By noon Carston had made his daily inspection circuit of the drome. He had surveyed the commissary, loitered past the new structure that was to house the courts and exchanged a few pleasantries with the sergeant of the constabulary. He had checked the oxygen and humidity gauges on the big board outside the power building. And he had climbed to the drome’s Central Observation Platform within the quartz bubble, where he stood now, gazing out at the incredible landscape of Nida 255.
A jigsaw pattern of tumbled monolithic rocks in a myriad of pastel colors stretched before him as far as he could see. Off to the left where the rock formations descended into a low bluish plain, a mass of girders and steel ribs crouched like some huge spider—all that was left of the Centauria. As Carston looked
