Frowning, I turned to look at him as I drove. Gerhardt had always been an enigma: a small scrunchy guy with untidy brown hair flapping in his eyes, eyes that were set a little too close together. He had a degree from the University of Kansas and had put in some time on their field staff with distinction, or so his references said.
I said, "What the hell do you mean?"
"I don't trust Mattern. He hates us."
"He doesn't. Mattern's no villain—just a fellow who wants to do his job and go home. But what do you mean, the ship not being there?"
"He'll blast off without us. You see the way he sent us all out into the desert, and kept his own men back. I tell you, he'll strand us here!"
I snorted. "Don't be a paranoid. Mattern won't do anything of the sort."
"He thinks we're dead weight on the expedition," Gerhardt insisted. "What better way to get rid of us?"
The halftrack breasted a hump in the desert. I kept wishing a vulture would squeal somewhere, but there was not even that. Life had left this world ages ago. I said, "Mattern doesn't have much use for us, sure. But would he blast off and leave three perfectly good halftracks behind? Would he?"
It was a good point. Gerhardt grunted agreement after a while. Mattern would never toss equipment away, though he might not have such scruples about five surplus archaeologists.
We rode along silently for a while longer. By now we had covered twenty miles through this utterly barren land. As far as I could see, we might just as well have stayed at the ship. At least there we had a surface lie of building foundations.