"Alan, I want to go with you, but—"
"You heard your father. But nothing."
Fifteen minutes later, they were putting on insulined surface garments at the quartermaster supply depot near the great stone portal which separated Red Sands from the Martian desert.
The clerk said, "Going up to the warp-station?"
"No," Bennett Keifer told him.
"Yes," Alan said.
The clerk scratched his head, but saluted as they marched toward the stone portal. "Open it," Alan told him.
The portal slid away. The fierce Martian wind blasted them with swirling, choking sand. The intense cold cleared Alan's head. Five hundred yards across the ochre sand, they could see the black bulk of the warp-ship. The portal groaned and scraped shut behind them. You could see nothing but a bare escarpment of Martian granite.
"Haddix is tied up in the ship," Alan shouted over the shrieking wind. "We'll put him outside, then blast off."
Now the warp-ship loomed over them, balanced black and ugly on its tail. Alan worked the airlock mechanism with numb fingers. The lock swung in.