"Phoooeeeey!" said Tom, spitting out the sand that had filtered into his mouth. "I never want to do that again!" He dusted himself off and flashed his emergency light around the deck. "Look at that!" he said in amazement. "If we'd kept on digging, we'd have been trapped down there for—" he paused and looked at Astro who was grinning—"a long, long time!" He held the light on the sand that was flowing out of the open hatch of the passenger lounge.
"Come on," urged Astro. "Let's get Roger out of there!"
They called to Roger through the hose and told him to bring two more emergency lights and the remainder of the Martian water. Three minutes later the Polaris unit was together again.
Standing on the deck beside his two unit-mates, Roger brushed himself off and smiled. "Well," he said, "looks like we made it!"
"Yeah," said Tom, "but take a look at this!" He walked across the jet-boat deck to the nearest window port. What should have been a clear view of the desert was a mass of solidly packed sand.
"Oh, no!" cried Roger. "Don't tell me we have to go through that again?"
"I don't think it'll be so bad this time," said Astro.
"Why not?" asked Tom.
"The sand is banked the heaviest on the port side of the ship. And the window ports on the starboard side of the control deck were pretty high off the ground."
"Well, let's not just stand here and talk about it," said Roger. "Let's take a look!" He turned and walked through the jet-boat deck.