Dyann pulled an idol from her trunk and put it on her shelf. It was a small wooden image, gaudily painted and fiercely tusked, each of its six arms holding some weapon. One, Ballantyne noticed, was a carved Terrestrial tommy-gun. "Qviet, please," she said, raising one arm. "I am about to pray to Ormun the Terrible." "Barbarian," guffawed Urushkidan. Dyann took a pillow and stuffed it in his mouth. "Qviet, please, I said." She smiled gently and prostrated herself before the god. After a while she got up. Urushkidan was still speechless with rage. She turned to Ballantyne and asked, "Do the ships here carry live animals? I vould like to make a small sacrifice too." II The bulletin board said that in the present orbital positions of the planets, the _Jovian Queen_ would make her voyage at one Earth-gravity acceleration in six days, forty-three minutes, and twelve seconds, plus or minus ten seconds. That might be pure braggadocio, though Ballantyne wouldn't have been surprised to learn that it was sober truth. He hoped the time was overestimated. His cabin mates were a little wearing on the nerves. Urushkidan filling the room with smoke, sitting up till all hours covering paper with mathematical symbols and screaming at any interruption. Dyann was nice-looking but rather overwhelming. In some ways she was reminiscent of Catherine Vanbrugh. The Engineer shuddered. He slouched moodily into the bar and ordered a martini he could ill afford. The place was quiet, discreetly lit, not very full. His eyes fell on the stiff-laced Jovian colonel, still clutching his portfolio like grim death, but talking with unusual animation to a stunning Terrestrial redhead. It was clear that ideas about the purity of the Jovian stock--"hardened in the fire and ice of outer space, tempered and beaten into the new and dominant mankind"--had been temporarily shelved. If I had some money, thought Ballantyne gloomily, I could detach her from him and enjoy this trip. The bartender informed him, with some awe, that the man was Colonel Ivan Hosea Domenico Roshevsky-Feldkamp, late military attaché of Jupiter's Terrestrial embassy and an officer who had served with distinction in suppressing the Ionian revolt and in asserting Jupiter's rightful claims to Saturn. Ray was more interested in the girl's name and antecedents. Just as he'd thought, an heiress on a pleasure trip. Expensive. A couple of genial Earthmen moved up and began talking to him. Before long they suggested a friendly game of poker. Oh-ho! thought Ray, who knew that sort. "Sure," he said. They played most of the time for a couple of days. Luck went back and forth but in general Ray won, and toward the end he was a couple of thousand U. N. credits to the good. He let his eyes glitter with febrile cupidity, and the sharks--there were three of them all told--almost licked their lips.