[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, acutelyuncomfortable vibration of rocket blasts shook the ship. Rockets werestrictly emergency devices, these days, so when they were used there wasobviously 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 Surveyofficer he was well-traveled enough to know when things did not goright. He looked up from the bookscreen, waiting. Nobody came to explainthe eccentricity of a spaceship using rockets. It would have beenimmediate, on a regular liner, but the _Warlock_ was practically atramp. This trip it carried just two passengers. Passenger service wasnot yet authorized to the planet ahead, and would not be until Bordmanhad made the report he was on his way to compile. At the moment, though, the rockets blasted, and stopped, and blasted again. There was somethingdefinitely wrong. 

The _Warlock's_ other passenger came out of her cabin. She lookedsurprised. She was Aletha Redfeather, an unusually lovely Amerind. It was extraordinary that a girl could be so self-sufficient on atedious space-voyage, and Bordman approved of her. She was making thejourney to Xosa II as a representative of the Amerind HistoricalSociety, but she'd brought her own bookreels and some elaboratefancywork which--woman-fashion--she used to occupy her hands. Shehadn't been at all a nuisance. Now she tilted her head on one sideas she looked inquiringly at Bordman. 

"I'm wondering, too, " he told her, just as an especially sustained andviolent shuddering of rocket-impulsion made his chair legs thutter onthe floor. 

There was a long period of stillness. Then another violent but muchshorter blast. A shorter one still. Presently there was a half-secondblast which must have been from a single rocket tube because of the mildshaking it produced. After that there was nothing at all. 

Bordman frowned to himself. He'd been anticipating groundfall within amatter of hours, certainly. He'd just gone through his specbookcarefully and re-familiarized himself with the work he was to survey onXosa II. It was a perfectly commonplace minerals-planet development, andhe'd expected to clear it FE--fully established--and probably TP and NQratings as well, indicating that tourists were permitted and noquarantine was necessary. Considering the aridity of the planet, nobacteriological dangers could be expected to exist, and if touristswanted to view its monstrous deserts and infernolike windsculptures--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 ofvoyage. Its purpose was the delivery of heavy equipment--specifically asmelter--and a senior Colonial Survey officer to report the completionof primary development. 

Aletha waited, as if for more rocket blasts. Presently she smiled atsome thought that had occurred to her. 

"If this were an adventure tape, " she said humorously, "the loudspeakerwould now announce that the ship had established itself in an orbitaround the strange, uncharted planet first sighted three days ago, andthat volunteers were wanted for a boat landing. "

Bordman demanded impatiently:

"Do you bother with adventure tapes? They're nonsense! A pure waste oftime!"

Aletha smiled again. 

"My ancestors, " she told him, "used to hold tribal dances and makemedicine and boast about how many scalps they'd taken and how they didit. It was satisfying--and educational for the young. Adolescents becamefamiliar with the idea of what we nowadays call adventure. They werepartly ready for it when it came. I suspect your ancestors used to telleach other stories about hunting mammoths and such. So I think it wouldbe fun to hear that we were in orbit and that a boat landing was inorder. "

Bordman grunted. There were no longer adventures. The universe wassettled; civilized. Of course there were still frontier planets--Xosa IIwas 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 aboutit. 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 whenshe smiled. She wore the modern Amerind dress--a sign of pride in theancestry which now implied such diverse occupations as interstellarsteel construction and animal husbandry and llano-planet colonization. "If it were adventure, as the only girl on this ship I'd have to be inthe landing party, lest the tedium of orbital waiting make the"--hersmile widened to a grin--"the pent-up restlessness of trouble-makers inthe 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 willaccordingly be landed by boat. Will you make yourselves ready, please, and report to the boat-blister?_" The voice paused and added, "_Handluggage only, please. _"

Aletha's eyes brightened. Bordman felt the shocked incredulity of a manaccustomed to routine when routine is impossibly broken. Of coursesurvey ships made boat landings from orbit, and colony ships let downrobot hulls by rocket when there was as yet no landing grid for thehandling of a ship. But never before in his experience had an ordinaryfreighter, on a routine voyage to a colony ready for its finaldegree-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 hisown. The colony on Xosa II had been established two years ago. Minimumcomfort conditions had been realized within six months. A temporarylanding grid for light supply ships was up within a year. It hadpermitted stock-piling, and it had been taken down to be rebuilt as apermanent grid with every possible contingency provided for. The eightmonths since the last ship landing was more than enough for the buildingof the gigantic, spidery, half-mile-high structure which would handlethis planet's interstellar commerce. There was no excuse for anemergency! 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 ofthe colony. It was to be unloaded first. By the time the ship's holdswere wholly empty, the smelter would be operating. The ship would waitfor a full cargo of pig metal. Bordman had expected to live in thiscabin while he worked on the survey he'd come to make, and to leaveagain with the ship. 

Now he was to go aground by boat. He fretted. The only emergencyequipment he could possibly need was a heat-suit. He doubted the urgencyof that. But he packed some clothing for indoors, and then defiantlyincluded his specbook and the volumes of definitive data to whichspecifications for structures and colonial establishments alwaysreferred. 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'slegs projected from the boat port. The engineer withdrew, with a stripof tape from the boat's computer. He compared it dourly with a similarstrip from the ship's figurebox. Bordman consciously acted according tothe 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 arealways scornful of passengers. 

 * * * * *

Bordman scowled. Then Aletha came, carrying a not-too-heavy bag. Bordmanput it in the boat, disapproving of the crampedness of the craft. Butthis wasn't a lifeboat. It was a landing boat. A lifeboat had Lawlordrive and could travel light-years, but in the place of rockets androcket fuel it had air-purifiers and water-recovery units andfood-stores. It couldn't land without a landing grid aground, but itcould get to a civilized planet. This landing boat could land without agrid, but its air wouldn't last long. 

"Whatever's the matter, " said Bordman darkly, "it's incompetencesomewhere!"

But he couldn't figure it out. This was a cargo ship. Cargo shipsneither took off nor landed under their own power. It was too costly offuel they would have to carry. So landing grids used local power--whichdid not have to be lifted--to heave ships out into space, and again usedlocal power to draw them to ground again. Therefore ships carried fuelonly for actual space-flight, which was economy. Yet landing grids hadno moving parts, and while they did have to be monstrous structures theyactually drew power from planetary ionospheres. So with no moving partsto break down and no possibility of the failure of a powersource--landing grids couldn't fail! So there couldn't be an emergencyto 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. Hewaved his hand. Aletha crawled into the landing-boat port. Bordmanfollowed. Four people, with a little crowding, could have gotten intothe little ship. Three pretty well filled it. The engineer followed themand sealed the port. 

"Sealed off, " he said into the microphone before him. 

The exterior-pressure needle moved halfway across the dial. Theinterior-pressure needle stayed steady. 

"All tight, " said the engineer. 

The exterior-pressure needle flicked to zero. There were clankingsounds. The long halves of the boat-blister stirred and opened, andabruptly the landing boat was in an elongated cup in the hull-plating, and above them there were many, many stars. The enormous disk of anearby planet floated into view around the hull. It was monstrous andblindingly bright. It was of a tawny color, with great, irregular areasof yellow and patches of bluishness. But most of it was the color ofsand. And all its colors varied in shade--some places were lighter andsome darker--and over at one edge there was blinding whiteness whichcould not be anything but an ice cap. But Bordman knew that there was noocean or sea or lake on all this whole planet, and the ice cap was morenearly hoarfrost than such mile-deep glaciation as would be found at thepoles of a maximum-comfort world. 

"Strap in, " said the engineer over his shoulder. "No-gravity coming, andthen rocket-push. Settle your heads. "

Bordman irritably strapped himself in. He saw Aletha busy at the sametask, her eyes shining. Without warning, there came a sensation of acutediscomfort. It was the landing boat detaching itself from the ship andthe diminishment of the ship's closely-confined artificial-gravityfield. That field suddenly dropped to nothingness, and Bordman had themomentary sickish dizziness that flicked-off gravity always produces. Atthe 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 tonguetried to slide back into his throat. There was an enormous oppression onhis chest. He found himself thinking panicky profanity. 

Simultaneously the vision ports went black, because they were out of theshadow of the ship. The landing boat turned--but there was no sensationof centrifugal force--and they were in a vast obscurity with merely adim phantom of the planetary surface to be seen. But behind them ablue-white sun shone terribly. Its light was warm--hot--even though itcame through the polarized shielding ports. 

