Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 214: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

They met us halfway. Their vehicle was essentially the Same as Our own; broad, flat tracks over bogies slung on an efficient torsion-bar suspension—wide, light-weight chassis fitted with a tear-drop canopy of crystal transparency. But traveling with a lot less noise, and with almost twice the Speed. Kruger said, “| guess | owe you eight bucks.” “Maybe they’re robots. Long-dead civilization. Only the machines remain to traverse the wind-whipped sands... .” “Stop, you're chilling my marrow!” “Want to try the radio?” “Minute ... hold on, looks as if they’re stopping!” “Obviously want us there. Truce-parley in the desert— look, getting out,’ | think. Come on, club this thing on the flanks, will you?” Kruger had his boot flat to the floor as it was, and we were tossing up sand on both sides like a miniature tornado. Typically Earth-style—lots of noise, lots of splash, all show and no go. lt seemed as if we kept them waiting for an hour, but it was actually less than ten minutes before Kruger had us up alongside. “You think they know all about radio and such, | hope? Because brother, I’m not going to take this goldfish bowl off to hear them utter the Secret of the Universe itself... “Hey, hey—they’re wearing suits and helmets themselves. What the hell ... you don’t suppose you-know- who has us beat-” “Nuts, you owe me eight bucks! Come on, let’s get out of here.” We climbed down out of the track. And there we were, facing them, wondering a little foolishly what the intelligent thing was to do. All three were taller than Max’s six-one by several inches. Thinner, too. Their skin was whiter, and they looked CORniclooo SS CO