ow," Venus said sternly. "Don't tell me the presence of your
Goddess embarrasses you." She raised her head imperiously. "Hurry it
up."

Very slowly, he began taking off his clothes. There was, after all,
nothing to be ashamed of, he told himself. As a matter of fact, Venus
ought to be getting used to the sight of him undressing by this time.

Somehow, he finally managed to get the _chiton_ on straight. Venus
looked him over and nodded her approval.

"Come along now," she said. "They're waiting for us. And one thing:
don't get nervous, for Hera's sake. You're all right."

"Oh," Forrester said. "Sure. Perfectly all right. Right as rain."

"Well, you are. As a matter of fact, I think you'll make a fine
Dionysus."

She led him toward a wall opposite where the closet had been. As they
approached it, a section of it became bluer and bluer. With a sinking
feeling, Forrester told himself that he knew what was coming.

He did. The wall dissolved into the shimmering blue haze of a Veil of
Heaven, just like the one that had transported him from New York to his
present position. Where that was, he wasn't entirely sure, but
remembering his one look out the window, he suspected it was Mount
Olympus.

But there wasn't any time for thinking. Venus took his hand coolly as
they reached the blue haze. Then both of them stepped through.

CHAPTER SIX

The room into which they stepped seemed even larger than the one they
had left. The distances were just as hard to measure, and why Forrester
had the feeling, he couldn't have said, but it did feel larger. The
sense of enormous space hung over it.

The wall colors were just the same, however, dripping and changing in a
continuous flow of patterns, with the little sunbursts and rainbows
appearing here and there without any visible reason.

But the room itself was comparatively unimportant, Forrester knew. It
was what went on in the room that sent shivers up his spine, and
instructed one knee to start knocking against other one. He had heard of
the Court of the Gods, though as far as he knew no mortal had ever seen
it. There were certainly no photographs of it, even in the most
exhaustive travel books.

Forrester knew without question that he was standing in that Courtroom.
The knowledge did not make him calm. And the beings sitting and
reclining on couches along the shimmering walls made him feel even
worse. He recognized every one of them, and every one sent a new shock