"Did . .. Did you say, " panted Aletha happily--breathless because of theacceleration--"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 screenbefore him. There was a vertical line across the side of the lighteddisk. A blip moved downward across it, showing their height in thousandsof miles. After a long time the blip reached the bottom, and thevertical line became double and another blip began to descend. Itmeasured height in hundreds of miles. A bright spot--a square--appearedat one side of the screen. A voice muttered metallically, and suddenlyseemed to shout, and then muttered again. Bordman looked out one of theblack ports and saw the planet as if through smoked glass. It was aghostly 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 acrossthe screen. He moved more controls. It came back to the center. Theheight-in-hundreds blip was at the bottom, now, and the vertical linetripled and a tens-of-miles-height blip crawled downward. 

There were sudden, monstrous plungings of the landing boat. It had hitthe outermost fringes of atmosphere. The engineer said words it was notappropriate for Aletha to hear. The plungings became more violent. Bordman held on--to keep from being shaken to pieces despite thestraps--and stared at the murky surface of the planet. It seemed to befleeing from them and they to be trying to overtake it. Gradually, verygradually, its flight appeared to slow. They were down to twenty miles, then. 

Quite abruptly the landing boat steadied. The square spot bobbed aboutin the center of the astrogation screen. The engineer worked controls tosteady it. 

The ports cleared a little. Bordman could see the ground below moredistinctly. There were patches of every tint that mineral coloring couldproduce. There were vast stretches of tawny sand. A little while more, and he could see the shadows of mountains. He made out mountain flankswhich should have had valleys between them and other mountain flanksbeyond, but they had tawny flatnesses between, instead. These, he knew, would be the sand plateaus which had been observed on this planet andwhich had only a still-disputed explanation. But he could see areas ofglistening yellow and dirty white, and splashes of pink and streaks ofultramarine and gray and violet, and the incredible red of iron oxidecovering square miles--too much to be believed. 

The landing-boat's rockets cut off. It coasted. Presently the horizontilted and all the dazzling ground below turned sedately beneath them. There came staccato instructions from a voice-speaker, which theengineer obeyed. The landing boat swung low--below the tips of giantmauve 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 amomentary pause, they were horribly loud--and the boat settled down anddown upon its own tail of fire. 

There was a completely blinding mass of dust and rocket fumes which cutoff all sight of everything else. Then there was a crunching crash, andthe 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 thanhis head, and he felt ridiculous. He saw the engineer at workunstrapping himself. He duplicated the action, but it was absurdlydifficult 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 sawthe surface of Xosa II. There was no living thing in sight. The grounditself was pebbles and small rocks and minor boulders--all apparentlytumbled from the starkly magnificent mountains to one side. There weremonstrous, many-colored cliffs and mesas, every one eaten at in theunmistakable fashion of wind-erosion. Through a notch in the mountainwall before them a strange, fan-shaped, frozen formation appeared. Ifsuch a thing had been credible, Bordman would have said that it was aflow of sand simulating a waterfall. And everywhere there was blindingbrightness and the look and feel of blistering sunshine. But there wasnot 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 lesshomelike or attractive. "

Aletha laughed. 

"My eyes see it differently. "

Which was true. It was accepted, nowadays, that humankind might be onespecies but was many races, and each saw the cosmos in its own fashion. On Kalmet III there was a dense, predominantly Asiatic population whichterraced its mountainsides for agriculture and deftly mingled moderntechniques with social customs not to be found on--say--Demeter I, wherethere were many red-tiled stucco towns and very many olive groves. Inthe llano planets of the Equis cluster, Amerinds--Aletha'skin--zestfully rode over plains dotted with the descendants of buffaloand antelope and cattle brought from ancient Earth. On the oases ofRustam IV there were date palms and riding camels and much argumentabout what should be substituted for the direction of Mecca at the timesfor prayer, while wheat fields spanned provinces on Canna I and highlycivilized emigrants from the continent of Africa on Earth stored junglegums and lustrous gems in the warehouses of their spaceport city ofTimbuk. 

So it was natural for Aletha to look at this wind-carved wildernessotherwise than as Bordman did. Her racial kindred were the pioneers ofthe stars, these days. Their heritage made them less than appreciativeof urban life. Their inborn indifference to heights made them thesteel-construction men of the cosmos, and more than two-thirds of thelanding grids in the whole galaxy had their coup-feather symbols on thekey posts. But the planet government on Algonka V was housed in athree-thousand-foot white stone tepee, and the best horses known to menwere raised by ranchers with bronze skins and high cheekbones on thellano planet Chagan. 

 * * * * *

Now, here, in the _Warlock's_ landing boat, the engineer snorted. Avehicle came around a cliff wall, clanking its way on those eccentriccaterwheels that new-founded colonies find so useful. The vehicleglittered. It crawled over tumbled boulders, and flowed over fallenscree. 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. Butthey told the truth. The figure controlling the ground car wasIndian--Amerind--wearing a breechcloth and thick-soled sandals and threestreamlined feathers in a band about his head. Moreover, he did not ridein 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 sanethis method of riding was--here. The ground vehicle lurched and swayedand rolled and pitched and tossed as it came over the uneven ground. Tosit in anything like a chair would have been foolish. A back rest wouldthrow one forward in a frontward lurch, and give no support in case of abackward one. A sidewise tilt would tend to throw one out. Riding aground car as if in a saddle was sense!

But Bordman was not so sure about the costume. The engineer opened theport 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 hernose against a viewport. And just then Bordman did understand thecostume or lack of it. Air came in the open exit port. It was hot anddesiccated. It was furnace-like!

"How, 'Letha, " called the rider on the caterwheel steed. "Either dressfor the climate or put on a heat-suit before you come out of there!"

Aletha chuckled. Bordman heard a stirring behind him. Then Alethaclimbed to the exit port and swung out. Bordman heard a dour mutteringfrom the engineer. Then he saw her greeting her cousin. She had slippedout of the conventionalized Amerind outfit to which Bordman wasaccustomed. Now she was clad as Anglo-Saxon girls dressed for beaches onthe cool-temperature planets. 

For a moment Bordman thought of sunstroke, with his own eyes dazzled bythe still-partly-filtered sunlight. But Aletha's Amerind coloring wasperfectly suited to sunshine even of this intensity. Wind blowing uponher body would cool her skin. Her thick, straight black hair was atleast as good protection against sunstroke as a heat-helmet. She mightfeel 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 thetiny, battery-powered motors. The suit ballooned out. It was intendedfor short periods of intolerable heat. The motors kept it inflated--awayfrom his skin--and cooled its interior by the evaporation of sweat pluswater from its canteen tanks. It was a miniature air-conditioning systemfor one man, and it should enable him to endure temperatures otherwiselethal to someone with his skin and coloring. But it would use a lot ofwater. 

He climbed to the exit port and went clumsily down the exterior ladderto the tail fin. He adjusted his goggles. He went over to the chatteringyoung Indians, young man and girl. He held out his gloved hand. 

"I'm Bordman, " he said painfully. "Here to make a degree-of-completionsurvey. 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 contactyour ship in time to warn it off. It was in our gravity field before itanswered, and its Lawlor drive couldn't take it away--not workingbecause 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 distressmessage anywhere, and our best estimate is that the colony will be wipedout--thirst and starvation--in six months. I'm sorry you and Aletha haveto 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. Itwould come back. Nobody on the ship wanted to stay aground, because theyknew the conditions and the situation below--unbearable heat and thecomplete absence of hope. But nobody had anything to do! The ship hadbeen maintained in standard operating condition during its two-months'voyage from Trent to here. No repairs or overhaulings were needed. Therewas no maintenance-work to speak of. There would be only stand-bywatches until something happened. There would be nothing to do on thosewatches. There would be off-watch time for twenty-one out of everytwenty-four hours, and no purposeful activity to fill even half an hourof it. In a matter of--probably--years, the _Warlock_ should receiveaid. She might be towed out of her orbit to space in which the Lawlordrive could function, or the crew might simply be taken off. Butmeanwhile, 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. Thecolonists had at least the colorful prospect of death before them. Theycould 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 thesaddle-blanket, and apparently suffered little if at all. But Bordmancould only ride in the ground-car's cargo space, along with the sack ofmail from the ship. The ground was unbelievably rough and the joltingintolerable. The heat was literally murderous. In the metal cargo space, the temperature reached a hundred and sixty degrees in the sunshine--andgiven enough time, food will cook in no more heat than that. Of course aman has been known to enter an oven and stay there while a roast wascooked, and to come out alive. But the oven wasn't throwing himviolently about or bringing sun-heated--blue-white-sun heated--metal topress his heat-suit against him. 

