noon
Martha Dane paused , looking up at the purple-tinged copper sky . The wind had shifted since noon , while she had been inside , and the dust storm that was sweeping the high deserts to the east was now blowing out over Syrtis . The sun , magnified by the haze , was a gorgeous magenta ball , as large as the sun of Terra , at which she could look directly . Tonight , some of that dust would come sifting down from the upper atmosphere to add another film to what had been burying the city for the last fifty thousand years . The red loess lay over everything , covering the streets and the open spaces of park and plaza , hiding the small houses that had been crushed and pressed flat under it and the rubble that had come down from the tall buildings when roofs had caved in and walls had toppled outward .