"But as usual, they failed to take into consideration the 'Unpredictable,' that cosmic accident that recurs always in the lives of men—thus the World-State never even dreamed of what were later on to be called 'The Societies.'"
Fermin the Arch-Mutant paused meditatively in his reading, and wondered with faint amusement if Seville-Lorca peering from the summit of some remote Nirvana could see the stupendous drama that was being enacted in the Moons, and write on the spectral pages of a book, a new addition to his "Annals." But his sardonic reverie was suddenly arrested in mid-flight, for at his feet the great, golden Felirene had stirred with the preternatural awareness of the feline, its immense green eyes feral as it sensed....
I
"O Moon of my delight
That knows no waning..."
Terra—19th Century.
In the semi-darkness, the vast crysto-plast observatory was deserted. For the fifteen Tiers devoted to the feast, overflowed with celebrants who observed the three hundredth anniversary of their landing.
All Io seemed devoted to the chief preoccupation in their lives, and, had managed to make of an historic fact, the excuse for a planet-wide bacchanale. Julian Varon removed his black silk mask and stepped to the wide balcony overhanging the plains. The frosty air was like a benison on his narrow, high-cheek-boned face, and the silence was a greater blessing still. Vaguely, he remembered the lines of an ancient poem of the twentieth century, which, by one of those ironies of Fate, had been preserved when far greater masterpieces had faded into oblivion:
"The brandy's very good—