The suit did make survival possible, but that was all. The contents ofits canteens gave out just before arrival, and for a short time Bordmanhad only sweat for his suit to work with. It kept him alive by forcedventilation, but he arrived in a state of collapse. He drank the icedsalt water they gave him and went to bed. He'd get back his strengthwith a proper sodium level in his blood. But he slept for twelve hoursstraight. 

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-comfortclass D--a blue-white sun and a mean temperature of one hundred and tendegrees. Africans could take such a climate--with night-relief quarters. Amerinds could do steel construction work in the open, protected only byinsulated shoes and gloves. But Bordman could not venture out-of-doorsexcept in a heat-suit. He couldn't stay long then. It was not aweakness. It was a matter of genetics. But he was ashamed. 

Aletha nodded to him when he found the Project Engineer's office. Itoccupied one of the hulls in which colony-establishment materials hadbeen lowered by rocket power. There were forty of the hulls, and theyhad been emptied and arranged for inter-communication in three separatecommunities, so that an individual could change his quarters andordinary associates from time to time and colony fever--franticirritation with one's companions--was minimized. 

Aletha sat at a desk, busily making notes from a loose leaf volumebefore her. The wall behind the desk was fairly lined with similarvolumes. 

"I made a spectacle of myself!" said Bordman, bitterly. 

"Not at all!" Aletha assured him. "It could happen to anybody. Iwouldn'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 thrivedbecause their ancestors had lived on the shores of the Gulf of Guinea, on Earth. But Anglos did not find its climate healthful, nor would manyother races. Amerinds died there quicker than most. 

"Ralph's on the way here now, " added Aletha. "He and Dr. Chuka were outpicking 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 tous, 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 itout. Is that it?"

"That's it, " agreed Aletha. "It's pretty bad all around. I didn't planto die just yet. "

Her voice was perfectly normal. Bordman snorted. As a senior ColonialSurvey officer, he'd been around. But he'd never yet known a humancolony to be extinguished when it was properly equipped and after aproper pre-settlement survey. He'd seen panic, but never real cause fora matter-of-fact acceptance of doom. 

 * * * * *

There was a clanking noise outside the hulk which was the ProjectEngineer's headquarters. Bordman couldn't see clearly through thefiltered ports. He reached over and opened a door. The brightnessoutside struck his eyes like a blow. He blinked them shut instantly andturned away. But he'd seen a glistening, caterwheel ground car stoppingnot far from the doorway. 

He stood wiping tears from his light-dazzled eyes as footsteps soundedoutside. Aletha's cousin came in, followed by a huge man with remarkablydark skin. The dark man wore eyeglasses with a curiously thick, corklikenosepiece to insulate the necessary metal of the frame from his skin. Itwould 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, showingstartlingly white teeth. Then he began to shiver. 

"It's like a freeze-box in here, " he said in a deep voice. "I'll get arobe and be with you. "

He vanished through a doorway, his teeth chattering audibly. Aletha'scousin took half a dozen deliberate deep breaths and grimaced. 

"I could shiver myself, " he admitted "but Chuka's really acclimated toXosa. He was raised on Timbuk. "

Bordman said curtly:

"I'm sorry I collapsed on landing. It won't happen again. I came here todo a degree-of-completion survey that should open the colony to normalcommerce, let the colonists' families move in, tourists, and so on. ButI was landed by boat instead of normally, and I am told the colony isdoomed. I would like an official statement of the degree of completionof the colony's facilities and an explanation of the unusual points Ihave just mentioned. "

The Indian blinked at him. Then he smiled faintly. The dark man cameback, zipping up an indoor warmth-garment. Redfeather dryly brought himup to date by repeating what Bordman had just said. Chuka grinned andsprawled comfortably in a chair. 

"I'd say, " he remarked humorously, in that astonishingly deep-tonedvoice of his, "sand got in our hair. And our colony. And the landinggrid. There's a lot of sand on Xosa. Wouldn't you say that was thetrouble?"

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 Surveyofficer, I have authority to give any orders needed for my work. I giveone now. I want to see the landing grid--if it is still standing. I takeit that it didn't fall down?"

Redfeather flushed beneath the bronze pigment of his skin. It would behard to offend a steelman more than to suggest that his work did notstand 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 iscompleted?"

"Just so, " said Redfeather without expression. 

"Then I issue a formal order that I be taken to the landing-grid siteimmediately, " said Bordman angrily. "I want to see what sort ofincompetence 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. Bordmanblinked at the momentary blast of light, and then began to pace up anddown the office. He fumed. He was still ashamed of his collapse from theheat during the travel from the landed rocket-boat to the colony. Therefore he was touchy and irritable. But the order he had given wasstrictly justifiable. 

He heard a small noise. He whirled. Dr. Chuka, huge and black andspectacled, rocked back and forth in his seat, suppressing laughter. 

"Now, what the devil does that mean?" demanded Bordman suspiciously. "Itcertainly isn't ridiculous to ask to see the structure on which the lifeof the colony finally depends!"

"Not ridiculous, " said Dr. Chuka. "It's--hilarious!"

He boomed laughter in the office with the rounded ceiling of a remaderobot 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 dictateswere not the same for everybody. But he marched away, back to thecubbyhole in which he had awakened. Angrily, he donned the heat-suitthat had not protected him adequately before, but had certainly savedhis life. He filled the canteens topping full--he suspected he hadn'tdone so the last time. He went back to the Project Engineer's officewith a feeling of being burdened and absurd. 

 * * * * *

Out a filter-window, he saw that men with skins as dark as Dr. Chuka'swere at work on a ground car. They were equipping it with a sunshade andcurious shields like wings. Somebody pushed a sort of caterwheelhandtruck toward it. They put big, heavy tanks into its cargo space. Dr. Chuka had disappeared, but Aletha was back at work making notes from theloose-leaf volume on the desk. 

[Illustration]

"May I ask, " asked Bordman with some irony, "what your work happens tobe just now?"

She looked up. 

"I thought you knew, " she said in surprise. "I'm here for the AmerindHistorical Society. I can certify coups. I'm taking coup-records for theSociety. They'll go in the record-cache Ralph and Dr. Chuka arearranging, so no matter what happens to the colony, the record of thecoups won't be lost. "

"Coups?" demanded Bordman. He knew that Amerinds painted feathers on thekey-posts of steel structures they'd built, and he knew that the postingof such "coup-marks" was a cherished privilege and undoubtedly asurvival 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 threeeagle-feathers. You saw them. He has three coups. Pinions, too! He builtthe landing grids on Norlath and--Oh, you don't know!"

"I don't, " admitted Bordman, his temper not of the best because of whatseemed unnecessary condescensions on Xosa II. 

Aletha looked surprised. 

"In the old days, " she explained, "back on Earth, if a man scalped anenemy, he counted coup. The first to strike an enemy in a battle countedcoup, too--a lesser one. Nowadays a man counts coups for differentthings, but Ralph's three eagle-feathers mean he's entitled to as muchrespect as a warrior in the old days who, three separate times, hadkilled and scalped an enemy warrior in the middle of his own camp. Andhe is, too!"

Bordman grunted. 

"Barbarous, I'd say!"

"If you like, " said Aletha. "But it's something to be proud of--and onedoesn't count coup for making a lot of money!" Then she paused and saidcurtly: "The word 'snobbish' fits it better than 'barbarous. ' We aresnobs! But when the head of a clan stands up in Council in the Big Tepeeon Algonka, representing his clan, and men have to carry the ends of thefeather headdress with all the coups the members of his clan haveearned--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 notenter--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 gogglesagain and made his way heavily to the waiting, now-shaded ground car. Henoted that there were other changes beside the sunshade. The cover-deckof the cargo space was gone, and there were cylindrical riding seatslike saddles in the back. The odd lower shields reached out sidewisefrom the body, barely above the caterwheels. He could not make out theirpurpose and irritably failed to ask. 

