CHAPTER -1

 Cadmus trembled now as he waited. He had been waiting too long. Sweat was heavy on his clean-muscled body. A bright eagerness blazed from his gray eyes. And beyond the small pressure dome of the combination lab and living quarters, the frigid night pounded at the translucent teflonite—gnawed hungrily at that small dot of life and warmth on the barren asteroid.

 Now that he was almost ready to step into the matter transmitter, each moment had become an eternity as he waited to be transported almost instantly to Mars. To the city of Akal-jor. To his final destiny.

He cursed softly at the cloud of amnesia aching in his skull. Johlan the Venusian scientist had had him in various states of hypnosis for some time, educating him for this task, and had placed a protective veneering of amnesia across his mind to protect his purpose from the Silver Guard's mental probers in case he were captured.

Since birth, Johlan had raised Zaleel and Cadmus on the asteroid. The three of them were unconditionally dedicated to the great "plan." Because of his fogged memory, Cadmus now knew but little concerning the details of the plan. He only knew that he would die to carry it through. That if he failed, Tri-Planet civilization would go on down to final decay and ruin.

The three of them, three frail motes of intelligent life, must save the vast System. Old Johlan the Venusian. Zaleel of the golden hair and generous red lips. And Cadmus the fighter. To fight the Silver Guards, and the gigantic mechanical intelligence of the Great Gray God, Cadmus had only the sword at his side and the crude energy gun Johlan had made. The energy gun was too small for efficiency but it had to be small in order to be carried unnoticed beneath his tunic.

Zaleel was gone. She had stepped into the transmat months before to carry out her part of the plan. Cadmus remembered only the shiny richness of her hair, the warm promise of her lips.

A signal light blinked. A glow crackled round the electronic power rim of the transmat. Cadmus shot one last glance through the pressure dome where he had spent most of his lifetime in preparation.

A thin hard smile parted his space-burned face as he stepped into the transmat and melted into a blurred vortex of coloration.

Pain beyond thought shattered his consciousness to shreds. The blackness was absolute. The cold was ineffable.

 It was the year of the Gray God, 257 A.G.

Tomorrow was the day of Worship at the Gray God's shrine. Beyond the city of Akal-jor was the vast valley where the Gray God was born, and where it lived on, eternally, beneath its impregnable gray metal dome, five miles in diameter, and a mile high. Shielded by half a mile of deadly radioactive field, a teeming moat of gamma rays through which no living thing could pass.

On three worlds, hopeless, futile, static beings of a dying civilization prepared for the big exodus to Mars and to the Gray God's altars. Then they would return to their dull cycle of meaningless existence to dream in some drugged escapeasy, or to die horribly in one of Consar III's atomic power plants, mine shafts, or his isotope factories.

Consar III had arrived in Akal-jor for the worship. With him were five thousand slaves. Bathing in countless hedonistic luxuries, he awaited the worship to begin at tomorrow's dawn. Meanwhile he looked for new and interesting female slaves.

Next to sensual pleasure, Consar enjoyed most the contemplation of his great power over the masses of three worlds. He could never lose that power. Unless the Gray God died, and that was impossible of course. Or unless he died. He would die certainly, sometime. Then he wouldn't worry about pleasures or power.

From the windows of his Martian mansion, the Palace of Pearl, he looked to the east into the valley of the Gray God. It towered, a massive gray metal skull. Consar III laughed. The Gray God was a machine. Therefore its position as governmental dictator of the System remained absolutely stable. Nothing could ever change again. His position as sole exploiter of the resources of the System, under the title of Consar Exploitations Interplanetary, was to remain unchanged forever. It was a perfect setup.

The System was Consar's really, despite the fact that the Gray God ruled through mechanical dictates. All the dictates favored Consar. Consar and his hedonistic rituals, sycophants, courtiers and concubines.

There was always the rumor of an underground seeking to overthrow the status quo. The Cadmeans, who had tried once before to destroy the Great Machine, had been wiped out of existence. Or at least most of them. If any did remain alive, they were ineffectual. They would be discovered and killed or enslaved by the Silver Guards. The Guards didn't really work for Consar, not directly. They were conditioned in the council tower to obey the dictates of the Great Machine. But those dictates all favored Consar's position of royalty, so it amounted to the same thing.

He moved the animated throne across the room to the edge of his roseate pleasure pool that shimmered in the middle of the jeweled floor. Above him, joylamps spun their songs of colored sensuality. His three hundred pounds of white flabby flesh settled into depths of luxuriance.

A small spidery man entered and bowed. "There is a girl here in Akal-jor, Illustrious Consar."

"Ah. Go on, Gaston." Consar's voice bubbled with soft power like lava. "You have acted rapidly and with customary clarity."

