The Mirzim landed on an arid tableland swept by bitter winds. Quorn stayed to maintain his tense vigil at the radar screens but the rest of them went out, glad of solid ground if only for a few minutes.
The wind-driven dust tore at Trehearne, cutting into his flesh like tiny cold daggers. The sky was dusky at midday but there were few stars. Even at night there would be few stars here. The sullen glare of Thuvis washed the dusty desert world with red and where a deep ravine cleft the tableland the shadows clung like clotted blood. Trehearne could not think of a place that more resembled hell.
Edri had hastened to the lip of the ravine. Trehearne followed and looked down. Below the steep sides, below the ugly screes, was a tangle of pallid vegetation, stunted trees and leprous shrubbery, clustered around warm springs that smoked like little fumaroles in the chill air. There was a settlement here, three or four small plastic structures surrounded by a wall, and outside the wall a pathetic expanse of tilled land.
"They're coming!" cried Edri. "They saw the ship...."
A narrow path led steeply up from the ravine. Men were already toiling along it. Trehearne counted them. Eight, ten, eleven—eleven men, the total population of this world of ultimate exile.
Edri was shouting. His voice echoed back and forth in the ravine with a hollow booming sound. Other shouts answered him. The men on the path began to run. They slipped and staggered in their haste, clawing their way upward. Trehearne could see their white faces strained toward him.
He watched them come—gaunt wind-bitten hopeless men with the greyness of living death upon them, striving up from that deep red-lit prison, answering the call of Edri's voice. He saw their eyes, the eyes of men called back suddenly from that terrible numbing of the mind that is worse than clean destruction.
Edri threw his arms around the man who came first over the rim. He had not been there as long as the others and the stamp was not so deep on him. He turned and shouted at his mates to hurry. His beard and his unkempt hair blew in the wind and his voice was wild.
Edri cried to him, "No time for talk now, Arrin! Is that all of you?"
It was. The line of bearded scarecrows hastened toward the Mirzim. Ready hands helped them in.