"All ready, " said Redfeather coldly. "Dr. Chuka's coming with us. Ifyou'll get in here, please----"

Bordman climbed awkwardly into the boxlike back of the car. He bestrodeone of the cylindrical arrangements. With a saddle on it, it wouldundoubtedly have been a comfortable way to cover impossibly bad terrainin a mechanical carrier. He waited. About him there were the squattyhulls of the space-barges which had been towed here by a colony ship, each one once equipped with rockets for landing. Emptied of theircargoes, they had been huddled together into the three separate, adjoining communities. There were separate living quarters and messhalls and recreation rooms for each, and any colonist lived in thecommunity of his choice and shifted at pleasure, or visited, or remainedsolitary. For mental health a man has to be assured of his free will, and over-regimentation is deadly in any society. With menpsychologically 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 rawrock. But it was peculiarly smooth, as if sand grains had rubbed over itfor uncountable aeons and carefully worn away every trace of unevenness. Half a mile to the left, dunes began and went away to the horizon. Thenearer ones were small, but they gained in size with distance from themountains--which evidently affected the surface-winds hereabouts--andthe edge of seeing was visibly not a straight line. The dunes yondermust 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 towhich sand dunes could grow had no limit. The surface of Xosa II was asea of sand, on which islands and small continents of wind-swept rockwere merely minor features. 

Dr. Chuka adjusted a small metal object in his hand. It had a tubedangling from it. He climbed into the cargo space and fastened it to oneof the two tanks previously loaded. 

"For you, " he told Bordman. "Those tanks are full of compressed air atrather high pressure--a couple of thousand pounds. Here's areduction-valve with an adiabatic expansion feature, to supply extra airto your heat-suit. It will be pretty cold, expanding from so high apressure. Bring down the temperature a little more. "

Bordman again felt humiliated. Chuka and Redfeather, because of theirraces, were able to move about nine-tenths naked in the open air on thisplanet, and they thrived. But he needed a special refrigerated costumeto endure the heat. More, they provided him with sunshades andrefrigerated air that they did not need for themselves. They werethoughtful of him. He was as much out of his element, where they fittedperfectly, as he would have been making a degree-of-completion survey onan underwater project. He had to wear what was practically a diving suitand 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 ablanket--and Dr. Chuka mounted beside Bordman. The ground car got underway. It headed for the mountains. 

 * * * * *

The smoothness of the rock was deceptive. The caterwheel car lurchedand bumped and swayed and rocked. It rolled and dipped and wallowed. Nobody could have remained in a normal seat on such terrain, but Bordmanfelt hopelessly undignified riding what amounted to a hobbyhorse. Underthe sunshade it was infuriatingly like a horse on a carousel. That therewere three of them together made it look even more foolish. He staredabout him, trying to take his mind from his own absurdity. His gogglesmade 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 evenif the sun never touched you directly. "

Bordman did not answer. The caterwheel car went on. It came to a patchof sand--tawny sand, heavily mineralized. There was a dune here. Not abig one for Xosa II. It was no more than a hundred feet high. But theywent up its leeward, steeply slanting side. All the planet seemed totilt 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 thewheels struggled with sand precariously ready to fall, and Bordman had asudden perception of the sands of Xosa II as the oceans that they reallywere. The dunes were waves which moved with infinite slowness, but theirresistible force of storm-seas. Nothing could resist them. Nothing!

They traveled over similar dunes for two miles. Then they began to climbthe approaches to the mountains. And Bordman saw for the secondtime--the first had been through the ports of the landing-boat--wherethere was a notch in the mountain wall and sand had flowed out of itlike a waterfall, making a beautifully symmetrical cone-shaped heapagainst the lower cliffs. There were many such falls. There was oneplace where there was a sand-cascade. Sand had poured over a series ofrocky steps, piling up on each in turn to its very edge, and thenspilling again to the next. 

They went up a crazily slanting spur of stone, whose sides were toosteep for sand to lodge on, and whose narrow crest had a bare thincoating of powder. 

The landscape looked like a nightmare. As the car went on, wabbling andlurching and dipping on its way, the heights on either side made Bordmantend to dizziness. The coloring was impossible. The aridness, thedesiccation, the lifelessness of everything about was somehow shocking. Bordman found himself straining his eyes for the merest, scrubbiest ofbushes and for however stunted and isolated a wisp of grass. 

The journey went on for an hour. Then there came a straining climb up anow-windswept ridge of eroded rock, and the attainment of its highestpoint. The ground car went onward for a hundred yards and stopped. 

They had reached the top of the mountain range, and there wasdoubtlessly another range beyond. But they could not see it. Here, atthe place to which they had climbed so effortfully, there were no morerocks. There was no valley. There was no descending slope. There wassand. This was one of the sand plateaus which were a unique feature ofXosa II. And Bordman knew, now, that the disputed explanation was thetrue one. 

Winds, blowing over the mountains, carried sand as on other worlds theycarried moisture and pollen and seeds and rain. Where two mountainranges ran across the course of long-blowing winds, the winds eddiedabove the valley between. They dropped sand into it. The equivalent oftrade winds, Bordman considered, in time would fill a valley to themountain tops, just as trade winds provide moisture in equal quantity onother 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 valleyhere. The landing grid had eighteen hundred feet of height built. Therewas to be four hundred feet more--the lighter top construction justifiesmy figure of eighty per cent completion. Then there was a storm. "

[Illustration]

It was hot. Horribly, terribly hot, even here on a plateau atmountaintop height. Dr. Chuka looked at Bordman's face and bent down inthe vehicle. He turned a stopcock on one of the air tanks brought forBordman's necessity. Immediately Bordman felt cooler. His skin was dry, of course. The circulated air dried sweat as fast as it appeared. But hehad 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 expandedair was almost deliriously refreshing. 

Dr. Chuka produced a canteen. Bordman drank thirstily. The water wasslightly salted to replace salt lost in sweat. 

"A storm, eh?" asked Bordman, after a time of contemplation of his innersensations as well as the scene of disaster before him. There'd be somehundreds 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 sweepof changed trade winds along the length of the valley. "But what has astorm to do----"

"It was a sandstorm, " said Redfeather coldly. "Probably there was asunspot flare-up. We don't know. But the pre-colonization survey spokeof sandstorms. The survey team even made estimates of sandfall invarious places as so many inches per year. Here all storms drop sandinstead of rain. But there must have been a sunspot flare because thisstorm blew for"--his voice went flat and deliberate because it wasstating the unbelievable--"for two months. We did not see the sun in allthat time. And we couldn't work, naturally. The sand would flay a man'sskin off his body in minutes. So we waited it out. 

"When it ended, there was this sand plateau where the survey had orderedthe landing grid to be built. The grid was under it. It is under it. Thetop of eighteen hundred feet of steel is still buried two hundred feetdown in the sand you see. Our unfabricated building-steel is piled readyfor erection--under two thousand feet of sand. Without anything butstored power it is hardly practical"--Redfeather's tone wassardonic--"for us to try to dig it out. There are hundreds of millionsof tons of stuff to be moved. If we could get the sand away, we couldfinish the grid. If we could finish the grid, we'd have power enough toget the sand away--in a few years, and if we could replace the machinerythat wore out handling it. And if there wasn't another sandstorm. "

He paused. Bordman took deep breaths of the cooler air. He could thinkmore clearly. 

"If you will accept photographs, " said Redfeather politely, "you cancheck that we actually did the work. "

 * * * * *

Bordman saw the implications. The colony had been formed of Amerinds forthe steel work and Africans for the labor the Amerinds were congenitallyaverse to--the handling of complex mining-machinery underground and thecontrol of modern high-speed smelting operations. Both races couldendure this climate and work in it--provided that they had cooledsleeping quarters. But they had to have power. Power not only to workwith, but to live by. The air-cooling machinery that made sleep possiblealso condensed from the cooled air the minute trace of water vapor itcontained and that they needed for drink. But without power they wouldthirst. Without the landing grid and the power it took from theionosphere, they could not receive supplies from the rest of theuniverse. So they would starve. 

And the _Warlock_, now in orbit somewhere overhead, was well within theplanet's gravitational field and could not use its Lawlor drive toescape with news of their predicament. In the normal course of events itwould be years before a colony ship capable of landing or blasting outof a planetary gravitational field by rocket-power was dispatched tofind out why there was no news from Xosa II. There was no such thing asinterstellar signaling, of course. Ships themselves travel faster thanany signal that could be sent, and distances were so great that merecommunication took enormous lengths of time. A letter sent to Earth fromthe Rim even now took ten years to make the journey, and another ten fora reply. Even the much shorter distances involved in Xosa II'spredicament still ruled out all hope. The colony was strictly on itsown. 

