The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sand Doom, by William Fitzgerald Jenkins

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Title: Sand Doom

Author: William Fitzgerald Jenkins

Release Date: August 31, 2007 [EBook #22467]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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[Illustration: Cover Page]

[Illustration]
SAND DOOM

BY MURRAY LEINSTER

Illustrated by Freas

+--------------------------------------------------------------+
| _The problem was as neat a circle as one could ask for; |
| without repair parts, they couldn't bring in the ship that |
| carried the repair parts!_ |
+--------------------------------------------------------------+

Bordman knew there was something wrong when the throbbing, acutely
uncomfortable vibration of rocket blasts shook the ship. Rockets were
strictly emergency devices, these days, so when they were used there was
obviously an emergency.

He sat still. He had been reading, in the passenger lounge of the
_Warlock_--a very small lounge indeed--but as a senior Colonial Survey
officer he was well-traveled enough to know when things did not go
right. He looked up from the bookscreen, waiting. Nobody came to explain
the eccentricity of a spaceship using rockets. It would have been
immediate, on a regular liner, but the _Warlock_ was practically a
tramp. This trip it carried just two passengers. Passenger service was
not yet authorized to the planet ahead, and would not be until Bordman
had made the report he was on his way to compile. At the moment, though,
the rockets blasted, and stopped, and blasted again. There was something
definitely wrong.

The _Warlock's_ other passenger came out of her cabin. She looked
surprised. She was Aletha Redfeather, an unusually lovely Amerind.
It was extraordinary that a girl could be so self-sufficient on a
tedious space-voyage, and Bordman approved of her. She was making the
journey to Xosa II as a representative of the Amerind Historical
Society, but she'd brought her own bookreels and so