They were led around the perimeter of the enclosure to places not far from the high seat.  Van Rycke settled down with a grunt of satisfaction.  It was plain that the Free Traders were numbered among the nobility.  They could be sure of good trade in the days to come.

Delegations from neighboring clans arrived in close companies of ten or twelve and were granted seats, as had been the Terrans, in groups.  Dane noted that there was no intermingling of clan with clan.  And, as they were to understand later that night, there was a very good reason for that precaution.

“Hope all our adaption shots work,” Ali murmured, eyeing with no pleasure at all the succession of platters now being borne through the inner opening of the table.

While the Traders had learned long ago that the wisest part of valor was not to sample alien strong drinks, ceremony often required that they break bread (or its other world equivalent) on strange planets.  And so science served expediency and now a Trader bound for any Galactic banquet was immunized, as far as was medically possible, against the evil consequences of consuming food not originally intended for Terran stomachs.  One of the results being that Traders acquired a far flung reputation of possessing bird-like appetites—­since it was always better to nibble and live, than to gorge and die.

Groft had not yet taken his place in the vacant chieftain’s chair.  For the present he stood in the center of the table circle, directing the captive slaves who circulated with the food.  Until the magic moment when the clan themselves would proclaim their overlord, he remained merely the eldest son of the house, relatively without power.

As the endless rows of platters made their way about the table the basket lights on the tops of the pillars were ignited, dispelling the dusk of evening.  And there was an attendant stationed by each to throw on handsful of aromatic bark which burned with puffs of lavender smoke, adding to the many warring scents.  The Terrans had recourse at intervals to their own pungent smelling bottles, merely to clear their heads of the drugging fumes.

Luckily, Dane thought as the feast proceeded, that smoke from the braziers went straight up.  Had they been in a roofed space they might have been overcome.  As it was—­were they entirely conscious of all that was going on around them?

His reason for that speculation was the dance now being performed in the center of the hall—­their fight with the gorp being enacted in a series of bounds and stabbings.  He was sure that he could no longer trust his eyes when the claw knife of the victorious dancer-hunter apparently passed completely through the chest of another wearing a grotesque monster mask.

As a fitting climax to their horrific display, three of the men who had been with them on the reef entered, dragging behind them—­still enmeshed in the hunting net—­the gorp which Dane had stunned.  It was uncurled now and very much alive, but the pincer claws which might have cut its way to safety were encased in balls of hard substance.