Bordman said heavily:

"I'll accept the photographs. I even accept the statement that thecolony will die. I will prepare my report for the cache Aletha tells meyou're preparing. And I apologize for any affront I may have offeredyou. "

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 anyorders needed for my work, I want to survey the steps you've taken tocarry out those parts of your instructions dealing with emergencies. Iwant to see right away what you've done to beat this state of things. Iknow they can't be beaten, but I intend to leave a report on what you'vetried!"

 * * * * *

The _Warlock_ swung in emptiness around the planet Xosa II. It wasbarely five thousand miles above the surface, so the mottled terrain ofthe dry world flowed swiftly and perpetually beneath it. It did not seembeneath, of course. It simply seemed out--away--removed from the ship. And in the ship's hull there was artificial gravity, and light, andthere were the humming sounds of fans which kept the air in motion andflowing through the air apparatus. Also there was food, and adequatewater, and the temperature was admirably controlled. But nothinghappened. Moreover, nothing could be expected to happen. There wereeight men in the crew, and they were accustomed to space-voyages whichlasted from one month to three. But they had traveled a good two monthsfrom their last port. They had exhausted the visireels, playing themover and over until they were intolerable. They had read and reread allthe bookreels they could bear. On previous voyages they had played chessand similar games until it was completely predictable who would beatwhom 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 workwithin five diameters of an Earth-gravity planet. Space is warped onlyinfinitesimally by so thin a field, but a Lawlor drive needs almostperfectly unstressed emptiness if it is to take hold. They did not havefuel enough to blast out the necessary thirty-odd thousand miles againstgravity. The same consideration made their lifeboats useless. They couldnot escape by rocket-power and their Lawlor drives, also, wereineffective. 

The crew of the _Warlock_ was bored. The worst of the boredom was thatit promised to last without limit. They had food and water and physicalcomfort, but they were exactly in the situation of men sentenced toprison for an unknown but enormous length of time. There was no escape. There could be no alleviation. The prospect invited frenzy byanticipation. 

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 theircatastrophe. The skipper went through the ship and painstakinglyconfiscated every weapon. He locked them up. He, himself, already feltthe nagging effect of jangling nerves. There was nothing to do. Hedidn't know when there would ever be anything to do. It was a conditionto produce hysteria. 

 * * * * *

There was night. Outside and above the colony there were uncountablemyriads of stars. They were not the stars of Earth, of course, butBordman had never been on Earth. He was used to unfamiliarconstellations. He stared out a port at the sky, and noted that therewere no moons. He remembered, when he thought, that Xosa II had nomoons. There was a rustling of paper behind him. Aletha Redfeatherturned a page in a loose-leaf volume and painstakingly made a note. Thewall behind her held many more such books. From them could be extractedthe detailed history of every bit of work that had been done by thecolony-preparation crews. Separate, tersely-phrased items could beassembled 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 byaircraft. It was not practical, even to build up a reserve of fluid. Winds carried sand particles here as on other worlds they carriedmoisture. Aircraft were abraded as they flew. The last working fliermade a forced landing five hundred miles from the colony. A caterwheelexpedition went out and brought the crew in. The caterwheel trucks werearmored with silicone plastic, resistant to abrasion, but when they gotback they had to be scrapped. There had been men lost in suddensand-squalls, and heroic searches for them, and once or twice rescues. There had been cave-ins in the mines. There had been accidents. Therehad been magnificent feats of endurance and achievement. 

Bordman went to the door of the hull which was Ralph Redfeather'sProject Engineer office. He opened it. He stepped outside. 

It was like stepping into an oven. The sand was still hot from thesunshine just ended. The air was so utterly dry that Bordman instantlyfelt it sucking at the moisture of his nasal passages. In ten secondshis feet--clad in indoor footwear--were uncomfortably hot. In twenty thesoles of his feet felt as if they were blistering. He would die of theheat at night, here! Perhaps he could endure the outside near dawn, buthe raged a little. Here where Amerinds and Africans lived and throve, hecould live unprotected for no more than an hour or two--and that at onespecial time of the planet's rotation!

He went back in, ashamed of the discomfort of his feet and angrilyletting them feel scorched rather than admit to it. 

Aletha turned another page. 

"Look, here!" said Bordman angrily. "No matter what you say, you'regoing 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'drather stay here. "

"For the present, perhaps, " snapped Bordman. "But before things get toobad you go back to the ship! They've rocket fuel enough for half a dozenlandings 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 helpus gets here?"

Bordman would not answer. He'd done some figuring. It had been atwo-month journey from Trent--the nearest Survey base--to here. The_Warlock_ had been expected to remain aground until the smelter itbrought could load it with pig metal. Which could be as little as twoweeks, but would surprise nobody if it was two months instead. So theship would not be considered due back on Trent for four months. It wouldnot be considered overdue for at least two more. It would be six monthsbefore 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 amishap in space. There'd eventually be a report of noncommunication tothe Colony Survey headquarters on Canna III. But it would take threemonths for that report to be received, and six more for aconfirmation--even if ships made the voyages exactly at the mostfavorable intervals--and then there should at least be a complaint fromthe colony. There were lifeboats aground on Xosa II, for emergencycommunication, and if a lifeboat didn't bring news of a planetarycrisis, no crisis would be considered to exist. Nobody could imagine alanding grid failing!

Maybe in a year somebody would think that maybe somebody ought to askaround about Xosa II. It would be much longer before somebody put a noteon somebody else's desk that would suggest that when, or if, a suitableship passed near Xosa II, or if one should be available for the inquiry, it might be worth while to have the noncommunication from the planetlooked into. Actually, to guess at three years before another shiparrived would be the most optimistic of estimates. 

"You're a civilian, " said Bordman shortly. "When the food and water runlow, you go back to the ship. You'll at least be alive when somebodydoes 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 theorder!"

"I doubt it very much, " said Aletha pleasantly. 

She returned to her task. 

 * * * * *

There were crunching footsteps outside the hulk. Bordman winced alittle. With insulated sandals, it was normal for these colonists tomove from one part of the colony to another in the open, even bydaylight. He, Bordman, couldn't take out-of-doors at night! His lipstwisted bitterly. 

Men came in. There were dark men with rippling muscles under glisteningskin, and bronze Amerinds with coarse straight hair. Ralph Redfeatherwas with them. Dr. Chuka came in last of all. 

"Here we are, " said Redfeather. "These are our foremen. Among us, Ithink 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 andSpottedhorse and Lewanika---- They were names which in combination wouldonly be found in a very raw, new colony. But the men who crowded intothe office were wholly at ease, in their own minds as well as in thepresence of a senior Colonial Survey officer. They nodded as they werenamed, and the nearest shook hands. Bordman knew that he'd have likedtheir looks under other circumstances. But he was humiliated by theconditions on this planet. They were not. They were apparently onlysentenced to death by them. 

"I have to leave a report, " said Bordman curtly--and he was somehowastonished to know that he did expect to leave a report rather than makeone; he accepted the hopelessness of the colony's future--"on thedegree-of-completion of the work here. But since there's an emergency, Ihave also to leave a report on the measures taken to meet it. "

The report would be futile, of course. As futile as the coup-recordsAletha was compiling, which would be read only after everybody on theplanet was dead. But Bordman knew he'd write it. It was unthinkable thathe shouldn't. 

"Redfeather tells me, " he added, again curtly, "that the power instorage can be used to cool the colony buildings--and therefore condensedrinking water from the air--for just about six months. There is foodfor about six months. If one lets the buildings warm up a little, tostretch the fuel, there won't be enough water to drink. Go on halfrations to stretch the food, and there won't be enough water to last andthe 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, "butthey can't use the landing boat more than a few times. It can't use shipfuel. No refrigeration to hold it stable. They couldn't land more than aton of supplies all told. There are five hundred of us here. No helpthere!"

He looked from one to another. 

"So we live comfortably, " he told them with irony, "until our food andwater and minimum night-comfort run out together. Anything we do to tryto stretch anything is useless because of what happens to somethingelse. Redfeather tells me you accept the situation. What are youdoing--since you accept it?"

