With his foot he nudged a long, flat plank, not wood, which clinked when his boot struck it. There were three of these and they had been brought ashore like babies, each wrapped in its own coat of thick cloth and laid carefully down on blocks. The grunting soldiers were hauling a frame up from the grounded barge, an angular construction of wooden beams, taller than any of them, wider than three of them. The sun was bright and hot; Jeon was sweating, and he was doing little more than standing around watching. He unhooked the front of his coat and took it off. Marwin said, “This stuff comes from some mine down south of the desert there. Look.” He stepped onto the plank with both boots. The plank was about as wide as his boots were long and he bounced once to make sure he had good footing. Reaching down, he got the near end of the plank and with a yank pulled it up toward him, and the plank bent like a bow. When he let go the plank slapped back down again into the sand with a thump. “Hunh,”
