"O.K., then," said Tom, "it's settled. We'll move at night when it's
cool, and try to rest during the day when it's the hottest."
Roger looked up at the blazing white sphere in the pale-blue sky that
burned down relentlessly. "I figure we have about six hours before she
drops for the day," he said.
"Then let's go back inside the ship and get some rest," he said.
Without another word, the three cadets climbed back inside the ship and
made places for themselves amid the littered deck of the control room. A
hot wind blew out of the New Sahara through the open port like a breath
of fire. Stripped to their shorts, the three boys lay around the deck
unable to sleep, each thinking quietly about the task ahead, each
remembering stories of the early pioneers who first reached Mars. In the
mad rush for the uranium-yielding pitchblende, they had swarmed over the
deserts toward the dwarf mountains by the thousands. Greedy, thinking
only of the fortunes that could be torn from the rugged little
mountains, they had come unprepared for the heat of the Martian deserts
and nine out of ten had never returned.
Each boy thought, too, of the dangers they had just faced. This new
danger was different. This was something that couldn't be defeated with
an idea or a sudden lucky break. This danger was ever present--a fight
against nature, man against the elements on an alien planet.
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