Dr. Chuka said amiably:

"We've picked a storage place for our records, and our miners areblasting out space in which to put away the record of our actions to thelast possible moment. It will be sandproof. Our mechanics are building abroadcast unit we'll spare a tiny bit of fuel for. It will runtwenty-odd years, broadcasting directions so it can be found regardlessof how the terrain is changed by drifting sand. "

"And, " said Bordman, "the fact that nobody will be here to givedirections. "

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 beenboastings that there'll be a well-practiced choir ready to go to work inthe next world. "

White teeth showed in grins. Bordman was almost envious of men who couldgrin 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 theworst mountains within three hundred miles. There's been a new recordset for the javelin, adjusted for gravity constant, and Johnny Cornstalkdid a hundred yards in eight point four seconds. Aletha has the recordsand has certified them. "

"Very useful!" said Bordman sardonically. Then he disliked himself forsaying it even before the bronze-skinned men's faces grew studiedlyimpassive. 

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 ownill-nature. 

"I take it back!" he said irritably. "What I said was uncalled for. Ishouldn't have said it! But I came here to do a completion survey andwhat you've been giving me is material for an estimate of morale! It'snot my line! I'm a technician, first and foremost! We're faced with atechnical problem!"

Aletha spoke suddenly from behind him. 

"But these are men, first and foremost, Mr. Bordman. And they're facedwith a very human problem--how to die well. They seem to be rather goodat it, so far. "

Bordman ground his teeth. He was again humiliated. In his own fashion hewas attempting the same thing. But just as he was genetically notqualified to endure the climate of this planet, he was not prepared fora fatalistic or pious acceptance of disaster. Amerind and African, alike, these men instinctively held to their own ideas of what thedignity of a man called upon him to do when he could not do anything butdie. But Bordman's idea of his human dignity required him to be stillfighting: still scratching at the eyes of fate or destiny when he wasslain. It was in his blood or genes or the result of training. He simplycould not, with self-respect, accept any physical situation as hopelesseven when his mind assured him that it was. 

 * * * * *

"I agree, " he said coldly, "but still I have to think in technicalterms. You might say that we are going to die because we cannot land the_Warlock_ with food and equipment. We cannot land the _Warlock_ becausewe have no landing grid. We have no landing grid because it and all thematerial to complete it is buried under millions of tons of sand. Wecannot make a new light-supply-ship type of landing grid because we haveno smelter to make beams, nor power to run it if we had, yet if we hadthe beams we could get the power to run the smelter we haven't got tomake the beams. And we have no smelter, hence no beams, no power, noprospect of food or help because we can't land the _Warlock_. It isstrictly a circular problem. Break it at any point and all of it issolved. "

One of the dark men muttered something under his breath to those nearhim. There were chuckles. 

"Like Mr. Woodchuck, " explained the man, when Bordman's eyes fell onhim. "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 condensemoisture. We've chemicals for hydroponics--if we could keep the plantsfrom roasting as they grew. Refrigeration and water and food arepractically 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 awoman I know. Her husband raises horses. He's mad about them. And theylive 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 creamand refrigeration isn't too simple. But she has a Doctorate in HumanHistory. So she had her husband make an insulated tray on the roof oftheir 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. "Domesticscience achievement. " To Bordman she explained: "Her husband put a trayon 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 itfrom the heat of the sun. At night she takes off the top cover and poursher custard, thin, in the tray. Then she goes to bed. She has to get upbefore 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 knowwhy. She said it was done in a place called Babylonia on Earth, manythousands of years ago. "

Bordman blinked. Then he said decisively:

"Damn! Who knows how much the ground-temperature drops here beforedawn?"

"I do, " said Aletha's cousin, mildly. "The top-sand temperature fallsforty-odd degrees. Warmer underneath, of course. But the air here isalmost cool when the sun rises. Why?"

"Nights are cooler on all planets, " said Bordman, "because every nightthe dark side radiates heat to empty space. There'd be frost everywhereevery morning if the ground didn't store up heat during the day. If weprevent daytime heat-storage--cover a patch of ground before dawn andleave it covered all day--and uncover it all night while shielding itfrom warm winds---- We've got refrigeration! The night sky is emptyspace itself! Two hundred and eighty below zero!"

 * * * * *

There was a murmur. Then argument. The foremen of the Xosa IIcolony-preparation crew were strictly practical men, but they had thehabit of knowing why some things were practical. One does not do modernsteel construction in contempt of theory, nor handle modern mining toolswithout knowing why as well as how they work. This proposal sounded likesomething that was based on reason--that should work to some degree. But how well? Anybody could guess that it should cool something at leasttwice as much as the normal night temperature-drop. But somebodyproduced a slipstick and began to juggle it expertly. He astonishedlyannounced his results. Others questioned, and then verified it. Nobodypaid much attention to Bordman. But there was a hum of absorbeddiscussion, in which Redfeather and Chuka were immediately included. Bycalculation, it astoundingly appeared that if the air on Xosa II wasreally as clear as the bright stars and deep day-sky color indicated, every second night a total drop of one hundred and eighty degreestemperature could be secured by radiation to interstellar space--ifthere were no convection-currents, and they could be prevented by----

It was the convection-current problem which broke the assembly intogroups with different solutions. But it was Dr. Chuka who boomed at allof them to try all three solutions and have them ready before daybreak, so the assembly left the hulk, still disputing enthusiastically. Butsomebody had recalled that there were dewponds in the one arid area onTimbuk, and somebody else remembered that irrigation on Delmos III wasaccomplished that same way. And they recalled how it was done----

Voices went away in the ovenlike night outside. Bordman grimaced, andagain said:

"Damn! Why didn't I think of that myself?"

"Because, " said Aletha, smiling, "you aren't a Doctor of Human Historywith a horse-raising husband and a fondness for ice cream. Even so, atechnician was needed to break down the problem here into really simpleterms. " Then she said, "I think Bob Running Antelope might approve ofyou, 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 moreproblems. "

Her cousin came back into the room. He said with gratification:

"Chuka can turn out silicone-wool insulation, he says. Plenty ofmaterial, and he'll use a solar mirror to get the heat he needs. Plentyof temperature to make silicones! How much area will we need to pull infour thousand gallons of water a night?"

"How do I know?" demanded Bordman. "What's the moisture-content of theair here, anyhow?" Then he said vexedly, "Tell me! Are you usingheat-exchangers to help cool the air you pump into the buildings, beforeyou 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 withdrewinto themselves. In even two months of routine tedious voyaging to thisplanet, there had been the beginnings of irritation with the mannerismsof other men. Now there would be years of it. At the beginning, everyman tended to become a hermit so that he could postpone as long aspossible the time when he would hate his shipmates. Monotony was alreadyso familiar that its continuance was a foreknown evil. The crew of the_Warlock_ already knew how intolerable they would presently be to eachother, and the foreknowledge tended to make them intolerable now. 

Within two days of its establishment in orbit, the _Warlock_ was mannedby men already morbidly resentful of fate; with the psychology ofprisoners doomed to close confinement for an indeterminate but ghastlyperiod. 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 tomake port for a matter of years. 

 * * * * *

Most human problems are circular and fall apart when a single trivialpart of them is solved. There used to be enmity between races becausethey were different, and they tended to be different because they wereenemies, so there was enmity--The big problem of interstellar flight wasthat nothing could travel faster than light, and nothing could travelfaster than light because mass increased with speed, and mass increasedwith speed--obviously!--because ships remained in the same time-slot, and ships remained in the same time-slot long after a one-second shiftwas possible because nobody realized that it meant traveling faster thanlight. And even before there was interstellar travel, there waspractically no interplanetary commerce because it took so much fuel totake off and land. And it took more fuel to carry the fuel to take offand land, and more still to carry the fuel for that, until somebody usedpower on the ground for heave-off instead of take-off, and again on theground for landing. And then interplanetary ships carried cargoes. Andon Xosa II there was an emergency because a sandstorm had buried thealmost completed landing grid under some megatons of sand, and itcouldn't be completed because there was only storage power because itwasn't completed, because there was only storage power because----

But it took three weeks for the problem to be seen as the ultimatelysimple thing it really was. Bordman had called it a circular problem, but he hadn't seen its true circularity. It was actually--like allcircular problems--inherently an unstable set of conditions. It began tofall apart when he saw that mere refrigeration would break its solidity. 

