"Tell your master I want to see him," I said. "And take me to the girl, Venta."
The fellow leered. "You talk like you own the ship," he commented.
The doorslide closed. His footsteps retreated, but presently they came back. He opened the door. "The Great-Master says, bring you," he said with an ironic grin. "Come on. You can both come."
Silently we followed him down a narrow metal corridor.
"This way—" I saw our captor now as a bulky six-foot fellow clad incongruously in a crudely plaited robe of dried vegetable fibre, draped upon him like a Roman toga. He stood aside at an oval doorway; and Jim and I went into a small triangular room. Starlight filtered into it from a side bull's-eye.
Clad still in her brief garment, Venta sat on a square pad on the floor. As we entered she flung me a look, and then stared straight ahead.
"So? This is the fellow who thought he would steal my little Venta? Come in, Frane. Stand over there; I want to look you over."
Karl Curtmann. He was seated in a small, straight-backed armchair. He was a smallish, slim fellow, not over forty perhaps. A vivid blue toga encased him; sandals were on his feet. At our entrance he raised one of his bare ornamented arms with a gesture.
The costume was queerly incongruous to a modern Earthman; but upon Curtmann there was an immense dignity, a sense of the consciousness of his own greatness. More than mere conceit, it seemed to radiate from him. On his heavy, square-jawed face there was a look of amused contempt as he regarded me.