The reclam crews filled and sodded the sterile rock, planted binding grasses, grain and trees, and diverted rivers to keep it fertile. When there were no rivers to divert they blasted out springs and lakes in the foothills to make their own. Biologists developed the necessary germ and insect life from what they found in the sea. Where that failed, they imported microorganisms from Earth. Three rubber-tracked crawlers picked their way down from the mountains until they joined the road passing the belt. They were loaded with ore that would be smelted into metal for depleted Earth, or for other colonies short of minerals. It was St. Martin's only export thus far. Zarwell pulled his sun helmet lower, to better guard his hot, dry features. The wind blew continuously on St. Martin's, but it furnished small relief from the heat. After its three-thousand-mile journey across scorched sterile rock, it sucked the moisture from a man's body, bringing a membrane-shrinking dryness to the nostrils as it was breathed in. With it came also the cloying taste of limestone in a worker's mouth. Zarwell gazed idly about at the other laborers. Fully three-quarters of them were beri-rabza ridden. A cure for the skin fungus had not yet been found; the men's faces and hands were scabbed and red. The colony had grown to near self-sufficiency, would soon have a moderate prosperity, yet they still lacked adequate medical and research facilities. Not all the world's citizens were content. Bergstrom was waiting in his office when Zarwell arrived that evening. He was lying motionless on a hard cot, with his eyes closed, yet with his every sense sharply quickened. Tentatively he tightened small muscles in his arms and legs. Across his wrists and thighs he felt straps binding him to the cot. "So that's our big, bad man," a coarse voice above him observed caustically. "He doesn't look so tough now, does he?" "It might have been better to kill him right away," a second, less confident voice said. "It's supposed to be impossible to hold him." "Don't be stupid. We just do what we're told. We'll hold him." "What do you think they'll do with him?" "Execute him, I suppose," the harsh voice said matter-of-factly. "They're probably just curious to see what he looks like first. They'll be disappointed." Zarwell opened his eyes a slit to observe his surroundings. It was a mistake. "He's out of it," the first speaker said, and Zarwell allowed his eyes to open fully. The voice, he saw, belonged to the big man who had bruised him against the locker at the spaceport. Irrelevantly he wondered how he knew now that it had been a spaceport. His captor's broad face jeered down at Zarwell. "Have a good sleep?" he asked with mock solicitude. Zarwell did not deign to acknowledge that he heard.