Down to a Sunless Sea

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When Brant saw the sooty smudge on the horizon, he reined in his loper with a muttered curse and sat the saddle, staring with narrowed eyes.

Dust storms are very rare on Mars, where the bitter-cold air is too thin to maintain dust particles for long. But air, however thin, remains air and has its currents.

And that dark, bruise-purple blur on the skyline was a dust storm, all right.

He growled another curse, and felt despair gnaw at his heart. He was a big, hard man with a dark, strong face and eyes as fiery black as Satan’s heart. Not a man to have very often known fear.

Well, he knew it now… .

The thick, thick dust that carpets the dead sea bottoms of Mars is fine as talcum. It seeps into the pores of your skin, it leaks through solid plastic, even through a thermal suit of nioflex. There is no way to keep it out of your eyes, your lungs, your guts. And that is under ordinary conditions … but when ten thousand tons of superfine particles come howling down on you, whipping and whirling on every side… .

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