gone!"

Again this amazing woman curled in her cushions and again she purred.
Tommy watched in open mouthed astonishment as she smiled guilelessly on
his friend.

"You may leave me now, my Carson," she cooed. "Farley is free to
accompany you. Pegrani will guide you and inform you regarding our
customs and our people. You will learn much. And then you shall return
to Zara Clyone."

Blaine had fully expected that Tommy would die a horrible death before
his eyes, and in his sudden relief bent low and kissed the cold white
hand of the Zara. A foolish thing to do! She purred and snuggled into
the cushions like the feline she was--a dangerous animal; claws drawn
in now but ready to strike out, razor sharp, on a moment's notice.

* * * * *

Pegrani led them along the corridor to a lift. The car shot upward with
breath-taking speed.

"Say!" Tommy was growling, in English. "What's the big idea? You've got
the old girl ga-ga. Trying to vamp her into letting us off easy?"

"Shut up!" Blaine returned, irritated. "I don't know where we stand any
more than you do. But we're going to sit tight now and see what
happens. No more rough stuff from you, either."

"What! You're going to just stand around and take it--whatever they
hand us?"

"Of course not. But the time isn't ripe yet. We'll have to wait till we
know what it's all about."

They were outside then, on the palace roof, and Pegrani motioned them
to a railed-in runway that circled its edge. High overhead was the
shadowy blackness of the copper shell that enclosed the satellite. Huge
latticed columns, line upon line of them, stretched off into the
distance as far as the eye could follow; enormous white metal supports
that carried the immense weight of the covering which retained the
dense and humid atmosphere. Myriads of tiny blue-white suns there
seemed to be, stretching off between the columns, carried on thick
cables and radiating the artificial daylight of the interior. Hot, damp
odors wafted across the roof, the odors of decayed vegetation.

Most amazing of all, were the dwellings. In orderly rows like the
columns, they were flat topped cylindrical things that reminded Blaine
of nothing so much as the tanks of an oil refinery back home. And the
space between was overgrown with dense tropical vegetation, tangled and
matted and shooting transparent tubular stems up to a height of a
hundred feet or more where they sprouted