Adventure stories; Love stories; Science fiction; Venus (Planet) -- Fiction; War stories
Festival of Love! On the swaying little anti-gravity platform I
lay with Nereid, staring down at the strange, colorful scene that
stretched beneath us. It was at the end of our escape-flight from the
Spaceship, in time doubtless before Allen on that trip arrived in
Tollgamo's mountain city.
What Allen saw of the grim little metal and rock city of the Gorts was
in weird contrast to what I saw now of the riotous, colorful forest
and water scene where the gay festival of Love and Music was in full
progress.
There was only a brief glimpse at first, as we swooped down. We had
already passed over the main city of Arron. It lay between the open
sea and an area a mile or so inland, where there was a lagoon, little
chains of lakes, threads of tiny streams and a myriad little dots
of tropic islands. I had seen, down in the forest, lines of gay,
pastel-tinted lights to mark the city streets. Then we came to the
lagoon, where the festival was being held.
A watery failyland of gayety. The lagoon, a circular spread of water of
perhaps five miles, was rippled with a soft night-breeze. The ripples
were stained with the opalescent night-sheen from the overhead clouds,
and stained like a painter's pallette with a riot of glorious tints
from the strings of colored lights which connected the little islands.
One big island, a thousand feet in length, stood in the center. A
pavilion was on it, from which soft exotic music flooded out into the
night--music that blended on the tropic breeze with a vast murmur of
excited voices. I could guess that there might be four or five thousand
people disporting themselves here. The main island was thronged with
people moving about, or crowding toward the pavilion where with
the music there seemed dancing and perhaps some form of theatrical
entertainment.
Boats were on the thread-like little canals between the islands. A
barge crowded with young men and girls, all in gay-colored robes, was
slowly approaching from the open lagoon. Little boats, mere six foot
rafts, each held a girl and man; the man paddling, the girl fending off
flowers with which she was pelted by young men on other rafts, or on
the shore.
The laughing screams of girls floated up as they swam in the open
lagoon, their voices calling jocular defiance to the men on shore to
come out and catch them.
Nereid slid our little flying platform skilfully down. We landed on a
small level island which was connected with the big island by an arcade
bridge. No one had seemed to notice us. Boats were tied up here along
the shore. Others were arriving, disembarking the gay merrymakers. All
were in holiday attire; a variety of motley costumes, indescribable as
a fancy-dress costume ball on Earth. Some of them, men and girls, wore
cloaks and hoods, with little gaily colored masks covering their eyes.
I stood for a moment with Nereid. "You're going to find your father?" I
suggested.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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