ad faded. Then he got up
and walked steadily along the road which led from Interstelpen to Triton
City.

* * * * *

"Girls! Hurry with your packing! Girls!"

Sighing, Matilda Moriarity subsided. The girls, obviously, were in no
hurry. That would have been out of character.

Matilda Moriarity sighed again. She was short, stocky, fifty-two years
old and the widow of a fabulously wealthy interstellar investment
broker. She had a passion for classical music and, now that her husband
had been dead three years, she had decided to exercise that passion. But
for Matilda Moriarity, a very out-going fifty-two, exercising it had
meant passing it on. The outworlds, Matilda had told her friends, lacked
culture. The highest form of culture, for Matilda, was classical music.
Very well. She would bring culture to the outworlds.

* * * * *

Triton was her first try and even now sometimes she had to pinch herself
so she'd know the initial attempt had been a smashing success. She
didn't delude herself completely. It had been a brainstorm selecting
only girls--and pretty young things, at that--for the Interstellar
Symphony. On a world like Triton, a world which played host to very few
women and then usually to the hard types who turned up on any frontier
in any century, a symphony of a hundred pretty girls was bound to be a
success.

But the music, Matilda Moriarity told herself. They had listened to the
music. If they wanted to see the girls in their latest Earth-style
evening gowns, they had to listen to the music. And they had listened
quietly, earnestly, apparently enjoying it. The symphony had remained on
Triton longer than planned, playing every night to a full house. Matilda
had had the devil's own time chaperoning her girls, but that was to be
expected. It was their first taste of the outworlds; it was the
outworlds' first taste of them. The widow Moriarity had had her hands
full, all right. But secretly, she had enjoyed every minute of it.

"They say the bell means a prison break!" First Violin squealed
excitedly. First Violin was twenty-two, an Earth girl named Jane
Cummings and a student at the conservatory on Sirtus Major on Mars, but
to the widow Moriarity she was, and would remain, First Violin. That
way, calling the girls after their instruments, the widow Moriarity
could convince herself that her symphonic music had been of prime
importance on Triton, a