And in the background:

“Oh, Cecil, I can’t do that step—”

“Turn the music up louder—”

“But I don’t like anchovies—”

“Prince,” cried Che, “do hurry! It’s started to snow again. You know this would never have happened, Cecil, if you hadn’t decided to do parlor tricks with the hobenstocks.”

“Come on, sweetheart, let’s dance!”

“I told you, no! We’re too close to the edge!”

Below Lorq’s feet, on the floor screen, transmitting natural light, ice and gravel and boulders shone in the moonlight as the Caliban lowered.

“How many of them are there?” Lorq asked. “The ship isn’t that big.”

“They’ll squeeze.”

On the icy ledge that slipped across the screen, some were seated on a green poncho with wine bottles, cheeses, and baskets of food. Some were dancing. A few sat around on canvas chairs. One had scrambled to a higher ledge and was shading his eyes, staring up at the ship.

“Che,” Prince said, “we’re here. Get everything packed. We can’t wait around all day.”

“Good heavens! That is you up there. Come on, everybody, we’re on our way! Yes, that’s Prince!”

There was an explosion of activity on the ledge. The youngsters began to run about, picking things up, putting them in knapsacks; two people were folding the poncho.

“Edgar! Don’t throw that away! It’s ‘forty-eight, and you can’t just pick up a bottle any old where. Yes, Hillary, you may change the music. No! Don’t turn the heater off yet! Oh, Cecil, you are a fool. Brrrr!—well, I suppose we’ll be off in a moment or two. Of course I’ll dance with you, honey. Just not so close to the edge. Wait a second. Prince? Prince…!”

“Che!” Prince called as Lorq settled still closer. “Do you have any rope down there?” He put his hand over the mike. “Did you see her in Mayham’s Daughters where she acted the wacky, sixteen-year-old daughter of that botanist?”

Lorq nodded.

“That wasn’t acting.” He took his hand from the mike again. “Che! Rope! Do you have any rope?”

“Oodles! Edgar, where’s all that rope? But we climbed up here on something! There it is! Now, what do I do?”

“Tie big knots in it every couple of feet. How far are we above you?”

“Forty feet? Thirty feet? Edgar! Cecil! Jose! You heard him. Tie knots!”

On the floor screen Lorq watched the shadow of the yacht slip over the bergs; he let the boat fall even lower.

“Lorq, open the hatch in the drive-room when we’re—

“We’re seventeen feet above them,” Lorq called over his shoulder. “That’s it, Prince!” He reached forward. “And it is open.”

“Fine!”

Prince ducked through the doorway into the drive-room. Cold air slapped Lorq’s back. Dan and Brian held the ship steady in the wind.

On the floor screen Lorq saw one of the boys fling the rope up at the ship—Prince would be standing in the open hatchway to catch it in his silver glove. It took three tries. Then Prince’s voice came back over the wind: “Right! I’ve got it tied. Come on up!” And one after another they mounted the knotted rope.

“There you go. Watch it—”

“Man, it’s cold out there! Soon as you get past the heating field-”

“I’ve got you. Right in—”

“Didn’t think we’d make it. Hey, you want some Chateauneuf du Pape ‘forty-eight? Che says you can’t get—”

The voices filled the drive-room. Then:

“Prince! Luscious of you to rescue me! Are you going to have any nineteenth-century Turkish music at your party? We couldn’t get any local stations, but there was this educational program beaming up from New Zealand. Airy! Edgar invented a new step. You get down on your hands and knees and just swing your up and down. Jose, don’t fall back onto that silly mountain! Come in here this instant and meet Prince Red. He’s the one who’s giving the party, and his father has ever so many more millions than yours. Close the door now and let’s get out of the engine room. All these machines and things. It isn’t me.”

“Come inside, Che, and annoy the captain awhile. Do you know Lorq Von Ray?”

“My goodness, the boy who’s winning all those races? Why, he’s got even more money than you—”

“Shhhhh!” Prince said in a stage whisper as they came into the cabin. “I don’t want him to know.”

Lorq pulled the ship away from the mountain, then turned.

“You must be the one who won those prizes: You’re so handsome!”

Che-ong wore a completely transparent cold suit.

“Did you win them with this ship?”

She looked around the cabin, still panting from the climb up the rope. Rouged nipples flattened on vinyl with each breath.

“This is lovely. I haven’t been on a yacht in days.” And the crowd surged in behind her:

“Doesn’t anybody want any of this ‘forty-eight—”

“I can’t get any music in here. Why isn’t there any music—Cecil, do you have any more of that gold powder?”

“We’re above the ionosphere, stupid, and electromagnetic waves aren’t reflected any more. Besides, we’re moving too—”

Che-ong turned to them all. “Oh, Cecil, where has that marvelous golden dust got to? Prince, Lorq, you must try this. Cecil is the son of a mayor—”

“Governor—”

“—on one of those tiny worlds we’re always hearing about, very far away. He had this gold powder that they collect from crevices in the rocks. Oh, look, he’s still got lots and lots!”

The world began to spin beneath them.

“See, Prince, you breathe it in, like this. Ahhhh! It makes you see the most marvelous colors in everything you look at and hear the most incredible sounds in everything you hear, and your mind starts running about and filling in absolutely paragraphs between each word. Here, Lorq—”

“Watch it!” Prince laughed. “He’s got to get us back to Paris!”

“Oh!” exclaimed Che, “it won’t bother him. We’ll just get there a little faster, that’s all.”

Behind them the others were saying:

“Where did she say this goddamn party was?”

“Ile St-Louis. That’s in Paris.”

“Where—?”

“Paris, baby, Paris. We’re going to a party in—”

In the middle of the fourth century the Byzantine Emperor Julian, tiring of the social whirl of the Cite de Paris (whose population, then under a thousand, dwelt mostly in skin huts clustered about a stone and wooden temple sacred to the Great Mother), moved across the water to the smaller island.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the queen of a worldwide cosmetic industry, to escape the pretensions of the Right Bank and the bohemian excesses of the Left, established here her Paris pied a terre, the walls of which were lined with a fortune in art treasures (while across the water, a twin-towered cathedral had replaced the wooden temple).

At the close of the thirty-first century, its central avenue hung with lights, the side alleys filled with music, menageries, drink, and gaming booths, while fireworks boomed in the night, the Ile St.-Louis held Prince Red’s party.

“This way! Across here!”

They trooped over the trestled bridge. The black Seine glittered. Across the water, foliage dripped the stone balustrades. The sculptured buttresses of Notre Dame, floodlit now, rose behind the trees in the park on the Cite.

“No one can come onto my island without a mask!” Prince shouted.

As they reached the bridge’s center, he vaulted to the rail, grabbed one of the beams, and waved over the crowd with his silver hand. “You’re at a party! You’re at Prince’s party! And everybody wears a mask!” Spheres of fireworks, blue and red, bloomed on the dark behind his bony face.

“Airy!’ squealed Che-ong, running to the rail. “But if I wear a mask, nobody will recognize me, Prince! The studio only said I could come if there was publicity!”

He jumped, grabbed her vinyl glove, and led her down the steps. There, on racks, hundreds of full-headed masks glared.

“But I have a special one for you, Che!” He pulled down a two-foot, transparent rat’s head, ears rimmed with white fur, eyebrows sequined, jewels shaking at the end of each wire whisker.