In one week there were ten acres of desert covered withsilicone-wool-felt in great strips. By day a reflective surface wasuppermost, and at sundown caterwheel trucks hooked on to towlines andneatly pulled it over on its back, to expose gridded black-body surfacesto the starlight. And the gridding was precisely designed so that windsblowing across it did not make eddies in the grid-squares, and thechilled air in those pockets remained undisturbed and there was noconduction of heat downward by eddy currents, while there was admirableradiation of heat out to space. And this was in the manner of the nightsides of all planets, only somewhat more efficient. 

 * * * * *

In two weeks there was a water yield of three thousand gallons pernight, and in three weeks more there were similar grids over the colonyhouses and a vast roofed cooling-shed for pre-chilling of air to be usedby the refrigeration systems themselves. The fuel-store--storedpower--was thereupon stretched to three times its former calculatedusefulness. The situation was no longer a simple and neat equation ofdespair. 

Then something else happened. One of Dr. Chuka's assistants was curiousabout a certain mineral. He used the solar furnace that had made thesilicone wool to smelt it. And Dr. Chuka saw him. And after one blankmoment he bellowed laughter and went to see Ralph Redfeather. WhereuponAmerind steel-workers sawed apart a robot hull that was no longer a fueltank because its fuel was gone, and they built a demountable solarmirror some sixty feet across--which African mechanics deftlypowered--and suddenly there was a spot of incandescence even brighterthan the sun of Xosa II, down on the planet's surface. It played upon amineral cliff, and monstrous smells developed and even the Africanmining-technicians put on goggles because of the brightness, andpresently there were threads of molten metal and slag trickling--andseparating as they trickled--hesitantly down the cliff-side. 

And Dr. Chuka beamed and slapped his sweating thighs, and Bordman wentout in a caterwheel truck, wearing a heat-suit, to watch it for all oftwenty minutes. When he got back to the Project Engineer's office hegulped iced salt water and dug out the books he'd brought down from theship. There was the specbook for Xosa II, and there were the othervolumes of definitions issued by the Colonial Survey. They weredefinitions of the exact meanings of terms used in brieferspecifications, for items of equipment sometimes ordered by the ColonyOffice. 

 * * * * *

When Chuka came into the office, presently, he carried the first crudepig of Xosa II iron in his gloved hand. He gloated. Bordman was thenabsent, 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 miningproperties on Xosa II are prepared as of today to deliver pig iron, cobalt, zirconium and beryllium in commercial quantities! We require oneday's notice to begin delivery of metal other than iron at the moment, because we're short of equipment, but we can furnish chromium andmanganese on two days' notice--the deposits are farther away. "

He dumped the pig of metal on the second desk, where Aletha sat with herperpetual loose-leafed volumes before her. The metal smoked and began tochar the desk-top. He picked it up again and tossed it from one glovedhand 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 ofour own making--I credit an assist on the mirror, but that's all--we'reset to load the first ship that comes in for cargo! Now what are yougoing 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 himand he was copying feverishly the figures and formulae from a section ofthe definition book of the Colonial Survey. The books started with thespecifications for antibiotic growth equipment for colonies withproblems in local bacteria. It ended with definitions of the requiredstrength-of-material and the designs stipulated for cages in zoos formotile fauna, subdivided into flying, marine, and solid-groundcreatures: sub-sub-divided into carnivores, herbivores, and omnivores, with the special specifications for enclosures to contain abyssalcreatures requiring extreme pressures, and the equipment for maintaininga healthfully re-poisoned atmosphere for creatures from methane planets. 

Redfeather had the third volume open at, "Landing Grids, LightestEmergency, Commerce Refuges, For Use Of. " There were some dozens ofnon-colonized planets along the most-traveled spaceways on which refugesfor shipwrecked spacemen were maintained. Small forces of Patrolpersonnel manned them. Space lifeboats serviced them. They had theminimum installations which could draw on their planets' ionospheres forpower, and they were not expected to handle anything bigger than atwenty-ton lifeboat. But the specifications for the equipment of suchrefuges were included in the reference volumes for Bordman's use in themaking of Colonial surveys. They were compiled for the information ofcontractors who wanted to bid on Colonial Survey installations, and forthe guidance of people like Bordman who checked up on the work. So theycontained all the data for the building of a landing grid, lightestemergency, commerce refuge for use of, in case of need. Redfeathercopied feverishly. 

Chuka ceased his boasting, but still he grinned. 

"I know we're stuck, Ralph, " he said amiably, "but it's nice stuff togo 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! Youget set to cast beams for us! Girders! I'm going to get a lifeboat aloftand away to Trent! Build a minimum size landing grid! Build a fire undersomebody so they'll send us a colony ship with supplies! If there's nonew sandstorm to bury the radiation refrigerators Bordman brought tomind, we can keep alive with hydroponics until a ship can arrive withsomething 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 thatMr. Bordman is nagging himself to achieve the inconceivable? It isinconceivable, 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 manon 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 allright. The refrigeration proves that! But he can't walk out-of-doorswithout 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 walka beam twelve hundred feet up. In his own way, yes. He's capable. Butthe best man----"

"I'm sure, " agreed Aletha, "that he couldn't sing as well as the worstof your singing crew, Dr. Chuka, and any Amerind could outrun him. EvenI could! But he's got something we haven't got, just as we havequalities he hasn't. We're secure in our competences. We know what wecan do, and that we can do it better than any--" her eyestwinkled--"paleface. But he doubts himself. All the time and in everyway. And that's why he may be the best man on this planet! I'll bet hedoes prove it!"

Redfeather said scornfully:

"You suggested radiation refrigeration! What does it prove that heapplied it?"

"That, " said Aletha, "he couldn't face the disaster that was herewithout trying to do something about it--even when it was impossible. Hecouldn't face the deadly facts. He had to torment himself by seeing thatthey wouldn't be deadly if only this one or that or the other weretwisted a little. His vanity was hurt because nature had beaten men. Hisdignity was offended. And a man with easily-hurt dignity won't ever behappy, but he can be pretty good!"

Chuka raised his ebony bulk from the chair in which he still shifted theiron pig from gloved hand to gloved hand. 

"You're kind, " he said, chuckling. "Too kind! I don't want to hurt hisfeelings. I wouldn't, for the world! But really . .. I've never heard aman praised for his vanity before, or admired for being touchy about hisdignity! If you're right . .. Why . .. It's been convenient. It might evenmean hope. But . .. Hm-m-m---- Would you want to marry a man like that?"

"Great Manitou forbid!" said Aletha firmly. She grimaced at the bareidea. "I'm an Amerind. I'll want my husband to be contented. I want tobe contented along with him. Mr. Bordman will never be either happy orcontent. No paleface husband for me! But I don't think he's through hereyet. Sending for help won't satisfy him. It's a further hurt to hisvanity. He'll be miserable if he doesn't prove himself--to himself--abetter man than that!"

Chuka shrugged his massive shoulders. Redfeather tracked down the lastitem he needed and fairly bounced to his feet. 

"What tonnage of iron can you get out, Chuka?" he demanded. "What canyou do in the way of castings? What's the elastic modulus--how muchcarbon 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 howfast my . .. Ah . .. Mineral spring is trickling metal down thecliff-face. If you can really launch a lifeboat, we might get some helphere in a year and a half instead of five----"

 * * * * *

They went out-of-doors together. There was a small sound in the nextoffice. Aletha was suddenly very, very still. She sat motionless for along half-minute. Then she turned her head. 

"I owe you an apology, Mr. Bordman, " she said ruefully. "It won't takeback the discourtesy, but--I'm very sorry. "

Bordman came into the office from the next room. He was rather pale. Hesaid wryly:

"Eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves, eh? Actually I was on theway in here when I heard--references to myself it would embarrass Chukaand your cousin to know I heard. So I stopped. Not to listen, but tokeep them from knowing I'd heard their private opinions of me. I'll beobliged if you don't tell them. They're entitled to their opinions ofme. I've mine of them. " He added grimly, "Apparently I think more highlyof them than they do of me!"

Aletha said contritely:

"It must have sounded horrible! But they . .. We . .. All of us thinkbetter 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 fromhere--_if_ I get back from here--I'm going to marry Bob RunningAntelope. He's nice. I like the idea of marrying him. I want to! But Ilook forward not only to happiness but to contentment. To me that'simportant. 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 thecontentment you look for. " Then he snapped: "But what's this businessabout expecting more from me? What spectacular idea do you expect me topull 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 comeup with something we couldn't possibly imagine. And I didn't say it wasbecause 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 notneurotic! I'm not. I'm annoyed. I'll get hopelessly behind schedulebecause 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 Ialso repeat that I think you'll turn up something nobody elseexpects--and I've no idea what it will be. But you'll do it now toprove that I'm wrong about how your mind works. "

She went out. Bordman clamped his jaws tightly. He felt that especiallyhaunting discomfort which comes of suspecting that one has been toldsomething about himself which may be true. 

