ere
ineffective.

The crew of the _Warlock_ was bored. The worst of the boredom was that
it promised to last without limit. They had food and water and physical
comfort, but they were exactly in the situation of men sentenced to
prison for an unknown but enormous length of time. There was no escape.
There could be no alleviation. The prospect invited frenzy by
anticipation.

A fist fight broke out in the crew's quarters within two hours after the
_Warlock_ had established its orbit--as a first reaction to their
catastrophe. The skipper went through the ship and painstakingly
confiscated every weapon. He locked them up. He, himself, already felt
the nagging effect of jangling nerves. There was nothing to do. He
didn't know when there would ever be anything to do. It was a condition
to produce hysteria.

* * * * *

There was night. Outside and above the colony there were uncountable
myriads of stars. They were not the stars of Earth, of course, but
Bordman had never been on Earth. He was used to unfamiliar
constellations. He stared out a port at the sky, and noted that there
were no moons. He remembered, when he thought, that Xosa II had no
moons. There was a rustling of paper behind him. Aletha Redfeather
turned a page in a loose-leaf volume and painstakingly made a note. The
wall behind her held many more such books. From them could be extracted
the detailed history of every bit of work that had been done by the
colony-preparation crews. Separate, tersely-phrased items could be
assembled to make a record of individual men.

There had been incredible hardships, at first. There were heroic feats.
There had been an attempt to ferry water supplies down from the pole by
aircraft. It was not practical, even to build up a reserve of fluid.
Winds carried sand particles here as on other worlds they carried
moisture. Aircraft were abraded as they flew. The last working flier
made a forced landing five hundred miles from the colony. A caterwheel
expedition went out and brought the crew in. The caterwheel trucks were
armored with silicone plastic, resistant to abrasion, but when they got
back they had to be scrapped. There had been men lost in sudden
sand-squalls, and heroic searches for them, and once or twice rescues.
There had been cave-ins in the mines. There had been accidents. There
had been magnificent feats of endurance and achievement.

Bordman went to the door of the hull which was R