It was a stronger wind than ever blew on the world, even during the winter, when the people had to stay inside and wish that Earth tradition might be broken and good weather be had the year around.
"We'd better get back to the ship," Elias said.
They stopped talking and looked at him, and he looked down at his hands, embarrassed. "They'll be worried about us at home."
"No, they won't," Max said. Then he saw the thin, blue-veined hands trembling and the quiver not quite controlled in the wrinkled neck. "Though perhaps we should start back...."
Trina let out her breath in relief. To be back in the ship, she thought, with the needle and its forgetfulness, away from the noise and the crowd and the nervousness brought on by the rising wind.
It would be better, of course, when they had their place in the country. There it would be warm and homelike and quiet, with the farm animals near by, and the weather shut out, boarded out and forgotten, the way it was in winter on the world.
"You're coming with us?" Captain Bernard was saying.
"Yes, we're coming." Half a dozen of the men stood up and began pulling on their long, awkward coats.
"It'll be good to get back in space again," MacGregor said. "For a while." He smiled. "But I'm too old for a spaceman's life now."
"And I'm too old even for this," Elias said apologetically. "If we'd found this planet the other time...." He sighed and shook his head and looked out the window at the shadows that were people, bent forward, walking into the wind. He sighed again. "I don't know. I just don't know."