Words—only words. Yancey's mind was far away, searching the dust of the Desert Rouge for the beautiful quolla stones.
"You'll be paid three hundred credits a month and living expenses. I might add, Ritter, that the station you're getting is one of the most important in the entire chain."
Three hundred credits! And, with a little luck, Yancey thought, he could find quollas worth a hundred times as much.
"There'll be a patrol to escort you to the station and I think you'd better plan to leave at once." There was a small pause as the commandant regarded Yancey closely. "I hope," he said at last, "that neither of us is making a mistake, Ritter."
Yancey stood up, shook hands with the commandant, and the interview was ended.
Morrissey headed the patrol which escorted Yancey to his new post. Yancey took an almost immediate dislike to the broad-shouldered young space militiaman. There was about Morrissey that air of quiet positiveness which Yancey found impossible to bear.
Throughout the long and tiresome march from Athens to the humidi-hut this unreasoning resentment of Morrissey grew. The yielding, insubstantial dust underfoot, the eye-watering furnace glare in the sky, the desiccating heat that seemed to dry up the marrow in a man's bones—all this, through some inexplicable subconscious juggling, became Morrissey's fault.
Inside the comparative comfort of the plasti-shield, Yancey Ritter looked at the raw redness that stretched around, above and below him, and wondered what perverse fate had drawn him to this ultimate debacle here on the dust-clouded Desert Rouge. For the first time in his life Yancey knew the bowel-rending terror of utter desolation.
The spectre of thirst hovered in the orange and yellow dust clouds ahead. Crazed rocks, scarred and wind-broken, leered at him like blind prophets wordlessly screaming their dire predictions.