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He is greeted by a procession of the court and by a parade of the city's people, followed by The Festival of the Moons.
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The silvery seas and green continents of Throon rushed up toward the Caris as the warship made planet-fall with massive disregard of preliminary deceleration.
Gordon caught his breath as he looked down. From the edge of a silver ocean rose a lofty range of mountains that flashed and glittered as though of glass. They were of glass, he saw a moment later, a towering range formed by extrusion of vast masses of molten silicates from the planet.
And perched on a plateau of these Glass Mountains high above the sea was a fairy, unreal city. Its graceful domes and towers were like bubbles of colored glass themselves. Pinnacles and terraces took the light of Canopus and flashed it back in a glory of quivering effulgence. Throon City, this -- the core and capital of the Empire.
. . .
Every minute John Gordon felt more strongly the hopelessness of what he had set out to do. How could he maintain his impersonation, when everything here was so stunningly new and strange?
. . .
"What in the name of all the star-devils are you talking about?" demanded the emperor. "You should know as well as I why Shorr Kan wanted his hands on you. To get the secret of the Disruptor, of course!"
The Disruptor? What was that?
. . . The Feast of Moons . . .
Gordon stopped stock still, shaken by an inward quaking. He stood on a wide dais at the side of a circular hall that was of cathedral loftiness and splendor.
. . .
But not all of these banqueters were human!
. . . [Lianna] . . .
She was tall, though she did not look so beside Arn Abbas' giant height. As tall as himself, her slim, rounded figure perfectly outlined by her long, shimmering white gown, she held her ash-golden hair proudly high.
Pride, beauty, consciousness of authority -- these were what Gordon read in the chiselled white face, the faintly scornful red mouth, the cool, clear gray eyes that rested gravely on him.
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