Jan had just figured out a combination by which he hoped to cheat Heemskerk out of one of his knights, when Dekker, the _burgemeester_ of Oostpoort, entered the spaceport ready room. "There's been an emergency radio message," said Dekker. "They've got a passenger for the Earthship over at Rathole." "Rathole?" repeated Heemskerk. "What's that? I didn't know there was another colony within two thousand kilometers." "It isn't a colony, in the sense Oostpoort is," explained Dekker. "The people are the families of a bunch of laborers left behind when the colony folded several years ago. It's about eighty kilometers away, right across the Hoorn, but they don't have any vehicles that can navigate when the wind's up." Heemskerk pushed his short-billed cap back on his close-cropped head, leaned back in his chair and folded his hands over his comfortable stomach. "Then the passenger will have to wait for the next ship," he pronounced. "The _Vanderdecken_ has to blast off in thirty hours to catch Earth at the right orbital spot, and the G-boat has to blast off in ten hours to catch the _Vanderdecken_." "This passenger can't wait," said Dekker. "He needs to be evacuated to Earth immediately. He's suffering from the Venus Shadow." Jan whistled softly. He had seen the effects of that disease. Dekker was right. "Jan, you're the best driver in Oostpoort," said Dekker. "You will have to take a groundcar to Rathole and bring the fellow back." * * * * * So now Jan gripped his clay pipe between his teeth and piloted the groundcar into the teeth of the Twilight Gale. Den Hoorn was a comparatively flat desert sweep that ran along the western side of the Oost Mountains, just over the mountain from Oostpoort. It was a thin fault area of a planet whose crust was peculiarly subject to earthquakes, particularly at the beginning and end of each long day when temperatures of the surface rocks changed. On the other side of it lay Rathole, a little settlement that eked a precarious living from the Venerian vegetation. Jan never had seen it. He had little difficulty driving up and over the mountain, for the Dutch settlers had carved a rough road through the ravines. But even the 2-1/2-meter wheels of the groundcar had trouble amid the tumbled rocks of Den Hoorn. The wind hit the car in full strength here and, though the body of the groundcar was suspended from the axles, there was constant danger of its being flipped over by a gust if not handled just right. The three earthshocks that had shaken Den Hoorn since he had been driving made his task no easier, but he was obviously lucky, at that. Often he had to detour far from his course to skirt long, deep cracks in the surface, or steep breaks where the crust had been raised or dropped several meters by past quakes.