"She is a dancer in an escapeasy called the Maenad on the Street of Shadows. She is alive and vital and desirable as no woman among your women, My Ruler. She—"

"Bring her, Gaston, before dawn. After the worship, I'll take her back to Terra. Is she Martian?"

"Terro. Her name is Zaleel."

"Good. You can obtain the services of Silver Guards, as usual, under the Gray God's labor conscription edict fifty-seven."

The spidery little man bowed out. Consar III pressed a button. Soft durolite arms lowered him into the swirling waters of his pleasure pool. He sank slowly as the crystaline waters washed him gently in its bath of a thousand dreams.

Spiraling patterns fused, disassociated atomic rejoined. Cadmus stumbled from the transmat receiver. As he lurched through dusty damp shadows, a familiar, non-terrestrial voice called. The Venusian padded toward him on webbed feet, green scales shining in the cold luciferin light of a trunjbug lamp.

Cadmus' voice was still shaky, rattling through the subterranean gloom somewhere below Akal-jor. He couldn't remember where. He could remember very little. "I've got to know more about the plan," he said quickly. "More about myself. This fog is driving me crazy!"

The ancient Venusian said, "You'll know more, a lot more, if you succeed in destroying the Great Machine. It wouldn't be safe to know very much—at least until just before you're ready to strike. And you must strike the final blow at dawn."

"Was it necessary to wipe practically everything out of my mind," growled Cadmus. "I seem to be desperately groping for some memory, some facts that I should remember now! Do you—?"

"Forget everything but the immediate task before you," said Johlan tensely. "You strike just as dawn strikes. Just as millions of worshippers emerge from those transmats in the valley, the Great Gray God which they worship will die—before their eyes. They must see it die so they can carry eyewitness accounts back to their own worlds. We must succeed this time. Another solar year and the System will be too sunken in the disease of unchange and futility and defeat ever to change."

Cadmus breathed hoarsely. "Let me get on with it. Give me the necessary information!"

"Very well," sighed Johlan. "You have only one advantage. You realize what it is. Having been born in the asteroids, you don't have the disciplinary band in your head. The Guards, by using their coercion rays, can slay or paralyze any living inhabitant of the three worlds through the disciplinary band. That will allow you great advantage. Now—first you go to the Maenad on the Street of Shadows. Zaleel is a dancing girl there. She'll give you the equipment to destroy the Machine."

Cadmus gripped Johlan's boneless cold fingers. "I'll get the job done," said Cadmus with a certainty he was far from feeling.

Johlan nodded. "Straight ahead and up the first stairway. It will lead you directly onto the Street of Shadows."

Later, Cadmus gripped the sword hilt as he hugged the mouldy green wall of aged dhroon-stone. His eyes shifted up and down the crooked alley through filthy pools of splashing light from Phobos. Down its scrofulous length were a number of nameless dens and dives where defeated hopeless beings found solace in deadly drugs and deadlier dreams. He sucked in his breath. Yes—he had heard the jackboots on the stone street. Coming toward him from the direction of the Maenad, cutting off his advance. Part of a labor recruiting drive no doubt. Phobos' pale light glowed on silver uniforms and an array of deadly weapons. They were fine looking soldiers though they were nothing really but slaves.

He slid the sword free. The energy weapon beneath his tunic must be saved for an extreme emergency. Swords had been in use when the Machine had been constructed. Anyone could still carry one. Few bothered. Few cared. They were past the hope of fighting.

Cadmus turned. He had to run away, away from the Maenad as well as the Guards. He might not get back and time was getting too precious. The city swarmed everywhere with Guards because of the great worship at dawn.

He snarled like a trapped animal as hunched shapes spilled from the dark before him. Huge shaggy Bluemarts from the desert caves. Anthropoid mutations of a savage intelligence at the end of an evolutionary blind alley. They mimicked the Guards, killed for them, captured labor conscripts for them. Sometimes they died, too, thought Cadmus as he ran among them, striking desperately in an attempt to cut his way through to escape the Guards.

Blood ran black. Bluemarts bellowed pain. Two sprawled out to writhe and die on the ancient stones. Long heavy leather whips studded with brass spikes crashed around Cadmus as he dodged and fought and danced away.

He saw the Guards, close now. They were confused. Their coercion rays were being used, Cadmus knew, but he had no disciplinary band. A policejet came down and hovered overhead. A brilliant search beam slithered over the walls. A whiplash crashed against his shoulder, stunning him. Another scraped cloth and flesh from his side.

Dazed, he reached for his energy gun. But that whiplash had ripped away his harness, holster, gun and all. He staggered along the wall. A dull roaring pounded in his temples. Then he heard the unreal, whining voice of the old woman from the thick shadows of the wall. He heard but he could see nothing of her.

There was a dismal creaking of stone on stone.

"This way, my dear boy. Quickly, or you're a dead one!"