habit. They could always get a rise out of Orion. The Athens Eirenicon
said that yeast might fail to rise, but touch the button and Orion would
rise like a bird."

At that instant the galaxy jerked up the back curtain again, and when the
audience could control itself, Constantine Jopp, grinning meanly, asked:

"Why does he wear the girdle?"

"It is not a girdle--it is a belt," was Dicky Fergus's reply. "The gods
gave it to him because he was a favourite. There was a lady called
Artemis--she was the last of them. But he went visiting with Eos,
another lady of previous acquaintance, down at a place called Ortygia,
and Artemis shot him dead with a shaft Apollo had given her; but she
didn't marry Apollo neither. She laid Orion out on the sky, with his
glittering belt, around him. And Orion keeps on rising."

"Will he ever stop rising?" asked Holden.

Followed for the conspirators a disconcerting moment; for, when the
laughter had subsided, a lazy voice came from the back of the hall,
"He'll stop long enough to play with Apollo a little, I guess."

It was Gow Johnson who had spoken, and no man knew Terry O'Ryan better,
or could gauge more truly the course he would take. He had been in many
an enterprise, many a brush with O'Ryan, and his friendship would bear
any strain.

O'Ryan recovered himself from the moment he saw the back curtain, and
he did not find any fun in the thing. It took a hold on him out of all