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storms dangled and twirled like ropes, vanishing into a clear sky. Unlike Earth tornadoes, they rose from the surface. The three gigantic whirlwinds did an intricate dance, weaving in and out of each other’s paths. Sean winced as one of them swept over a distant dome. “Could they break open an installation?”
    “They haven’t so far,” Jenny said. “I think the domes are safe—they’re engineered to resist high wind velocities. Some of the red-coded connecting tubes are iffy. We’re not supposed to go into them if there are storms in the area. But if a tube cracked, the doors at both ends would seal automatically.”
    “What if someone was inside?”
    “Too bad,” Jenny said.
    Sean shivered.
4.2
    Two days later Sean learned about the kind of damage a dust devil could do. It happened during his chemistry session, which was overseen by a glowering Dr. Ellman. Sean, Mickey Goldberg, Alex Benford, Patrick Nakoma, and Nickie Mikhailova were all at separate virtual stations, each working on an individual problem, when everything went haywire.
    The three-dimensional display in front of Sean flickered, flared, and faded out. The other students yelped in dismay as they lost their work too. Nickie, who was a computer-science specialist, said, “We lost core power! What happened?”
    Ellman, who had been watching Alex’s virtual titration experiment, snarled, “I don’t know, unless Doe somehow managed to destroy the circuitry. I suppose you’re innocent, Doe?”
    “I didn’t do anything!” Sean protested.
    Ellman looked at him with a sour sneer. “You never do, and that’s one of your problems!” The lights in the lab dimmed suddenly, leaving them in semidarkness. “Go to your quarters. We’ll take up here next session. I trust we will have power again then.”
    But when they headed back to their dormitory wing, Alex, in the lead, found that the yellow-coded door to the connecting tube was sealed and wouldn’t open. “Man, I wonder what’s up. Let’s go up to the observation dome and see.”
    They wound their way up the stairs to the top of the lab dome, where windows looked out over the colony. A noise that Sean had barely been aware of, a sort of grinding, grew as they climbed, and when they got to the top he saw that the whole south side of the dome was being assaulted by dust whipping against the windows, driven by a roaring wind. It lasted for just a few seconds, and then the dust screeched overhead and the storm swept on. “Look at that!” Alex exclaimed.
    Sean pressed his face against a clear window. Dozens of dust devils were writhing through the colony, and in the distance, up in the foothills, more were snaking through the forests of windmills.
    “That’s it,” Mickey said. “The wind generators have shut down.”
    “Some of them are damaged,” Nickie said, shading her eyes with both hands. “They’ll have to be repaired.”
    “I’m volunteering,” Patrick said at once.
    “Not me,” Mickey said flatly. “I don’t want tobe caught out in the open when a storm hits.”
    “I’ll go,” Sean said.
    Mickey glanced at him and grinned. “Oh, so you’ve discovered your specialty at last. Going to become a planetary hero, are you?”
    “Stop it, Goldberg,” Nickie said. “Somebody has to go out and clean the contacts, and it might as well be us. We can’t get back to school until the colony has full power. You know our computers are the first things to go when there’s a power shortage.”
    “I could use a week or two off,” Mickey said. “Might be a good idea to let old Sean go out on the repair mission. Think you can foul things up just enough to keep us out of school, Doe?”
    “Shut up,” Sean said irritably. “I don’t care if you don’t want to go outside, but I’m tired of being cooped up. If I can be useful, I’m going, that’s all.”
    Mickey laughed. “That’s the pioneering spirit. Just like you, too. You were in the news a lot back on Earth, right?