The sultans would've loved Tom Perkins and he would've felt right at home with them, at least until he decided to kick somesand in their faces when they didn't appreciate his sense of humor.
Two days earlier, it had scooped somesand from a drift, sieved it to a fineness of less than a hundred and fifty microns, and dropped a portion half the size of a baby aspirin into a funnel on its back.