For a timeless moment of absolute silence, every being present stood with bowed head in reverence to the Absolute. Then they took their assigned places around the immense Council table grimly. The crisis was at hand.
When Bill Nardon entered, he was late, for the preliminaries, the usual diplomatic fencing and jockeying for favorable positions was over. The smouldering resentment of six belligerent worlds was frankly in the open.
Antaran, Head of the Supreme Council of Terra, presided at the head of the table—there had been no difficulty about that—as was his due as Host; but Venus and Mars had been diplomatically seated at his right and left, respectively, facing each other and with equal honors, where they could glare at each to their hearts' content. Neptune had been given the other end of the table facing Antaran, and to his right the Amazonian leader from Mercury. The balance of the delegates had been scattered around the council table interspersed cleverly with members of Terra's Council.
Bill saw instantly Antaran's anxious frown as he entered and caught the half-annoyed, half-anxious query at his lateness, telepathed in their secret code. He merely signalled, "Wait, Antaran!" and proceeded to stand behind the Terran Leader's chair as unobtrusively as possible. But it had been an entrance! His stately height of six feet five inches, in the close fitting tunic of beryllium, the dark red mane of wavy hair falling to his shoulders, allied to the lateness of his coming, gave him an importance in the eyes of the visiting delegates which, just now, he would have liked to avoid.
But when Antaran arose, all eyes centered coldly upon the Council Leader. A sensuous fragrance of Venusian Jasmines wafted like an invisible presence as the Martian Leader insolently applied a gossamer handkerchief to his nostrils in defense of the odors of the other races, and the tiny, winged Venusian ambassador glared with scorn. The Amazonian being from Mercury clanked her power-rapier uneasily, while the tall Neptunian unconsciously touched his belt. Above them, the cathedral-like dome of the tremendous Hall of Planets rose until the graduating hues of its intricately carved Sapphirine plastic walls paled from translucent sapphire to aquamarine, to beryl to palest mauve, and then only the sheerest rose-gold or diffused sunlight where the intricate interlacing of arches was like a cob-web pattern in the distance.
"We are gathered here," Antaran began without preamble in his terse, icy voice, "to discuss a problem that threatens...." He paused as if not willing to voice the ghastly thought, "to plunge our Universe into suicidal strife, and engulf the magnificent fruits of inter-planetary civilization."
Bill Nardon while engaged in appraising the reactions of those present, couldn't help being amused with part of his mind at the Terran Leader's purple periods. "Dearly loves speeches!" He exclaimed mentally in the curious mental short-hand with which he was wont to soliloquize.
"Ship after inter-planetary ship has disappeared without trace somewhere in transit between the inner and outer planets.... That is," he amended, "the known outer planets which include uninhabited Jupiter and its uncolonized Moons, the great centers of civilization—Europa and Neptune. I cannot speak for Uranus which has only been partly explored, and those two unknown quantities, Pluto and especially Saturn, that planet of maddening contradictions on which no space vessel has been able to land. Thousands upon thousands of passengers, colonists of all races, and untold treasure has vanished into thin air, without trace. I submit," Antaran drew himself to his full skeletal height of over six feet, thin to the point of emaciation and austere in all the dignity of his two hundred years, "I submit that Terra is blameless—that the infamy of this outrage is surpassed only by the mystery of the purpose behind it all!" He stood grim and silent, with folded arms, his translucent gray eyes searching the faces before him.
And pandemonium broke loose! The Martian exquisite forgot his affected snobbishness and his perfumed handkerchief, and was shouting:
"The floor! Grant me the floor!"