Annellica remained bored and indifferent to the revelry. She drank sparingly and passed up a hundred opportunities to be alone with me. She paid meticulous attention to her husband's wants with the quiet efficiency and anticipation of a trained secretary, but I caught her eyeing me with a most provocative, speculating look. My experience with married virgins was too limited to interpret her glances.
All revolved around the Major. When he ate, we all ate. When he over-drank and slept, we slept.
I never did discover which three nieces were supposed to be "mine." None paid me any attention, and Daphne, much to my relief, never insisted upon my activity in his Bacchanalian affairs.
Before we arrived at Tigursh II I was quite fed up with my host, drunk or sober. His indefatigable, sensual tastes wore on my nerves, but I still had no conception of the Roman carnival this was to turn into.
We touched down a few hundred yards from my prospecting camp which was located at the edge of the two-hundred-mile plain. Daphne stowed the girls in their rooms like so many playthings, and the faceless captain announced that the ramp was down.
At the first smell of the hot, humid, over-rich air, the Major rared back his head and said, "I like it!"
I had forgotten the rather exhilarating effect of the high-oxygen content. Coupled with the low-gravity, Tigursh II induced a mild euphoria on its human visitors. My planet was small and dense, and the rapid rotation—once every seven and a half hours—made for violent, capricious air currents and weather.
"I'll hike over to the compound and check on my crew," I told Daphne as the three of us bounced down the ramp.
"Don't bother," he said imperiously. "We passed them on the way in. Meant to tell you. I've been checking on them. You've got a nice thorium deposit, but it's a mile under that mud down there in the jungle." He waved carelessly to the south.