nearby, two human figures suddenly emerged! Figures that stood as though startled for a second, and then came plunging to attack!

V

Festival of Love! On the swaying little anti-gravity platform I lay with Nereid, staring down at the strange, colorful scene that stretched beneath us. It was at the end of our escape-flight from the Spaceship, in time doubtless before Allen on that trip arrived in Tollgamo's mountain city.

What Allen saw of the grim little metal and rock city of the Gorts was in weird contrast to what I saw now of the riotous, colorful forest and water scene where the gay festival of Love and Music was in full progress.

There was only a brief glimpse at first, as we swooped down. We had already passed over the main city of Arron. It lay between the open sea and an area a mile or so inland, where there was a lagoon, little chains of lakes, threads of tiny streams and a myriad little dots of tropic islands. I had seen, down in the forest, lines of gay, pastel-tinted lights to mark the city streets. Then we came to the lagoon, where the festival was being held.

A watery failyland of gayety. The lagoon, a circular spread of water of perhaps five miles, was rippled with a soft night-breeze. The ripples were stained with the opalescent night-sheen from the overhead clouds, and stained like a painter's pallette with a riot of glorious tints from the strings of colored lights which connected the little islands.

One big island, a thousand feet in length, stood in the center. A pavilion was on it, from which soft exotic music flooded out into the night—music that blended on the tropic breeze with a vast murmur of excited voices. I could guess that there might be four or five thousand people disporting themselves here. The main island was thronged with people moving about, or crowding toward the pavilion where with the music there seemed dancing and perhaps some form of theatrical entertainment.

Boats were on the thread-like little canals between the islands. A barge crowded with young men and girls, all in gay-colored robes, was slowly approaching from the open lagoon. Little boats, mere six foot rafts, each held a girl and man; the man paddling, the girl fending off flowers with which she was pelted by young men on other rafts, or on the shore.

The laughing screams of girls floated up as they swam in the open lagoon, their voices calling jocular defiance to the men on 

 Prev. P 27/48 next