"Dust," Mr. Tucker said. "Dust ... dust ... more dust. Soon the dust will be over everything. When the wind is gone, it will be there to hold our footprints."
Inside the air-conditioned scout, the men shivered.
"How did you come to find them?" Mr. Ryan asked.
"I saw the constructions from the photos, sir. This had been missed by the mapping party. It's easy enough to see why when you see the pictures."
"This the only one?"
"Yes, sir."
"How can you be sure of that, Captain Meford? It's a large planet."
"I had one of the machines scan the remaining maps for geometrical patterns, sir."
"Isn't that done routinely?" Mr. Tucker asked rather sharply.
"Yes, sir. But you see, we've always expected that if we were ever going to encounter intelligent life on a planet, it would be rather widespread. Accordingly—and this is the routine procedure, sir, used, as far as I know, by all contact parties—we ran through a statistically significant sample of the terrain. There was nothing on Miracastle out of the ordinary. There was the typical, low-order vegetable matter, about what we always find. It was a very typical planet, sir."