The flat, wide-tracked vehicle swerved in a tight arc, throwing up low ruby-colored clouds on either side. Its engines throbbed a new note of power, and it scuttled in a straight line across the desert floor like a fleck of shiny metal drawn by an unseen magnet. Behind it rose a thinning monument of green-black smoke, and between its tracks was a wavering line of indentations in the sand already half-obliterated by the weight of their own shallow walls. But they became deeper as the vehicle raced ahead; and then at length they ended, and the vehicle halted.
There was a mound of sand that the winds, in their caprice, would not have made alone, for they sculptured in a freer symmetry. And the child-like figures seemed to realize that at once.
With quick precision they levelled the mound and found Johnny Love. They took him into their vehicle, and deftly matched and replenished the waning gas mixture in the cylindrical tanks on his back.
Then they drove away with him.
"Ferris?"
"Ferris was your astrogeologer-navigator. He died when you crashed."
"Harrison ... Janes?"
"Harrison and Janes are not due for nine more days. But you are in no danger."
There was darkness and warmth; his throat was dry and it burned. It was hard to talk, and Ferris was dead. Harrison and Janes were not due for nine more days. Somebody said so. Nine more days and then everything would be—