound in the next +office. Aletha was suddenly very, very still. She sat motionless for a +long half-minute. Then she turned her head. + +"I owe you an apology, Mr. Bordman," she said ruefully. "It won't take +back the discourtesy, but--I'm very sorry." + +Bordman came into the office from the next room. He was rather pale. He +said wryly: + +"Eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves, eh? Actually I was on the +way in here when I heard--references to myself it would embarrass Chuka +and your cousin to know I heard. So I stopped. Not to listen, but to +keep them from knowing I'd heard their private opinions of me. I'll be +obliged if you don't tell them. They're entitled to their opinions of +me. I've mine of them." He added grimly, "Apparently I think more highly +of them than they do of me!" + +Aletha said contritely: + +"It must have sounded horrible! But they ... we ... all of us think +better of you than you do of yourself!" + +Bordman shrugged. + +"You in particular. 'Would you marry someone like me? Great Manitou, +no!'" + +"For an excellent reason," said Aletha firmly. "When I get back from +here--_if_ I get back from here--I'm going to marry Bob Running +Antelope. He's nice. I like the idea of marrying him. I want to! But I +look forward not only to happiness but to contentment. To me that's +important. It isn't to you, or to the woman you ought to marry. And I +... well ... I simply don't envy either of you a bit!" + +"I see," said Bordman with irony. He didn't. "I wish you all the +contentment you look for." Then he snapped: "But what's this business +about expecting more from me? What spectacular idea do you expect me to +pull out of somebody's hat now? Because I'm frantically vain!" + +"I haven't the least idea," said Aletha calmly. "But I think you'll come +up with something we couldn't possibly imagine. And I didn't say it was +because you were vain, but because you are discontented with yourself. +It's born in you! And there you are!" + +"If you mean neurotic," snapped Bordman, "you're all wrong. I'm not +neurotic! I'm not. I'm annoyed. I'll get hopelessly behind schedule +because of this mess! But that's all!" + +Aletha stood up and shrugged her shoulders ruefully. + +"I repeat my apology," she told him, "and leave you the office. But I +also repeat that I think you'll turn up something nobody else +expects--and I've no idea what it will be. But you'll do it now to +prove that I'm wrong about how your mind works." + +She went out. Bordman clamped his jaws tightly. He felt that especially +haunting discomfort which comes of suspecting that one has been told +something about himself which may be true. + +"Idiotic!" he fumed, all alone. "Me neurotic? Me wanting to prove I'm +the best man here out of vanity?" He made a scornful noise. He sat +impatiently at the desk. "Absurd!" he muttered wrathfully. "Why should I +need to prove to myself I'm capable? What would I do if I felt such a +need, anyhow?" + +Scowling, he stared at the wall. It was irritating. It was a nagging +sort of question. What would he do if she were right? If he did need +constantly to prove to himself---- + +He stiffened, suddenly. A look of intense surprise came upon his face. +He'd thought of what a self-doubtful, discontented man would try to do, +here on Xosa II at this juncture. + +The surprise was because he had also thought of how it could be done. + + * * * * * + +The _Warlock_ came to life. Her skipper gloomily answered the emergency +call from Xosa II. He listened. He clicked off the communicator and +hastened to an exterior port, deeply darkened against those times when +the blue-white sun of Xosa shone upon this side of the hull. He moved +the manual control to make it more transparent. He stared down at the +monstrous, tawny, mottled surface of the planet five thousand miles +away. He searched for the spot he bitterly knew was the colony's site. + +He saw what he'd been told he'd see. It was an infinitely fine, +threadlike projection from the surface of the planet. It rose at a +slight angle--it leaned toward the planet's west--and it expanded and +widened and formed an extraordinary sort of mushroom-shaped object that +was completely impossible. It could not be. Humans do not create visible +objects twenty miles high, which at their tops expand like toadstools on +excessively slender stalks, and which drift westward and fray and grow +thin, and are constantly renewed. + +But it was true. The skipper of the _Warlock_ gazed until he was +completely sure. It was no atomic bomb, because it continued to exist. +It faded, but was constantly replenished. There was no such thing! + +He went through the ship, bellowing, and faced mutinous snarlings. But +when the _Warlock_ was around on that side of the planet again, the +members of the crew saw the strange appearance, too. They examined it +with telescopes. They grew hysterically happy. They went frantically to +work to clear away the signs of a month and a half of mutiny and +despair. + +It took them three days to get the ship to tidiness again, and during +all that time the peculiar tawny jet remained. On the sixth day the jet +was fainter. On the seventh it was larger than before. It continued +larger. And telescopes at highest magnification verified what the +emergency communication