"Idiotic!" he fumed, all alone. "Me neurotic? Me wanting to prove I'mthe best man here out of vanity?" He made a scornful noise. He satimpatiently at the desk. "Absurd!" he muttered wrathfully. "Why should Ineed to prove to myself I'm capable? What would I do if I felt such aneed, anyhow?"

Scowling, he stared at the wall. It was irritating. It was a naggingsort of question. What would he do if she were right? If he did needconstantly 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 emergencycall from Xosa II. He listened. He clicked off the communicator andhastened to an exterior port, deeply darkened against those times whenthe blue-white sun of Xosa shone upon this side of the hull. He movedthe manual control to make it more transparent. He stared down at themonstrous, tawny, mottled surface of the planet five thousand milesaway. 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 aslight angle--it leaned toward the planet's west--and it expanded andwidened and formed an extraordinary sort of mushroom-shaped object thatwas completely impossible. It could not be. Humans do not create visibleobjects twenty miles high, which at their tops expand like toadstools onexcessively slender stalks, and which drift westward and fray and growthin, and are constantly renewed. 

But it was true. The skipper of the _Warlock_ gazed until he wascompletely 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. Butwhen the _Warlock_ was around on that side of the planet again, themembers of the crew saw the strange appearance, too. They examined itwith telescopes. They grew hysterically happy. They went frantically towork to clear away the signs of a month and a half of mutiny anddespair. 

It took them three days to get the ship to tidiness again, and duringall that time the peculiar tawny jet remained. On the sixth day the jetwas fainter. On the seventh it was larger than before. It continuedlarger. And telescopes at highest magnification verified what theemergency 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 timebefore. But there was no reason to hate anybody, now. The skipper wasvery much relieved. 

 * * * * *

There was eighteen hundred feet of steel grid overhead. It made acrisscross, ring-shaped wall more than a quarter-mile high and almost tothe top of the surrounding mountains. But the valley was not exactly anormal one. It was a crater, now: a steeply sloping, conical pit whosewalls descended smoothly to the outer girders of the red-painted, glistening steel structure. More girders for the completion of the gridprojected from the sand just outside its half-mile circle. And in thelanding grid there was now a smaller, elaborate, truss-braced object. Itrested on the rocky ground, and it was not painted, and it was quitesmall. A hundred feet high, perhaps, and no more than three hundredacross. But it was visibly a miniature of the great, now-uncovered, re-painted landing grid which was qualified to handle interstellar cargoships and all the proper space-traffic of a minerals-colony planet. 

A caterwheel truck came lurching and rolling and rumbling down the sideof the pit. It had a sunshade and ground-reflector wings, and Bordmanrode tiredly on a hobbyhorse saddle in its back cargo section. He wore aheat-suit. 

The truck reached the pit's bottom. There was a tool shed there. Thecaterwheel-truck bumped up to it and stopped. Bordman got out, visiblycramped by the jolting, rocking, exhausting-to-unaccustomed-musclesride. 

"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 asyou feed me that expanded air. " It was plain that he resented needingeven 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 needsyou. 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 foryou to see something. There where you see the little knot of people. Theplatform. "

Bordman grimaced. When one was well started on a survey, one got used toheights and depths and all sorts of environments. But he hadn't been upon steel-work in a good many months. Not since a survey on Kalka IVnearly a year ago. He would be dizzy at first. 

He accompanied Chuka to the spot where a steel cable dangled from analmost invisibly thin beam high above. There was a strictly improvisedcage to ascend in--planks and a handrail forming an insecure platformthat might hold four people. He got into it, and Dr. Chuka got in besidehim. Chuka waved his hand. The cage started up. 

Bordman winced as the ground dropped away below. It was ghastly to bedangling in emptiness like this. He wanted to close his eyes. The cagewent up and up and up. It took many long minutes to reach the top. 

There was a platform there. Newly-made. The sunlight was blindinglybright. The landscape was an intolerable glare. Bordman adjusted hisgoggles to maximum darkness and stepped gingerly from the swaying cageto the hardly more solid-seeming area. Here he was in mid-air on aplatform barely ten feet square. It was rather more than twice theheight of a metropolitan skyscraper from the ground. There were actualmountain-crests only half a mile away and not much higher. Bordman wasacutely uncomfortable. He would get used to it, but----

 * * * * *

"Well?" he asked fretfully. "Chuka said you needed me here. What's thematter?"

Ralph Redfeather nodded very formally. Aletha was here, too, and two ofChuka's foremen--one did not look happy--and four of the Amerindsteel-workers. They grinned at Bordman. 

"I wanted you to see, " said Aletha's cousin, "before we threw on thecurrent. It doesn't look like that little grid could handle the sand ittook care of. But Lewanika wants to report. "

A dark man who worked under Chuka--and looked as if he belonged on solidground--said carefully:

"We cast the beams for the small landing grid, Mr. Bordman. We meltedthe 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 becausewe built it on the sand that had buried the big grid. We didn'tunderstand 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 workthe same as the big one when it was finished. And then we made the biggrid 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 theionosphere for power. No lack of power then! And we'd set it to heave upsand instead of ships. Not to heave it out into space, but to give it upto mile a second vertical velocity. Then we turned it on. "

"And we rode it down, that little grid, " said one of the remainingIndians, 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 sandswept air with it. It made a whirlwind, bringing more sand from outsidethe grid into its field. It was a whirlwind with fifteen megakilowattsof power to drive it. Some of the sand went twenty miles high. Then itmade a mushroom-head and the winds up yonder blew it to the west. Itcame down a long way off, Mr. Bordman. We've made a new dune-area tenmiles downwind. And the little grid sank as the sand went away fromaround it. We had to stop it three times, because it leaned. We had todig under parts of it to get it straight up again. But it went down intothe valley. "

Bordman turned up the power to his heat-suit motors. He feltuncomfortably warm. 

"In six days, " said Ralph, almost ceremonially, "it had uncovered halfthe original grid we'd built. Then we were able to modify that to heavesand and to let it tap the ionosphere. We were able to use a good manytimes the power the little grid could apply to sand-lifting! In two daysmore the landing grid was clear. The valley bottom was clean. We shiftedsome hundreds of millions of tons of sand by landing grid, and now it ispossible to land the _Warlock_, and receive her supplies, and thesolar-power furnace is already turning out pigs for her loading. Wewanted you to see what we have done. The colony is no longer in danger, and we shall have the grid completely finished for your inspectionbefore 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 countcoup for the members of our tribe and clan. Now----"

Then there was confusion. Aletha's cousin was saying syllables that didnot mean anything at all. The other Indians joined in at intervals, speaking gibberish. Aletha's eyes were shining and she looked incrediblypleased 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 intohis 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 thestiffest technical university in this quarter of the galaxy, wearer ofthree eagle-pinion feathers and clad in a pair of insulated sandals anda breechcloth--whipped out a small paint-pot and a brush from somewhereand began carefully to paint on a section of girder ready for the nexttier of steel. He painted a feather on the metal. 

"It's a coup, " he told Bordman over his shoulder. "Your coup. Placedwhere it was earned--up here. Aletha is authorized to certify it. Andthe head of the clan will add an eagle-feather to the headdress he wearsin council in the Big Tepee on Algonka, and--your clan-brothers will beproud!"

Then he straightened up and held out his hand. 

Chuka said benignly:

"Being civilized men, Mr. Bordman, we Africans do not go in foruncivilized feathers. But we . .. Ah . .. Rather approve of you, too. Andwe plan a corroboree at the colony after the _Warlock_ is down, whenthere will be some excellently practiced singing. There is . .. Ah . .. Asong, a sort of choral calypso, about this . .. Ah . .. Adventure you havebrought to so satisfying a conclusion. It is quite a good calypso. It'slikely to be popular on a good many planets. "

Bordman swallowed. He was acutely uncomfortable. He felt that he oughtto say something, and he did not know what. 

But just then there was a deep-toned humming in the air. It was avibrant tone, instinct with limitless power. It was theeighteen-hundred-foot landing grid, giving off that profoundly bass andvibrant, 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 | | +--------------------------------------------------------------+