very soon, and there was no other for four metrons. Would Gorph send it on the first jet, or would he wait? It was a chance she'd have to take.

She got up from the floor and sat down on the couch beside the Viscount of Tharn. "Perat," she began hesitantly, "I know you must send me away. I'm sorry, because I don't want to leave you so soon, and you do not want me to leave you until the last moment, either. Anything else that I would tell you, you might doubt, so I say nothing more. I would like to dance for you. When I dance, I tell the truth."

"Yes, dance, but take care of your rib," assented the man moodily.

She filled his glass again with a sure hand and replaced it on the table. Then she unloosed the combs in her hair and let it fall in a profusion of curls about her shoulders, where it scintillated in a myriad sparkling semicircles in the soft light of the table luminar.

She shook her shoulders to scatter her hair, and unhurriedly released the clasp of her outer lounging gown. The heavy robe fell about her feet, leaving her clad only in a thin, flowing under-garment, which she smoothed languidly while she kicked off her slippers. Her mouth was now half-parted, her eyelids drooping and slumbrous. Perat was still staring at the ceiling, but she knew his mind was flowing unceasingly over her body.

"I must have music," she whispered. The man made no protest when she pressed the controls on his communications box to receive the slow and haunting dance music from the officers' club in the next zone.

The main avenue of access to Perat was now cut. And Gorph was a bolder man than she thought if he dared knock on the door of his chief while she was inside.

She began to sway and to chant. "The Song of Karos, the Great God of Scythe, Father of Tharn folk, Dweller in Darkness...."

Perat's glass halted, then proceeded slowly to his lips. Of course, no educated nobleman admitted a belief in the ancient religion of the Scythes, but how good it was to hear it sung and danced again? Not since his boyhood, when his mother had dragged him to the temple by main force.... He placed one palm behind his head and continued to sip and to think, as this strange, lovely woman unraveled with undulant body and husky voice the long, satisfying story of his god.

As she postured sinuously, Evelyn breathed a silent prayer of thanks to the dead mentors who 

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