"I have tried to be good to your woman Dora," Setta said as I passed her.
"Yes, thank you," I responded.
The Control Turret was pallid with overhead starlight. Its big circular glassite windows showed me the spread of the planetoid's barren surface underneath us. We had dropped down through cloud layers now. The wild naked wastes of the little world's surface were no more than ten thousand feet down. Still there seemed nothing but barren metal rocks; no sign of life human or otherwise.
"So you did not die, Tom Ralston. Welcome to our little colony!"
Torkine's ironic voice greeted me. He was seated at the control table where the intricate dials, levers and vacuums of the disc's mechanisms were ranged. He stood up as I entered. And beside him I saw Dora. She was still clad in her Earth garments, and her long pale-blonde hair was braided and coiled on her head. I have not spoken of Dora's beauty. Loving her, my own opinion of it possibly was exaggerated; and yet I have never known a man, or a woman either, who differed greatly from me in praising it—a delicate, ethereal beauty.
She gave a little cry as she saw me, half started to her feet, and then sank back on the bench beside Torkine. Her face was pallid, but she was trying to smile at me.
"Welcome," Torkine said again. "Come sit here with us, Ralston, and I'll show you our new world. You see he did not die, little Dora?"
I saw Torkine now as a huge burly giant; six feet four at least. A swaggering, handsome fellow, this escaped convict. In age he could have been thirty odd. He was grinning at me ironically as he shoved a metal chair toward me.
"The Supreme One will be glad to have you," he added. "You and Dora Franklin. Especially Dora. We need Earth beauty in our motley little colony of humans. The Supreme One spoke to me of that—there will be several marriages soon after we arrive tonight. The Great Master is deciding now which men and which women of our humans shall be mated."
Omnipotence. Torkine's irony was gone now; he spoke casually, as though stating a casual fact. Humans here, who before the power of the Supreme One were no longer individuals to have a will and emotions of their own. Everything to be decided for us.