PAGE 14
Sand Doom
by
There had been incredible hardships, at first. There were heroic feats. There had been an attempt to ferry water supplies down from the pole by aircraft. It was not practical, even to build up a reserve of fluid. Winds carried sand particles here as on other worlds they carried moisture. Aircraft were abraded as they flew. The last working flier made a forced landing five hundred miles from the colony. A caterwheel expedition went out and brought the crew in. The caterwheel trucks were armored with silicone plastic, resistant to abrasion, but when they got back they had to be scrapped. There had been men lost in sudden sand-squalls, and heroic searches for them, and once or twice rescues. There had been cave-ins in the mines. There had been accidents. There had been magnificent feats of endurance and achievement.
Bordman went to the door of the hull which was Ralph Redfeather’s Project Engineer office. He opened it. He stepped outside.
It was like stepping into an oven. The sand was still hot from the sunshine just ended. The air was so utterly dry that Bordman instantly felt it sucking at the moisture of his nasal passages. In ten seconds his feet–clad in indoor footwear–were uncomfortably hot. In twenty the soles of his feet felt as if they were blistering. He would die of the heat at night, here! Perhaps he could endure the outside near dawn, but he raged a little. Here where Amerinds and Africans lived and throve, he could live unprotected for no more than an hour or two–and that at one special time of the planet’s rotation!
He went back in, ashamed of the discomfort of his feet and angrily letting them feel scorched rather than admit to it.
Aletha turned another page.
“Look, here!” said Bordman angrily. “No matter what you say, you’re going to go back on the Warlock before—-“
She raised her eyes.
“We’ll worry about that when the time comes. But I think not. I’d rather stay here.”
“For the present, perhaps,” snapped Bordman. “But before things get too bad you go back to the ship! They’ve rocket fuel enough for half a dozen landings of the landing boat. They can lift you out of here!”
Aletha shrugged.
“Why leave here to board a derelict? The Warlock‘s practically that. What’s your honest estimate of the time before a ship equipped to help us gets here?”
Bordman would not answer. He’d done some figuring. It had been a two-month journey from Trent–the nearest Survey base–to here. The Warlock had been expected to remain aground until the smelter it brought could load it with pig metal. Which could be as little as two weeks, but would surprise nobody if it was two months instead. So the ship would not be considered due back on Trent for four months. It would not be considered overdue for at least two more. It would be six months before anybody seriously wondered why it wasn’t back with its cargo. There’d be a wait for lifeboats to come in, should there have been a mishap in space. There’d eventually be a report of noncommunication to the Colony Survey headquarters on Canna III. But it would take three months for that report to be received, and six more for a confirmation–even if ships made the voyages exactly at the most favorable intervals–and then there should at least be a complaint from the colony. There were lifeboats aground on Xosa II, for emergency communication, and if a lifeboat didn’t bring news of a planetary crisis, no crisis would be considered to exist. Nobody could imagine a landing grid failing!
Maybe in a year somebody would think that maybe somebody ought to ask around about Xosa II. It would be much longer before somebody put a note on somebody else’s desk that would suggest that when, or if, a suitable ship passed near Xosa II, or if one should be available for the inquiry, it might be worth while to have the noncommunication from the planet looked into. Actually, to guess at three years before another ship arrived would be the most optimistic of estimates.