* * *

Steve turned the little turbo-jet engine over, then on impulse ran back
to the old man and gave him his canteen, turning away before it could be
refused and striding quickly back to the unicopter and getting himself
airborne without looking at the deserted village or the old man again.

The old man's voice called after him: "Tell the people ... hurry ...
Kumaji looking for them to kill ... desert wind ought to wipe out their
trail ... but hurry...."

The voice faded into the faint rushing sound of the hot desert wind.
Steve gazed down on bare sun-blasted rock, on rippled dunes, on
hate-haze. He circled wider and wider, seeking his people.

Hours later he spotted the caravan in the immensity of sand and
wasteland. He brought the unicopter down quickly, with a rush of air and
a whine of turbojets. He alighted in the sand in front of the
slow-moving column. It was like something out of Earth's Middle
East--and Middle Ages. They had even imported camels for their life here
on the Sirian desert, deciding the Earth camel was a better beast of
burden than anything the Sirius II wastelands had to offer. They walked
beside the great-humped beasts of burden, the animals piled high with
the swaying baggage of their belongings. They moved through the sands
with agonizing slowness. Already, after only one day's travel, Steve
could see that some of the people were spent and exhausted and had to
ride on camelback. They had gone perhaps fifteen miles, with almost five
hundred to go across searing desert, the Kumaji seeking them....

"Hullo!" Steve shouted, and a man armed with an atorifle came striding
clumsily through the sand toward him. "Cantwell's the name," Steve said.
"I'm one of you."

Bleak hostility in his face, the man approached. "Cantwell. Yeah, I
remember you. Colony wasn't good enough for young Steve Cantwell. Oh,
no. Had to go off to Earth to get himself educated. What are you doing
here now on that fancy aircraft of yours, coming to crow at our wake?"

The bitterness surprised Steve. He recognized the man now as Tobias
Whiting, who had been the Colony's most successful man when Steve was a
boy. Except for his bitterness and for the bleak self-pity and defeat in
his eyes, the years had been good to Tobias Whiting. He was probably in
his mid-forties now, twenty years Steve's senior, but he was
well-muscled, his flesh was solid, his step bold and strong. He was a
big muscular man with a cragg