slanted toward them in a screaming dive. . . .
When the nose of his ship made contact with a mooring socket, he set all instruments at zero. He climbed to his feet and stretched wearily. Then he walked to the sliding side door of the ship, released the air lock and stepped out onto the ramp that flanked the mooring tower.
From this position, some two hundred feet above the ground, he had his first look at the terrain of Mars. Great gray wastelands spread endlessly in all four directions and the only break in this monotony was a low ridge of hills on the far-distant eastern horizon.
Ward shivered slightly. He hadn't been prepared for anything this depressing. The small group of squat buildings beneath him looked like tiny objects adrift in a vast, terrible gray sea.
A man appeared at the door of the central building and Ward felt an idiotic sensation of relief at the sight of a human, moving figure in that dead, silent, gray terrain.
The man waved to Ward and walked from the doorway toward the base of the mooring tower.
Ward descended to the ground in the small cage of the tower elevator. He stepped out onto the soft, flaky soil of Mars as the man he had seen from above came up to the tower.
"Lieutenant Harrison reporting for duty, sir," he said. He saluted and noticed with a certain satisfaction the other's embarassment at this military recognition which he didn't deserve.
"My name is Halliday," the man said, after a short awkward pause. He extended his hand. "I'm certainly glad to have you here, Lieutenant."
As Ward shook hands, he appraised the man carefully, and found nothing in his examination to change his previously acquired opinion.
Thomas Halliday was small and stooped, with sallow features and nervously shifting eyes, which looked startlingly large behind thick strong glasses. His hair was thin and faded brown in color. There was a peculiar tight look about his mouth and jaw, as if he were in a continual state of faint exasperation.
This, thought Ward, was the man who had been holding up the development of this area for three years. And, looking at him, it was easy to see why.
Ward had his bag in his hand. Halliday, noticing it, asked, "Did you bring any arms with you?"
Ward patted the raytube in the smart military holster at his hip.
"Just this," he said. He added drily, "Expecting trouble?"
"No," Halliday answered. His eyes shifted from Ward's and swept about in a long inspection of the vast, sprawling, deserted terrain that stretched away on all four sides like a boundless ocean.
"But," he added, "it's when you're not expecting trouble that you're most likely to run into it."
Ward smiled to himself as he followed Halliday's thin stooped figure to the main building, a squat solid structure of heavy duralloy steel, with only one door and no windows at all.
The man was obviously a neurotic mass of nerves, or else he was indulging in a bit of melodrama to impress his new assistant.
Halliday stepped aside at the door and Ward preceded him into the hot, sparsely furnished room. Halliday followed him, closing the door behind him and setting the mechanism of a powerful automatic lock before turning to Ward with an apologetic little smile.
