He pushed a pile of junk out of the way for a clear view
of the outside.
"There's your answer," said Astro, pointing at the port.
"By the rings of Saturn, look at that!" cried Tom.
"Yeah," said Roger, "black as the fingernails of a Titan miner!"
"That's a sandstorm," Astro said finally. "It blows as long as a week
and can pile up sand for two hundred feet. Sometimes the velocity
reaches as much as a hundred and sixty miles an hour. Once, in the
south, we got caught in one, and it was so bad we had to blast off. And
it took all the power we had to do it!"
The three cadets stood transfixed as they gazed through the crystal port
at the oncoming storm. The tremendous black cloud rolled toward the
spaceship in huge folds that billowed upward and back in
three-thousand-foot waves. The roar and wail of the wind grew louder,
rising in pitch until it was a shrill scream.
"We'd better get down to the power deck," said Tom, "and take some
oxygen bottles along with us, just in case. Astro, bring the rest of the
Martian water and you grab several of those containers of food, Roger.
We might be holed in for a long time."
"Why go down to the power deck?" asked Roger.
"There's a huge hole in the upper part of the ship's hull. That sand
will come in here by the ton and there's nothing to stop it," Tom
answered Roger, but kept his eyes on the churning black cloud.
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