WE DANCE for the DOM

Illustrated by Julian S. Krupa. (First published on January 1950)

The Dom had a triple crown, and it was by a strange circumstance indeed that he set it on Green Wing’s head!

He knelt before her. “I am yours to command,” he said softly.

VANUE’S great hand, swift and light as a seabird for all its size, reached for a bronze wand and touched with it a silver bell.

Beside her Firko yawned a little sleepily, saying: “Must we look at more of those derrish spools? Surely we know enough about the effects?”

“This is for Mion” softly Vanue’s slow sweet-toned words dropped like struck notes from some rich life-vibrant harp. “You will find it interesting, too. If I did not think it would drive the sleep from your bored face, I would not send for them! ”

Firko turned his broad, ruddy face to hers, laughing silently. “It’s not sleep, it’s dreams from your eyes, the magic of your hair, the moonshine of your ivory flesh caught in my mind. A man in love is always sleepy in appearance”

Vanue ignored him, turning to Mion, come to Falnorn, their home on the satellite of Enn.

“You came to learn certain method of organization to use in your work among the barbarian nations. In the records I will show you, there is a group of races, intermixed throughout one giant planet and four satellites. These are dark planets in unstarred space, yet their culture is shattered and falls before a singular societies’ grasp for dominance. I will show you why these peaceful peoples fell into war. . .”

One of the floating-haired young Nor maids came on; quick silkily sliding feet upon the glittering mirror-floor. Into her Mistress hands she put a file-disc, bearing in slots near a hundred spools of thought wire.

The fluorescing vapors swirled in the prisoning force field, the augmented record reached out and seized us with the greater-than-reality illusion that is the value of record. For one cannot forget or miss one detail of the recorded wisdom.

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