IT WAS A FANTASTIC, weird ceremony. The varicolored tubelights gleamed down upon the couples who stood ranged along the front edge of the dais. Men and women of three great planets, facing the gruesome multiple monster which here on its own little world was Omnipotent. Its toneless voice was droning now with the ritual it had devised; and at intervals, trained by the Physicals, the couples on the dais bowed, gestured and then knelt with foreheads to the ground in supplication and homage to the Supreme One. Little grey-skinned Venus girls in their gaudy robes; brown-skinned, black-haired young women of Mars; the Earth-girls and young men.
But I had eyes only for Dora, as she knelt with the big Torkine beside her. The light gleamed on her long, pale-blonde hair which fell in great gleaming
