So summer ended, and the dark blue sky was murked by angry haze. Vitrac, chief scientist, said, "You're not going out again, are you, Terry?"
The kid gave the real answer, "Let's go, Dad. I want to. Besides, Digger is homesick."
The next morning, when the equinoxial storm closed in, the Terrys had vanished.
Joe Dayton led the search party. He found nothing. Mars is small but still vast. Its total surface equals all the land on Earth. Since the first men had come, not one in a thousand of its square miles had been touched by human boots.
Wandering explorers found Frank Terry's mummy late that spring, in a deep part of Syrtis Major, with old ocean salt around it. When they brought it to Port Laribee it was not completely dried out. So Terry must have survived through the winter.
The boy must surely be dead, too. But stories drifted back to the Port—of holes found in the felted soil, and of a small, heavily-burdened figure that scampered away at the sight of a man.
The general opinion was that this was pure romancing, to intrigue the tourists who came out that year in their bright, excited crowds, charmed by the Red Planet yet sheltered from it, equipped from shops recommended by the most debonaire of space wanderers—if such existed. Many were eager to stay, girls among them, bright-faced, sure, with the thrill in their eyes and voices. Ah, yes—but how long would they have lasted in this too rich and rough a strangeness?
Joe Dayton shrugged, sad that his opinion had to be so mean. There were soberer arrivals, too. Relatives of Port Laribee staff-members, mostly. Willowby's wife. Doc Lorring's small daughter, Tillie, sent out for a visit. Among the tourists there were a few additional kids.
There was also the lost Frank Terry's elder brother, Dolph Terry, big, but prim beneath an easy smile. Also there was a Terry girl, Doran by name. She did not seem much like either of her brothers—the mystical wanderer, Frank Terry, nor the slightly stuffed-shirted Dolph. She was much younger than either of them, sun-browned, a bit puzzled at being on another world, not terribly pretty, but quick with good-humored shrugs and friendly chuckles whenever she could put aside her worry about her nephew.
Dayton had some belief in the tales from the wilderness. For he'd known young Will Terry. Besides, beneath the ineptness of kids, he recognized an adaptability beyond that of adults. So his work was cut out for him.