s_ landing boat, the engineer snorted. A
vehicle came around a cliff wall, clanking its way on those eccentric
caterwheels that new-founded colonies find so useful. The vehicle
glittered. It crawled over tumbled boulders, and flowed over fallen
scree. It came briskly toward them. The engineer snorted again.

"That's my cousin Ralph!" said Aletha in pleased surprise.

Bordman blinked and looked again. He did not quite believe his eyes. But
they told the truth. The figure controlling the ground car was
Indian--Amerind--wearing a breechcloth and thick-soled sandals and three
streamlined feathers in a band about his head. Moreover, he did not ride
in a seat. He sat astride a semi-cylindrical part of the ground car,
over which a gaily-colored blanket had been thrown.

[Illustration]

The ship's engineer rumbled disgustedly. But then Bordman saw how sane
this method of riding was--here. The ground vehicle lurched and swayed
and rolled and pitched and tossed as it came over the uneven ground. To
sit in anything like a chair would have been foolish. A back rest would
throw one forward in a frontward lurch, and give no support in case of a
backward one. A sidewise tilt would tend to throw one out. Riding a
ground car as if in a saddle was sense!

But Bordman was not so sure about the costume. The engineer opened the
port and spoke hostilely out of it:

"D'you know there's a lady in this thing?"

The young Indian grinned. He waved his hand to Aletha, who pressed her
nose against a viewport. And just then Bordman did understand the
costume or lack of it. Air came in the open exit port. It was hot and
desiccated. It was furnace-like!

"How, 'Letha," called the rider on the caterwheel steed. "Either dress
for the climate or put on a heat-suit before you come out of there!"

Aletha chuckled. Bordman heard a stirring behind him. Then Aletha
climbed to the exit port and swung out. Bordman heard a dour muttering
from the engineer. Then he saw her greeting her cousin. She had slipped
out of the conventionalized Amerind outfit to which Bordman was
accustomed. Now she was clad as Anglo-Saxon girls dressed for beaches on
the cool-temperature planets.

For a moment Bordman thought of sunstroke, with his own eyes dazzled by
the still-partly-filtered sunlight. But Aletha's Amerind coloring was
perfectly suited to sunshine even of this intensity. Wind blowing upon
her body would cool her skin. Her thick, straight black hair was at
l