stasy.

"Yes, that's ours," he assured her. "Just about everything either of us
has ever wanted." The clamor was now so great--everyone was recognizing
his-and-her house and was exclaiming about it--that both Temple and
Hilton fell silent and simply watched the scenery unroll.

Across the turbulent Whitewater and a mile farther north, the mountains
ended as abruptly as though they had been cut off with a cleaver and an
apparently limitless expanse of treeless, grassy prairie began. And
through that prairie, meandering sluggishly to the ocean from the
northeast, came the wide, deep River Placid.

The _Orion_ halted. It began to descend vertically, and only then did
Hilton see the spaceport. It was so vast, and there were so many
spaceships on it, that from any great distance it was actually
invisible! Each six-acre bit of the whole immense expanse of level
prairie between the Placid and the mountains held an Oman
superdreadnought!

* * * * *

The staff paired off and headed for the airlocks. Hilton said: "Temple,
have you any reservations at all, however slight, as to having Dark Lady
as a permanent fixture in your home?"

"Why, of course not--I like her as much as you do. And besides--" she
giggled like a schoolgirl--"even if she _is_ a lot more beautiful than I
am--I've got a few things she never will have ... but there's something
else. I got just a flash of it before you blocked. Spill it, please."

"You'll see in a minute." And she did.

Larry, Dark Lady and Temple's Oman maid Moty were standing beside the
Hilton's car--and so was another Oman, like none ever before seen. Six
feet four; shoulders that would just barely go through a door; muscled
like Atlas and Hercules combined; skin a gleaming, satiny bronze; hair a
rippling mass of lambent flame. Temple came to a full stop and caught
her breath.

"The Prince," she breathed, in awe. "Da Lormi's Prince of Thebes. The
ultimate bronze of all the ages. _You_ did this, Jarve. How did you ever
dig him up out of my schoolgirl crushes?"

All six got into the car, which was equally at home on land or water or
in the air. In less than a minute they were at Hilton House.

The house itself was circular. Its living-room was an immense annulus of
glass from which, by merely moving along its circular length, any
desired view could be had. The pair walked around it once. Then she took
him by the arm and steered him firmly toward one of t