moonlight, glinted like the eyes of a hunting cat. Tuck was getting his legs unwound from the ridiculous robe he wore, stumbling toward the moaning Smith. What was it, I wondered, that made the two of them such pals? Not homosexuality, for that would have been apparent in the close confines of the space trip out from Earth; there must be within them some sort o spiritual need that reached out and touched the other. Certainly Smith would be glad of someone to look after him and Tuck might well regard the blind man and his voice in the head as a good sort of investment, but their friendship must be something more than that. Two fumbling incompetents, perhaps, who had found in each other’s weaknesses a common bond of compassion and of understanding.
The desert was almost as bright as day and, looking at the sky, I saw it was not the moon alone that accounted for the brightness. The entire vault of sky was ablaze with stars, more stars and bigger stars and brighter than I had ever seen before. The stars had not been apparent in the quick glance we had gotten of this place before the hobbies bucked us into it, but now they were-stars that seemed so close it seemed a man could reach up his hand and pick them, like the apples off a tree.
Sara was on her feet by now, still grasping her rifle, carrying it at port arms across her body.
“I managed to keep the muzzle up,” she told me.
“Well, hurrah for you,” I said.
“That’s the first rule, always,” she told me. “Keep the uzzle up so it doesn’t clog. If I hadn’t, the barrel would be full of sand.”
George still was wailing and now his wailing took the form of words “What happened, Tuck?” he screamed “Where are e? What happened to my friend? He has gone away. I don’t hear him anymore.”
“For the love of Christ,” I said to Tuck, disgusted, “get him on his feet and dust him off and wipe his nose and tell him what has happened.”
“I can’t explain,” growled Tuck, “until someone tells me what is going on.”
“I can tell you that,” I said. “We got took. We’ve been had, my friend.”
“They’ll come back,” howled George. “They’ll come back or us. They won’t leave us here.”
“No, of course they won’t,” said Tuck, hauling him to his feet. “They’ll come back when the sun is up.”
“The sun ain’t up now, Tuck?”
“No,” said Tuck. “The moon. And a-lot of stars.”
And I was stuck with this, I thought. Heaved into a place where I had no idea where I was and loaded down with a couple of nincompoops and a white Diana who could only think about how she had kept he muzzle up.
I took a look around. We had been dumped on the lower slope of a dune and on either side of us the dunes heaved up to meet the night-time sky. The sky itself was empty of everything but the moon and stars. There was not a cloud in sight. And the land was empty of anything but sand. There were no trees or bushes, not a blade of vegetation. There was a slight chill in the air, but that, I figured, would be dissipated as soon as the sun came up. More than likely we had a long, hot day ahead and we hadn’t any water.
Long furrows in the sand showed where our bodies had plowed through it, pushing up little mounds of sand ahead of us. We had been thrown from the direction of the other dune, and knowing exactly from where we had been thrown, it occurred to me, might have some importance. I walked out a ways and with the butt of my gun drew a long line in the sand and made some rough arrows pointing from it.
Sara watched me closely. “You think we can get back?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t bet on it,” I told her, shortly.
“There was a doorway of some sort,” she said, “and the hobbies bucked us through it and when we landed here there wasn’t any doorway.”
“They had us pegged,” I said, “from the minute we set down. They gave us the business, from the very start. We never had a prayer.”
“But we are here,” she said, “and we have to start to think how we can get out.”
“If you can keep an eye on those two clowns,” I said, “and see they cause no trouble, I’ll go out for a look.”
She regarded me gravely. “Have you anything in mind, captain? Anything in particular?”
I shook my head. “Just a look around. There could be a chance I might stumble on some water. We’ll need water badly before the day is over.” “But if you lost your way...”
“I’ll have my tracks to follow,” I told her, “if a wind doesn’t come up suddenly and wipe them out. If anything goes wrong, I’ll fire a beam up into the sky and you loose off a shot or two to guide me back.”
“You don’t think the hobbies will come back to get us?”
“Do you think so?”
“I suppose not,” she said. “But what’s the point of it? What did they gain by it? Our luggage couldn’t be worth that much to them.”
“They got rid of us,” I said.
“But they guided us in. If it hadn’t been for that beam...” “There was the ship,” I said. “It could have been the ship that they were after. They had a lot of ships out on the field. They must have lured a lot of other people.”
“And all of them on this planet? Or on other planets?”
“Could be,” I said. “Our job right now is to see if there’s any place better than this desert we can go.. We haven’t any food and we have no water.”
I settled the strap of my rifle on my shoulder and started to plod up the dune.
“Anything else I can do?’ asked Sara.