had said. + +Then the crew began to experience frantic impatience. It was worse, +waiting those last three or four days, than even all the hopeless time +before. But there was no reason to hate anybody, now. The skipper was +very much relieved. + + * * * * * + +There was eighteen hundred feet of steel grid overhead. It made a +crisscross, ring-shaped wall more than a quarter-mile high and almost to +the top of the surrounding mountains. But the valley was not exactly a +normal one. It was a crater, now: a steeply sloping, conical pit whose +walls descended smoothly to the outer girders of the red-painted, +glistening steel structure. More girders for the completion of the grid +projected from the sand just outside its half-mile circle. And in the +landing grid there was now a smaller, elaborate, truss-braced object. It +rested on the rocky ground, and it was not painted, and it was quite +small. A hundred feet high, perhaps, and no more than three hundred +across. But it was visibly a miniature of the great, now-uncovered, +re-painted landing grid which was qualified to handle interstellar cargo +ships and all the proper space-traffic of a minerals-colony planet. + +A caterwheel truck came lurching and rolling and rumbling down the side +of the pit. It had a sunshade and ground-reflector wings, and Bordman +rode tiredly on a hobbyhorse saddle in its back cargo section. He wore a +heat-suit. + +The truck reached the pit's bottom. There was a tool shed there. The +caterwheel-truck bumped up to it and stopped. Bordman got out, visibly +cramped by the jolting, rocking, exhausting-to-unaccustomed-muscles +ride. + +"Do you want to go in the shed and cool off?" asked Chuka brightly. + +"I'm all right," said Bordman curtly. "I'm quite comfortable, so long as +you feed me that expanded air." It was plain that he resented needing +even a special air supply. "What's all this about? Bringing the +_Warlock_ in? Why the insistence on my being here?" + +"Ralph has a problem," said Chuka blandly. "He's up there. See? He needs +you. There's a hoist. You've got to check degree-of-completion anyhow. +You might take a look around while you're up there. But he's anxious for +you to see something. There where you see the little knot of people. The +platform." + +Bordman grimaced. When one was well started on a survey, one got used to +heights and depths and all sorts of environments. But he hadn't been up +on steel-work in a good many months. Not since a survey on Kalka IV +nearly a year ago. He would be dizzy at first. + +He accompanied Chuka to the spot where a steel cable dangled from an +almost invisibly thin beam high above. There was a strictly improvised +cage to ascend in--planks and a handrail forming an insecure platform +that might hold four people. He got into it, and Dr. Chuka got in beside +him. Chuka waved his hand. The cage started up. + +Bordman winced as the ground dropped away below. It was ghastly to be +dangling in emptiness like this. He wanted to close his eyes. The cage +went up and up and up. It took many long minutes to reach the top. + +There was a platform there. Newly-made. The sunlight was blindingly +bright. The landscape was an intolerable glare. Bordman adjusted his +goggles to maximum darkness and stepped gingerly from the swaying cage +to the hardly more solid-seeming area. Here he was in mid-air on a +platform barely ten feet square. It was rather more than twice the +height of a metropolitan skyscraper from the ground. There were actual +mountain-crests only half a mile away and not much higher. Bordman was +acutely uncomfortable. He would get used to it, but---- + + * * * * * + +"Well?" he asked fretfully. "Chuka said you needed me here. What's the +matter?" + +Ralph Redfeather nodded very formally. Aletha was here, too, and two of +Chuka's foremen--one did not look happy--and four of the Amerind +steel-workers. They grinned at Bordman. + +"I wanted you to see," said Aletha's cousin, "before we threw on the +current. It doesn't look like that little grid could handle the sand it +took care of. But Lewanika wants to report." + +A dark man who worked under Chuka--and looked as if he belonged on solid +ground--said carefully: + +"We cast the beams for the small landing grid, Mr. Bordman. We melted +the metal out of the cliffs and ran it into molds as it flowed down." + +He stopped. One of the Indians said: + +"We made the girders into the small landing grid. It bothered us because +we built it on the sand that had buried the big grid. We didn't +understand why you ordered it there. But we built it." + +The second dark man said with a trace of swagger: + +"We made the coils, Mr. Bordman. We made the small grid so it would work +the same as the big one when it was finished. And then we made the big +grid work, finished or not!" + +Bordman said impatiently: + +"All right. Very good. But what is this? A ceremony?" + +"Just so," said Aletha, smiling. "Be patient, Mr. Bordman!" + +Her cousin said conversationally: + +"We built the small grid on the top of the sand. And it tapped the +ionosphere for power. No lack of power then! And we'd set it to heave up +sand instead of ships. Not to heave it out into space, but to give it up +to mile a second vertical velocity. Then we turned it on." + +"And we rode it down, that little