a notch in the mountain wall before them a strange, fan-shaped, frozen formation appeared. If such a thing had been credible, Bordman would have said that it was a flow of sand simulating a waterfall. And everywhere there was blinding brightness and the look and feel of blistering sunshine. But there was not 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 less homelike or attractive.”

Aletha laughed.

“My eyes see it differently.”

Which was true. It was accepted, nowadays, that humankind might be one species but was many races, and each saw the cosmos in its own fashion. On Kalmet III there was a dense, predominantly Asiatic population which terraced its mountainsides for agriculture and deftly mingled modern techniques with social customs not to be found on—say—Demeter I, where there were many red-tiled stucco towns and very many olive [13] groves. In the llano planets of the Equis cluster, Amerinds—Aletha’s kin—zestfully rode over plains dotted with the descendants of buffalo and antelope and cattle brought from ancient Earth. On the oases of Rustam IV there were date palms and riding camels and much argument about what should be substituted for the direction of Mecca at the times for prayer, while wheat fields spanned provinces on Canna I and highly civilized emigrants from the continent of Africa on Earth stored jungle gums and lustrous gems in the warehouses of their spaceport city of Timbuk.

[13]

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

Now, here, in the Warlock’s landing boat, the engineer snorted. A vehicle came around a cliff wall, clanking 

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