Titus poured his tenth consecutive julep—directly from the bottle, without the benefit of ice, sugar or mint—and leaned back in his chair. His occupancy of a corner of the veranda had been a hard-won concession. Almost indifferent now, he stared at the hundreds of virtuosos and shouted, "Go home!"
 
But there was little zing in his voice and the words were, of course, lost in the confused sea of sound—musical, argumentative, operatic and otherwise. Heedless, the orchestras played, the ballet dancers whirled, painters sketched, gymnasts tumbled, dramatists soliloquized and the vocalists made it plain that they would give no quarter.
McWorther's World shud-shuddered. And the towering peaks of machinery and grain, cases and crates rumbled ominously as their slopes shifted. Titus' ears popped and he suddenly felt a giddiness that was all out of proportion to the number of juleps he had consumed.
An all-too-brief silence fell over the multitude. Then, as stability returned to the planetoid, they dived back into their various activities.
They were damned fools, McWorther thought. Even if it meant risking their lives, they would be willing to stay there and consort in their Olympian ecstasy of artistic communion. It was a field day, old home week, esoteric anschluss, a fraternal blowout—all rolled into one.
A distant explosion rent what was left of the compact atmosphere. And, as an immediate consequence, additional hundreds of tons of grain hissed down a nearby slope and eased into the lake.
Somewhat concerned, Titus stared at the myriad points of light coruscating deep out in space. What was happening was obvious: There were millions, perhaps billions of articles of freight in the same orbit—all maintaining their distances from the planetoid and from one another by virtue of their mass-repulsion generators. And, where that many electronic units were concerned, the breakdown factor became a predictable quantity. McWorther's World could now expect to be the target of a plunging chunk of cargo once every four or five minutes.
Another few hours, Titus realized, and that interval would be reduced to four or five seconds. For he could readily see the infinite streams of freighters that were still arriving and dropping off additional cargo.
As a matter of fact, it was so thick out there now that only a faint, diffused light was coming through from McWorther's Sun.
Titus poured himself another mintless, sugarless, iceless julep.
The insigne of the Western Cluster emblazoned on its side, a giant ship felt its way down through the atmosphere, sidled this way and that as it squeezed through the barrier of anchored Pullman crafts, pulled up and hovered over the southern edge of the veranda.
At that particular moment, Titus had been quite fascinated with the tumblers' practice session. One of the gymnasts, preparing for a back-flip, had taken a boost from the cupped hands of another. Only the resulting arc through the air was executed with slow-motion rhythm that took the performer to a height of perhaps twenty feet before he floated back to the ground.
At the same time, Titus' ears popped again and he had the odd sensation that the deck chair was shrinking away beneath him.
The newly arrived ship lowered an escalator to the surface and the pilot glided down, landing only a few feet from McWorther.
"There seems to be some mistake," he said. "I was given these coordinates and orbital factor for a—" he checked his notebook—"McWorther's World."
"This," said Titus stiffly, "is McWorther's World."
Cupping his hands, the pilot called back into the ship. "We're on the right place."
An alarmed face poked out of the hatch.
"This is it?"
Titus lurched to his feet, returning an equally startled expression. The man coming clown the escalator was President Vance Roswell of the Western Federation! He had seen the face on thousands of newscasts.
Roswell, sickened, stared at the mountains of supplies on the obscured surface of the planetoid. He tilted his head back and took in the glimmering sea of cargo out in space, the flaring trails of exhaust jets that criss-crossed in an infinite pattern as endless streams of ships jockeyed into position to discharge more freight. Then he dropped to the veranda railing and buried his face hopelessly in his hands.
By then, one of the orchestra conductors, who had also recognized the President, had abruptly brought his baton down to terminate the "Lyraen Overture." He led his ensemble into a stirring rendition of the "West Cluster Anthem."
Without interrupting his misery, Roswell elevated a limp hand and signaled for quiet.
But even before the musicians tapered to silence on a jagged, perplexed note, the other orchestra blared forth with the "East Cluster Blastoff March," all its members standing and facing the northern edge of the veranda.
Titus watched the impressive vessel float to the surface, its almost invisible repulsor beams jostling the lesser Pullman ships out of its way. Splashed across its side was the fist-clutching-galaxy symbol of the Eastern Federation.
He was still gawking when the hatch opened, ushering onto the tiled surface none other than the Emperor himself—an immense, brilliantly robed man who swept like a bowling ball through his retinue of aides.
There were two distant explosions, one close on the heels of the other, and the planetoid convulsed. That time, Titus imagined, he had seen one of the masses of cargo plunging to the surface.
The Emperor drew up before Titus. But although his lips moved, no audible sound came from his mouth, since he was in the immediate range of the Eastern Symphony Orchestra's bass section.
Sco............