grid," said one of the remaining +Indians, grinning. "What a party! Manitou!" + +Redfeather frowned at him and took up the narrative. + +"It hurled the sand up from its center. As you said it would, the sand +swept air with it. It made a whirlwind, bringing more sand from outside +the grid into its field. It was a whirlwind with fifteen megakilowatts +of power to drive it. Some of the sand went twenty miles high. Then it +made a mushroom-head and the winds up yonder blew it to the west. It +came down a long way off, Mr. Bordman. We've made a new dune-area ten +miles downwind. And the little grid sank as the sand went away from +around it. We had to stop it three times, because it leaned. We had to +dig under parts of it to get it straight up again. But it went down into +the valley." + +Bordman turned up the power to his heat-suit motors. He felt +uncomfortably warm. + +"In six days," said Ralph, almost ceremonially, "it had uncovered half +the original grid we'd built. Then we were able to modify that to heave +sand and to let it tap the ionosphere. We were able to use a good many +times the power the little grid could apply to sand-lifting! In two days +more the landing grid was clear. The valley bottom was clean. We shifted +some hundreds of millions of tons of sand by landing grid, and now it is +possible to land the _Warlock_, and receive her supplies, and the +solar-power furnace is already turning out pigs for her loading. We +wanted you to see what we have done. The colony is no longer in danger, +and we shall have the grid completely finished for your inspection +before the ship is ready to return." + +Bordman said uncomfortably: + +"That's very good. It's excellent. I'll put it in my survey report." + +"But," said Ralph, more ceremonially still, "we have the right to count +coup for the members of our tribe and clan. Now----" + +Then there was confusion. Aletha's cousin was saying syllables that did +not mean anything at all. The other Indians joined in at intervals, +speaking gibberish. Aletha's eyes were shining and she looked incredibly +pleased and satisfied. + +"But what ... what's this?" demanded Bordman when they stopped. + +Aletha spoke proudly. + +"Ralph just formally adopted you into the tribe, Mr. Bordman--and into +his clan and mine! He gave you a name I'll have to write down for you, +but it means, 'Man-who-believes-not-his-own-wisdom.' And now----" + +Ralph Redfeather--licensed interstellar engineer, graduate of the +stiffest technical university in this quarter of the galaxy, wearer of +three eagle-pinion feathers and clad in a pair of insulated sandals and +a breechcloth--whipped out a small paint-pot and a brush from somewhere +and began carefully to paint on a section of girder ready for the next +tier of steel. He painted a feather on the metal. + +"It's a coup," he told Bordman over his shoulder. "Your coup. Placed +where it was earned--up here. Aletha is authorized to certify it. And +the head of the clan will add an eagle-feather to the headdress he wears +in council in the Big Tepee on Algonka, and--your clan-brothers will be +proud!" + +Then he straightened up and held out his hand. + +Chuka said benignly: + +"Being civilized men, Mr. Bordman, we Africans do not go in for +uncivilized feathers. But we ... ah ... rather approve of you, too. And +we plan a corroboree at the colony after the _Warlock_ is down, when +there will be some excellently practiced singing. There is ... ah ... a +song, a sort of choral calypso, about this ... ah ... adventure you have +brought to so satisfying a conclusion. It is quite a good calypso. It's +likely to be popular on a good many planets." + +Bordman swallowed. He was acutely uncomfortable. He felt that he ought +to say something, and he did not know what. + +But just then there was a deep-toned humming in the air. It was a +vibrant tone, instinct with limitless power. It was the +eighteen-hundred-foot landing grid, giving off that profoundly bass and +vibrant, note it uttered while operating. Bordman looked up. + +The _Warlock_ was coming down. + +[Illustration] + + +THE END + + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + | Transcriber's Notes & Errata | + | | + | This etext was produced from Astounding Science Fiction | + | December 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any | + | evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was | + | renewed. | + | | + | Illustrations have been moved to their appropriate places in | + | the text. | + | | + | The following typographical errors have been corrected. | + | | + | |Error |Correction | | + | | | | | + | |dessicated |desiccated | | + | |Anglo-Anglo-Saxon--girls |Anglo-Saxon girls | | + | |carrousel |carousel | | + | |dessication |desiccation | | + | |derelect |derelict | | + | |sand-swept |sand swept | | + +--------------------------------------------------------------+ + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Sand Doom, by William Fitzgerald Jenkins + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SAND DOOM *** + +***** This file should be named 22467.txt or 22467.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/2/4/6/22467/ + +Produced by Greg Weeks, LN Yaddanapudi and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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