Thomas Halliday was small and stooped, with sallow features and nervously shifting eyes, which looked startlingly large behind thick strong glasses. His hair was thin and faded brown in color. There was a peculiar tight look about his mouth and jaw, as if he were in a continual state of faint exasperation.
This, thought Ward, was the man who had been holding up the development of this area for three years. And, looking at him, it was easy to see why.
Ward had his bag in his hand. Halliday, noticing it, asked, "Did you bring any arms with you?"
Ward patted the raytube in the smart military holster at his hip.
"Just this," he said. He added drily, "Expecting trouble?"
"No," Halliday answered. His eyes shifted from Ward's and swept about in a long inspection of the vast, sprawling, deserted terrain that stretched away on all four sides like a boundless ocean.
"But," he added, "it's when you're not expecting trouble that you're most likely to run into it."
Ward smiled to himself as he followed Halliday's thin stooped figure to the main building, a squat solid structure of heavy duralloy steel, with only one door and no windows at all.
The man was obviously a neurotic mass of nerves, or else he was indulging in a bit of melodrama to impress his new assistant.