Link mopped his forehead. Thistlethwaite said accusingly:

“But this ain’t where we shoulda landed! We shoulda stopped by that village! And even that ain’t the one I want!”

“This is where we did land,” said Link, “and lucky we made it! You don’t know how lucky!”

He went to a port to look out. The ship had landed in a sort of hollow, liberally sprinkled with boulders of various shapes and sizes. Sandy hillocks with sparse vegetation on their slopes appeared on every hand. Despite the ship’s upright position, Link could not see over the hills to a true horizon.

“I’ll go over to that village we saw comin’ down,” said Thistlethwaite importantly, “an’ arrange to send a message to my friends. Then we’ll get down to business. And there’s never been a business like this one before in all the time since us men stopped swappin’ arrowheads! You stay here an’ keep ship.”

He swung the ship’s one weapon, a stun gun, over his shoulder. It gave him a rakish air. He put on a hat.

“Yep. You keep ship till I come back!”

He went down the stairs. Link heard him go down all the levels until he came to the exit port in one of the ship’s landing fins. From the control room he saw Thistlethwaite stride grandly to the top of the nearest hill, look exhaustively from there, and then march away with an air of great and confident composure. He went out of sight beyond the hillcrest.

Link went down to the exit port himself. The air in the opening was fresh and markedly pleasant to breathe. He felt that it was about time that something interesting happened. This wasn’t it. Here was only commonplace landscape, commonplace sky, and commonplace tedium. He sat on the sill of the open exit port and waited without expectation for something interesting to happen.

Presently he heard tiny clickings. Two small animals, very much like pigs in size and appearance, came trotting hurriedly into view. Their hoofs had made the clicking sounds. They saw the ship and stopped short, staring at it. They didn’t look dangerous.