Hendley rose. Glancing down once more at the fat passenger who had been so angered by the white uniform, he thought: It's just as well you don't know the truth. Envy grew vigorously enough without nourishment, as a weed forced its way through the smallest crack in solid pavement.
He turned abruptly and made his way along the aisle to the narrow door at the front of the cabin.
Just before the outer panel swung open Hendley donned the sunglasses he had been issued. Even this protection did not keep his eyes from aching as the full glare of sunlight struck them. He stepped from the copter onto a concrete apron. The exit panel instantly closed behind him, and a moment later the copter rose swiftly and quietly, blasting Hendley with a column of hot air.
He shut his eyes against the sun's glare and felt its weight for a long moment after the copter's funnel of air had spun away. When he opened his eyes again, squinting, he surveyed a desolate, empty world. A broad expanse of concrete—cracked, broken, uneven, erratically patched—stretched to the fringe of a brown desert, which rose in smooth shallow steps to a ring of brown mountains hazy in the distance. In all that wilderness there was neither sight nor sound of life—nothing but the deteriorating white concrete of the landing strip, the brown earth, the aching sunlight.
Panic closed on him. He whirled. The sight of the familiar massive wall of a Freeman Camp brought sharp relief. The landing was outside the wall, of course, to prevent any unauthorized glimpse of what lay beyond that barrier. But one thing about the wall was puzzling. Like the concrete landing field, it was visibly crumbling and neglected.
The broad sweep of the wall was broken by a single gate. A lone attendant in a beige uniform sat in a small glass-walled cubicle beside the narrow gate. He glanced up without interest as Hendley approached.
"I'm a visitor," Hendley said. "This is my card."
The attendant gave the card a cursory inspection, consulted a list and nodded perfunctorily. As he made a notation on the list, Hendley was moved to break the heavy silence.
"Your landing strip isn't in very good shape, is it?" he commented lightly.