the goggles
again and made his way heavily to the waiting, now-shaded ground car. He
noted that there were other changes beside the sunshade. The cover-deck
of the cargo space was gone, and there were cylindrical riding seats
like saddles in the back. The odd lower shields reached out sidewise
from the body, barely above the caterwheels. He could not make out their
purpose and irritably failed to ask.

"All ready," said Redfeather coldly. "Dr. Chuka's coming with us. If
you'll get in here, please----"

Bordman climbed awkwardly into the boxlike back of the car. He bestrode
one of the cylindrical arrangements. With a saddle on it, it would
undoubtedly have been a comfortable way to cover impossibly bad terrain
in a mechanical carrier. He waited. About him there were the squatty
hulls of the space-barges which had been towed here by a colony ship,
each one once equipped with rockets for landing. Emptied of their
cargoes, they had been huddled together into the three separate,
adjoining communities. There were separate living quarters and mess
halls and recreation rooms for each, and any colonist lived in the
community of his choice and shifted at pleasure, or visited, or remained
solitary. For mental health a man has to be assured of his free will,
and over-regimentation is deadly in any society. With men
psychologically suited to colonize, it is fatal.

Above--but at a distance, now--there was a monstrous scarp of mountains,
colored in glaring and unnatural tints. Immediately about there was raw
rock. But it was peculiarly smooth, as if sand grains had rubbed over it
for uncountable aeons and carefully worn away every trace of unevenness.
Half a mile to the left, dunes began and went away to the horizon. The
nearer ones were small, but they gained in size with distance from the
mountains--which evidently affected the surface-winds hereabouts--and
the edge of seeing was visibly not a straight line. The dunes yonder
must be gigantic. But of course on a world the size of ancient Earth,
and which was waterless save for snow-patches at its poles, the size to
which sand dunes could grow had no limit. The surface of Xosa II was a
sea of sand, on which islands and small continents of wind-swept rock
were merely minor features.

Dr. Chuka adjusted a small metal object in his hand. It had a tube
dangling from it. He climbed into the cargo space and fastened it to one
of the two tanks previously loaded.

"For you," he told Bo