"We have legs," the girl said eagerly. "Let's try to make the car."
"We wouldn't have 'em, if we jumped out of this hole and started running. The little foxes have sharp teeth."
"Oh." Her voice dropped as the color faded from her eyes. "Then what are we going to do?"
"Stay here and hope they send out another desert car from the ship looking for us. If we don't return in a reasonable time, they may become curious about us."
"And if they don't come?"
"We'll try to out-fox the foxes."
"If we had a radio—"
"We do, but it's in our buggy. If we were there, we wouldn't need a radio. The dur-steel body of the car would stop the beam from that needle gun. How the hell does it happen that wild tribesmen, with no science and no industry, living here in a desert, have a weapon like that needle ray gun?"
"When they built their city there, they weren't desert tribesmen," the girl explained. "They were going somewhere, then, and they had science and at least light industry, and skilled workers. When they came back to the desert, they left everything behind them except their weapons. A primitive will always choose a weapon over anything else. He will value it as he values his life, because that is what it is."
"Why did they come back to a desert?"