she joined them, still dressed
in her laboring man's shapeless garments, the broad sun-helmet hiding
her face effectively. Her long, black hair was concealed under the
clothing. Having nearly been drawn into a brawl the day before, she
now carried a stained but still very serviceable short sword that she
had purloined from a merclite-drunken reveler in a gutter.

Thousands were already on the terraces surrounding the government
buildings. They were milling about, for it was still too soon after
the night's chill to sit down or lie on the rubbery red sward. Taxis
were bringing swarms over the canal from North Tarog, and water
vehicles were crossing over in almost unbroken lines.

Already the merclite vendors were busy, making their surreptitious way
from group to group, selling the highly intoxicating and legally
proscribed gum that would lift the users from the sordid, miserable
plane of their daily existence to exalted, reckless heights.

War vessels now began to course overhead, their solid, heavily plated
hulls glinting dully in the sun. Their levitator helices moaned
dismally, and as their long, slanting shadows slid over the assembled
thousands, it seemed that they cast a prophetic pall; that there was a
hush of foreboding.

But the psychological expert high in a nearby tower immediately noted
the slump in the psycho-radiation meter whose trumpet-shaped antenna
pointed downward. At the turn of the dial the air was filled with
throbbing martial music, and the expert noted with contemptuous
satisfaction that the needle now stood even higher than before.

Sira, caught like all the rest of the people in that stirring flood of
music, felt her own pulse leap. But she thought:

"This is the day! Wasil, could I only be with you!"

She thought sadly of Joro, whose shrewd observations and counsel she
missed more than she had ever thought possible.

"Poor, dear Joro! You would be a better king than any man you could
ever find! I wish I could have done as you wished me to."

* * * * *

There was a stir near the main entrance of the hall. A large private
yacht was slowly descending. She was bedecked with the green and gold
bunting of the terrestrial government, the green and orange of Mars.
Her hull glittered goldenly.

"Back!" shouted the captain of a Martian guard detail, the soldiers
running with pennant-decked ropes looping after them. The crowd surged
against the barrier, but mor