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.

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

[18]

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.

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