Once every ten years, White Sands became more than a sprawling Spaceport city. Millions of dollars were spent and millions of people amused, while White Sands took on a carnival atmosphere. Games and customs and artifacts were gathered from all the habitable worlds of the Solar System. The ultimate development of the mid-twentieth century State Fair could be seen in this, but it was a State Fair a hundred times over.
And now, during Carnival year, Pete’s wanderings brought him to White Sands. He got a job collecting tickets at the Exhibition of Interplanetary Flight, and after hours he lost himself completely in the glittering, make-believe worlds of the Carnival. He had left the Academy a month ago, hitch-hiking from town to town until, hardly realizing it, he had covered the thousand mi
