The two suns were high in the sky, just over halfway along their great arc across the heavens. Their harsh rays beat down upon the figure of a young boy, lying on his stomach on the flat roof of his apartment building. He was leaning his elbows on the ground, just an inch from the edge. In his hands he clutched a small pair of binoculars, holding them firmly to his eyes. He was earning $$3 per hour of watching for the sandsteamer, and he had been there all day. Now, with his sweat-soaked shirt clinging uncomfortably to his back and only a few drops of water left in his canteen, he was considering going back down to his apartment and giving up any more double-dollars he would earn that day. The boy sighed, bringing the binoculars down from his eyes. He let them drop, to hang around his neck by their cracked and weather-beaten Tomas-leather strap. Sitting up, he rocked back on his heels, peering out over the roofs of the town, before standing up to stretch his legs.

Once the blood was again flowing to his lower extremities, the boy threw back his head to gaze up at the cloudless dome of sky above him. The sky was such a stark blue, with a strange clarity to it such as he hadn't witnessed in quite a while. This brought to him feelings that he had not felt in years, and somehow reminded him of a song he had heard, a long time ago. The melody he could recall, but most of the lyrics were lost to him now. He started to sing softly:

"So…on the first evening a pebble, from somewhere out of nowhere drops upon the dreaming world…" From there, he couldn't remember the words, but he continued to hum the melody to himself. The song soon faded into nothing and the boy lowered his eyes. As he did so, they grew wide, because the sandsteamer the town had been waiting for for so long was suddenly in sight.

A spontaneous grin spread across his face, and then he sprinted to the trapdoor in the middle of the roof, flung it open and disappeared down the ladder. Once he hit the hallway of the top floor, started yelling, "The sandsteamer's here! The sandsteamer, it's coming, it's coming!" all the way down the rough wooden stairway and into the dusty street. He continued to scream about the sandsteamer, running into the bars, taverns, and hotels throughout the town, to tell everybody that the sandsteamer had arrived.

By the time the monolithic steel locomotive actually stopped just outside of the city limits, a crowd had gathered to welcome the visitors to their town, and to welcome back people who had left the all-but-forgotten backwater town of April, and were just now returning. The doors creaked slowly open, and a metal ramp was lowered so that the passengers could disembark without having to jump several feet from the steamer to the ground. Soon, hordes of people were thronging around the sandsteamer, passengers and townsfolk alike. People from the caravan of vehicles, following the sandsteamer across the trackless wastes for the safety it provided, were also pulling into town at the same time. They were also disembarking from their vehicles and heading into town, eager for a hot bath, a real meal, and a warm bed for the night. The sandsteamer would be staying parked in the town for a few days, or until the passenger tickets were sold out, and then head off to the next town or city along its route.