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There was a clanking noise outside the hulk which was the Project Engineer’s headquarters. Bordman couldn’t see clearly through the filtered ports. He reached over and opened a door. The brightness outside struck his eyes like a blow. He blinked them shut instantly and turned away. But he’d seen a glistening, caterwheel ground car stopping not far from the doorway.

He stood wiping tears from his light-dazzled eyes as footsteps sounded outside. Aletha’s cousin came in, followed by a huge man with remarkably dark skin. The dark man wore eyeglasses with a curiously thick, corklike nosepiece to insulate the necessary metal of the frame from his skin. It would blister if it touched bare flesh.

“This is Dr. Chuka,” said Redfeather pleasantly, “Mr. Bordman. Dr. Chuka’s the director of mining and mineralogy here.”

Bordman shook hands with the ebony-skinned man. He grinned, showing startlingly white teeth. Then he began to shiver.

“It’s like a freeze-box in here,” he said in a deep voice. “I’ll get a robe and be with you.”

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

“I could shiver myself,” he admitted “but Chuka’s really acclimated to Xosa. He was raised on Timbuk.”

Bordman said curtly:

“I’m sorry I collapsed on landing. It won’t happen again. I came here to do a degree-of-completion survey that should open the colony to normal commerce, let the colonists’ families move in, tourists, and so on. But I was landed by boat instead of normally, and I am told the colony is doomed. I would like an official statement of the degree of completion of the colony’s facilities and an explanation of the unusual points I have just mentioned.”

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

“I’d say,” he remarked humorously, in that astonishingly deep-toned voice of his, “sand got in our hair. And our colony. And the landing grid. There’s a lot of sand on Xosa. Wouldn’t you say that was the trouble?”

The Indian said with elaborate gravity:

“Of course wind had something to do with it.”

Bordman fumed.

“I think you know,” he said fretfully, “that as a senior Colonial Survey officer, I have authority to give any orders needed for my work. I give one now. I want to see the landing grid–if it is still standing. I take it that it didn’t fall down?”

Redfeather flushed beneath the bronze pigment of his skin. It would be hard to offend a steelman more than to suggest that his work did not stand up.

“I assure you,” he said politely, “that it did not fall down.”

“Your estimate of its degree of completion?”

“Eighty per cent,” said Redfeather formally.

“You’ve stopped work on it?”

“Work on it has been stopped,” agreed the Indian.

“Even though the colony can receive no more supplies until it is completed?”

“Just so,” said Redfeather without expression.

“Then I issue a formal order that I be taken to the landing-grid site immediately,” said Bordman angrily. “I want to see what sort of incompetence is responsible! Will you arrange it–at once?”

Redfeather said in a completely emotionless voice:

“You want to see the site of the landing grid. Very good. Immediately.”

He turned and walked out into the incredible, blinding sunshine. Bordman blinked at the momentary blast of light, and then began to pace up and down the office. He fumed. He was still ashamed of his collapse from the heat during the travel from the landed rocket-boat to the colony. Therefore he was touchy and irritable. But the order he had given was strictly justifiable.

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