Planet of Sand

by Murray Leinster

Then night fell. The winds died down from hurricane intensity to no more than gale force. Then to mere frantic gusts. And then—the sun had set on the farther side of the huge structure to which he had tied himself—then there was a period when a fine whitish mist seemed to obscure all the stars, and it gradually faded, and he realized that it was particles of so fine a dust that it hung in the air long after the heavier stuff had settled.

He released himself from the rope about the pillar. He stood, a tiny figure, beside the gargantuan columns of black metal which rose toward the stars. The stars themselves shone down brightly, brittlely, through utterly clear air. There were no traces of cloud formation following the storm of the day.

It was obvious that this was actually the normal weather of this planet. By day, horrific winds and hurricanes. By night, a vast stillness. And the small size and indistinctness of the icecap he had seen was assurance that there was nowhere on the planet any sizeable body of water to moderate the weather. And with such storms, inhabitants were unthinkable. Life of any sort was out of the question. But if there was anything certain in the cosmos, it was that the structure at whose feet he stood was artificial!

He flicked on his suit-radio. Static only. Sand particles in dry air, clashing against each other, would develop charges to produce just the monstrous hissing sounds his earphones gave off. He flicked off the radio and opened his face-plate. Cold dry air filled his lungs.

There were no inhabitants. There could not be any. But there was this colossal artifact of unguessable purpose. There was no life on this planet, but early during today's storm—and he suspected at other times when he could neither see nor hear—huge areas of the roof-plates had turned together to dump down their accumulated loads of sand. As he breathed in the first breaths of cold air, he heard a shrill outcry and a roaring somewhere within the forest of pillars. At a guess, it was another dumping of sand from the roof. It stopped. Another roaring, somewhere else. Yet another. Section by section, area by area, the sand that had piled on the roof at the top of the iron columns was dumped down between the columns' bases.

Stan flicked on the tiny instrument lights and looked at the motor of the space skid. The needle was against the pin at zero. He considered, and shrugged. Rob Torren would come presently to fight him to the death. But it would take the Stallifer ten days or longer to reach Earth, then three or four days for the microscopic examination of every part of the vast ship in a grim search for him.

Then there'd be an inquiry. It might last a week or two weeks or longer. The findings would be given after deliberation which might produce still another delay of a week or even a month.

Rob Torren would not be free to leave Earth before then. And then it would take him days to get hold of a space yacht and—because a yacht would be slower than the Stallifer—two weeks or so to get back here. Three months in all, perhaps. Stan's food wouldn't last that long. His water supply wouldn't last nearly as long as that.

If he could get up to the icecap there would be water, and on the edge of the ice he could plant some of the painstakingly developed artificial plants whose seeds were part of every abandon-ship kit. They could live and produce food under almost any set of planetary conditions. But he couldn't reach the polar cap without power the skid didn't have.

He straddled the little device. He pointed it upward. He rose sluggishly. The absurd little vehicle wabbled crazily. Up, and up, and up toward the uncaring stars. The high thin columns of steel seemed to keep pace with him. The roof of this preposterous shed loomed slowly nearer, but the power of the skid was almost gone. He was ten feet below the crest when diminishing power no longer gave thrust enough to rise. He would hover here for seconds, and then drift back down again to the sand—for good.