shore to come out and catch them.

Nereid slid our little flying platform skilfully down. We landed on a small level island which was connected with the big island by an arcade bridge. No one had seemed to notice us. Boats were tied up here along the shore. Others were arriving, disembarking the gay merrymakers. All were in holiday attire; a variety of motley costumes, indescribable as a fancy-dress costume ball on Earth. Some of them, men and girls, wore cloaks and hoods, with little gaily colored masks covering their eyes.

I stood for a moment with Nereid. "You're going to find your father?" I suggested.

"Yes. If he is here." She told me then of the Arsenal rock beyond the Water City, where Peters and his men most of their time were working. "He is there probably," she added. "I think he would not come here tonight."

"Then what would we do, go to him there?"

"Yes, of course. I will see our Ruler first. Jenten-Shah—he will be here. Over there on the big island, in the pavilion probably." Bitterness was in her tone. Nereid was thinking of the menace of the Gorts, with their engines of destruction. She and I did not know then, what Allen was just about now learning—that there was an urgency of haste since Tollgamo's attack would be made tonight. But as we threaded our way under the gay colored lights across the arcade to the main island, I somehow seemed to feel the undercurrent of menace here. Occasionally we passed little figures who were evidently onlookers. The imbecile workers, lower class who were almost in the position of slaves. They were weird little creatures, most of them no more than four feet tall, grey-skinned and powerfully built. We passed one who was standing on the shore gazing at a raft where a lone girl shrouded in blue-white filmy drapery was being pelted with flowers. The gnome-like imbecile stood impassive, gazing with vacant face. Then he was muttering to himself. A fragment of it reached us.

"Tollgamo is coming to help us workers. We won't have to work tomorrow. Then we can do things like this."

I gripped Nereid. "You hear what that worker said? No work for him tomorrow. Do you suppose—"

She tried to smile. "What an imbecile says never means much, Kent. But I must tell father."

Occasionally now people were staring at us, at me. Some rushed at us, but Nereid with an imperious gesture scattered them; and 

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