DAW #354 (UJ1488.) 1st printing September 1979 paperback. Cover by Don Maitz, 160 pages. Condition is near-Fine: tight and square with flat spine; faint ghost of a line on spine; trace of overall wear. Age tanning is mild and uniform. No stamps, marks or writing.

Hestia: After a hundred years the colony on Hestia seemed to be nearing its end. Its holdings on that green and fertile planet were still limited to a single river in one valley. Everywhere else hostile fauna hedged them in. A dam could break that deadlock, and they needed an engineer to construct it for them. Sam Merrit was the man who came in answer to their S. O. S. - and he wanted out as soon as he had landed. But once down on Hestia, it was live or die with the colony. So Sam stayed - to discover certain anomalies that the hardscrabble colonists had thrust from their minds.