The Belly of Gor Jeetl

By Charles A. Stearns

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Thrilling Wonder Stories August 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The hopeful spires of the Friendship Tower, you will recall, rose steadily, tier upon tier, throughout the year A.D. 4000 plus, despite the fact that it was beginning, more and more, to resemble a neoclassical stock exchange than it did a tower, and that the higher it climbed, the lower sank the estate of diplomatic relations among its backers, the nations of the Alliance of Inner Planets.

The Venusians wanted it on Venus because, as they shrewdly noted, Venus is wide open; the vacationer's planet. Low taxes. Moderate building costs, and a diverting variety of entertainment for the visiting delegates when they should meet. Why the derva-girls alone—

Mars wanted it on Mars, because, they said, the world is centrally located, easily accessible, and the dry climate was sure to preserve the masonry of the Friendship Tower forever, an immortal monument to man's amicability.

The Jovian colonials wanted it on Ganymede, because that would be most convenient (for Jupiter), and the Ganymedians agreed, if Jupiter would meet their share of the cost.

The kindest thing that can be said of the Saturnians, is that they were exceedingly saturnine. They hadn't a chance, and they knew it. Everyone expected trouble with Saturn.

Earth got it on Earth, with an overwhelming majority of one vote and eighty-three million dollars.

The Friendship Tower spitted the occasionally-blue sky over Capitol City in less than eleven months from the time its corner-stone was laid, and waited in awesome emptiness for the first friendly meeting of worlds within it.

If there was anyone who was completely satisfied with the Tower, it must have been Christopher M. Berthold, who first sketched it with gilt pen on a drawing board, and later drew it in bold lines of steel and plastic on the green horizon of his mother Earth. But Chris Berthold was a dour young man who had never in his life admitted that anything satisfied him.

By no coincidence, the man who built the tower was one of the three most famous architects in the solar system, at the age of 

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