were

had planned to stay in. He was happy in uniform, and for many of the colonists here, that was a totally foreign concept.
Both of those stories of his ancestors were in his mind as he stood, travel-weary and yet excited, before a massive piece of the machinery of war, a glorious hulk of purpose-built design. It was larger than a good many of the buildings of this far-off colony at the edges of human space.
Bachman’s World. A poor colony known only for its single export of a medicinal desert plant, it was not a place likely to attract a tourist trade. Those who came here left because life was even harder in the slums of Calcutta, or the perpetually typhoon-swept mud-flats of Bangladesh. They were farmers, who grew vast acreages of the “saje” for export, and irrigated just enough land to feed themselves. A hot, dry wind blew sand into the tight curls of his hair

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