ection of the wall slid back
showing another room. This was the famous Gloating Chamber of
Hiah-Leugh. Here were brought all the victims the tribe captured. And
here it was that their chief was supposed to spend his time in
_Gloating_ over the tortures his torturers were supposed to spend
their time in devising. But business had been very bad lately. Not
only was there not a single victim in the Gloating Chamber, there was
not a single torturer available. Hiah-Leugh suddenly remembered.
Something about a picnic.... Then why had the wall slid back?

"_Hiah-Leugh! Hiah-Leugh!_" it was the clarion call of his ninth
concubine, the lovely and charming Sally Patica. But what in the name
of all that was unmentionable was she doing in the Gloating Chamber?
Of course she too could be _Gloating_!

He moved slowly toward the room, hoping against hope she was not in a
bad mood. The last time she had called in that tone of voice he had
suffered greatly. She had made him go without an eyeball massage for a
whole week....

* * * * *

She was pacing back and forth on the long, raised platform. Hiah-Leugh
skirted the Iron Maiden, the Pallid Pulley, the Bronze Beater, the
Copper Conker, and Giant Mas-Mixer, which was a fake. Nothing was ever
mixed in it except the noxious weed Hiah-Leugh used in his pipe. At
the sound of his approach Sally stopped her pacing and fixed him with
a baleful glance out of eyes, four and five. Eyes, two and three were
busy seeing if her coiffure was right and eyes one, six and seven were
having their lids tweezed. After all, she had twelve pairs of legs
which were also used for hands. A heck of a lot could be done with so
many appendages.

She started in even before he quite reached her side:

"Where is everybody? Do I have to sit by myself every day? _Must_ you
have your eyeballs massaged _everyday_? Where are the torturers? Where
is everybody...?"

"I think there's a picnic scheduled for today, dear," Hiah-Leugh said.

"Why wasn't I told about it?" Sally demanded.

She had very probably _been_ told about it but knowing his ninth
concubine and the limits of her memory, she had very surely forgotten.

"Hiah-Leugh!" she broke in on him before he could frame a reply. "I'm
so terribly, terribly bored! There hasn't been a good torture since,
since ... when _was_ the last time there was a torture party?"

"The time Gin-Pad was caught stealing wokkerjabbies from his younge