Their solar powered, air cushion hover-lorries threw up their clouds of dust and sand to right and left, but they made good time over the erg. A good hovercraft driver could do much to even out a rolling landscape, changing his altitude from a few inches here to as much as twenty-five feet there, given, of course, enough power in his solar batteries, although that was little problem in this area where clouds were sometimes not seen for years on end.

This was back of beyond, the wasteland of earth. Only the interior of the Arabian peninsula and the Gobi could compete and, of course, even the Gobi was beginning to be tamed under the afforestation efforts of the teeming multitudes of China who had suffered its disastrous storms down through the millennia.

Omar checked and checked again with the instrument on his wrist, asking and answering, his voice worried.

Finally they pulled up beside a larger than usual wadi and Omar ben Crawf stared thoughtfully out over it. The one they had named Abrahim el Bakr stood beside him and the others slightly to the rear.

Abrahim el Bakr nodded, for once his face unsmiling. “Those cats’ll come down here,” he said. “Nothing else would make sense, not even to an Egyptian.”

“I think you’re right,” Omar growled. He said over his shoulder, “Bey, get the trucks out of sight, over that dune. Elmer, you and Kenny set the gun up over there. Solid slugs, and try to avoid their cargo. We don’t want to set off a Fourth of July here. Bey, when you’re finished with the trucks, take that Tommy-Noiseless of yours and flank them from over behind those rocks. Take a couple of clips extra, for good luck—you won’t need them, though.”

“How many are there supposed to be?” Abrahim el Bakr asked, his voice empty of humor now.

“Eight half-tracks, two armed jeeps, or land-rovers, one or the other. Probably about forty men, Abe.”

“All armed,” Abe said flatly.