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."
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