The tall tamped-earth wall of the Headquarters reserve area loomed ahead. Sector Headquarters had been established here when there were no other inhabitants. Seeds had been broadcast and trees planted while the survey buildings were under construction. Headquarters, in fact, had been built upon an uninhabited planet. But colonists followed in the wake of Survey personnel. Wives and children, and then storekeepers and agriculturists, and presently civilian technicians and ultimately even politicians arrived as the non-Service population grew. Now Sector Headquarters was resented because it occupied one fourth of the island. It kept too much of the planet's useful surface out of civilian use. And the island was now desperately overcrowded.
But it seemed also to be doomed.
As the bolster-truck moved silently toward Headquarters, a hundred-yard section of the wall collapsed. There was an upsurging of dust. There was a rumbling of falling, hardened wall. The truck's driver turned white. A civilian beside the road faced the wall and wrung his hands, and stood waiting to feel the ground under his feet begin to sweep smoothly toward the here-distant sea. A post held up a traffic signal some twenty yards from the gate. It leaned slowly. At a forty-five-degree tilt it checked and hung stationary. Fifty yards from the gate, a new crack appeared across the road.
But nothing more happened. Nothing. Yet one could not be sure that some critical point had not been passed, so that from now on there would be a gradual rise in the creeping of the soil toward the ocean.
Barnes caught his breath.
"That—makes one feel queer," he said unsteadily. "A ... shock like that wall falling could start everything off!"
Hardwick said nothing at all. It had occurred to him that there was no irrigation of the Survey area. He frowned very thoughtfully—even worriedly, as the truck went inside the Headquarters gate and rolled smoothly on over a winding road through definitely parklike surroundings.
It stopped before the building which was the Sector Chief's own headquarters in Headquarters. A large brown dog dozed peacefully on the plastic-tiled landing at the top of half a dozen steps. When Hardwick got out of the truck the dog got up with a leisurely air. When Hardwick ascended the steps, with Barnes following him, the dog came forward with a sort of stately courtesy to do the honors. Hardwick said:
"Nice dog, that."