Doomsday 257 A.G.!

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!"

II

Her hand was hard and dry, running down his torn arm like a deadly scorpion. The aperture in the wall opened further and a hot, stinking wind belched out. He dropped as paws gripped his booted ankles from behind. He twisted, thrust his sword into a shaggy throat. His hand felt the harness he had lost. He dragged it inside with him, into a black, forgotten hole.

The opening closed. There was an invisible stench of stale bodies and drug vapor. He could hear the old woman's hoarse breathing. He hooked the broken harness about his waist.

"Light," he gasped. "What's this, a tomb?"

"It will be, dear boy," she said. "We must move quickly down into the catacombs. I wear the receiver band. I feel them groping, but it's you they want. They don't know I'm helping you, and they don't want an old bag of bones like me. But hurry. They'll blast in the wall."

Flame glowed. She lighted a smoky taper. He saw a bent ragged packet of animated bones, a mop of gray hair and a narrow hawked beak. In niches along the winding cavern, shapes stirred. Moisture dripped. Turgid Lethean vapors from escapist drugs curled sluggishly. Skeletal faces stared, glazed and unseeing, dying.

Cadmus swore. Three worlds were dying like this. A vast social system that had stopped moving, evolving, so it was dying. Fast! A yellow Martian girl's luminous eyes stared vacantly into shadows, buried in some dream far from the hopeless, meaningless reality.

Cadmus studied the old woman with growing suspicion. The amnesia was a throbbing ache of unknowing. If he only knew more. There was so much he felt he had to know, right now, but he couldn't remember! Who was this sudden benefactress? Not from the Asteroids, for she wore the disciplinary band. Yet she had saved him, preserved him a little longer to carry out an impossible task.

She turned, anticipating his suspicion. "Zaleel sent me. You can trust me, Cadmus. I know these catacombs. I'm old Pirri who sells her Lethean drugs along the forgotten places of Akal-jor. You Cadmeans have a few sympathizers. Some still have hope. The Cadmean society is that hope."

A wave of fear blew through Cadmus' fogged brain. "Cadmeans. My—memory! Johlan erased almost everything. I remember nothing—yet—there's something—something I've got to remember!"

She didn't answer. They walked on. A Martian half-breed ogled them from a niche in the stone, jaws chewing the mind-shattering pulp of the Venusian thiln-flower. Wrecks of three worlds. They believed in nothing but their dreams—and the Gray God in the valley. The former they believed in as an only escape from a hopeless reality. The latter, because they had been conditioned to regard it as a god, as omnipotent.

You may fear a god, and hate a god, Cadmus mused, but you cannot desert a faith with impunity.

"You know a lot of Cadmus and the Cadmeans," he said as they walked deeper into the gloom. "I know nothing. Nothing! Listen, who is Cadmus?" He frowned. A ridiculous question.

"You are he," said Old Pirri. "Gods and heroes will never die."

"Who am I?"

"Cadmus."

He swore. His head ached more with doubts and hidden fears. A desperate yearning to know clawed frantically in his skull.

Old Pirri said, "There is a myth, centuries old, dear boy." Her voice softened. "But myths repeat themselves. They're rooted in the soul. In this myth, that was born on Terra when it was young and fresh and when blood was hot with early flames, there was a prince. He was tall and strong, and his skin was gold over muscles of steel."

She peered over her shoulder. "His name was Cadmus."

"Yes."

"Prince Cadmus slew a dragon and sowed its teeth. From these sprang armed men who fought and founded a great city—"

"Teeth—dragon—armed men, what are the symbols here?" A strange thrill trembled in him as the words took hold.

"You are the son of a much more recent Cadmus who was named from that ancient myth. Only he knew why he called himself Cadmus. He kept that secret to himself. But you are his son. If anyone knows your father's great secret of why he called himself Cadmus, it is you. You are Cadmus, now."

"But Johlan—he stifled my brain so the Guards couldn't probe my secrets—"

Old Pirri's eyes glowed, became red pools. "Zaleel told me. She, too, is ignorant of many things other than her assigned duties. Beware, lovely boy. Beware of friends and patriots who are out to achieve selfish ends. Beware even Zaleel, and Johlan, and Old Pirri. Remember history, and recall that when the Great Machine God was spawned and stopped all progress, wars were brewing between the worlds. Remember that was the reason the Machine was made—to halt progress and social evolution that might lead to another atom war. If the Machine is destroyed, remember that the old hates will return. For the ancient hates between peoples and planets and ideas still smolder."

Cadmus shivered. The sword hilt was ice in his grasp.

They turned. Several corridors branched into black mouths. Bats darted from hollows. Nothing must deter him from his objective. Yet—Old Pirri spoke wisdom. When the Machine quit, the three worlds would be plunged into chaotic anarchy. No government would exist until some kind of governmental agency was established. Who, then, or what group, would aspire to power? Consar III of course, if he lived. Others if there were others who still knew how to think.

They came into a subterranean street illuminated with cold luciferin light. Escapeasies lined its length. A forgotten river flowing from ennui to forgetfulness, and death. Archways crumbled overhead. Purple spider webs shimmered.

"We're directly under the Street of Shadows," said Old Pirri. Sense-drunkening music floated from dark maws. "Just inside that escapeasy, Cadmus. A door just inside leads up into the Street of Shadows, and into the Maenad." She gripped his arm. Tears shone in her eyes.

She took a chain from about her neck. A square of metal dangled heavily from the chain as she put it over Cadmus' head.

"Dear boy," she said, "this is a small force-shield device. I got it from a Cadmean who was killed in the last revolt. Press this small lever." She demonstrated. The unit hummed with power. It glowed with a strong effulgence. "This will nullify the vibro-guns of the Guards, for a while anyway."

Footsteps pounded. Old Pirri screeched, horribly, then went down on her knees. "Run—dear boy. Guards—" her voice shattered with pain. Her flesh jerked with the agony of a vibro-beam.

But he was safe, thought Cadmus quickly, while a sad rage wrenched his heart. She had sacrificed herself for him. She had given him the little force-shield unit.

He dropped down behind a crumbling column near the old woman as three Guards edged along the street. "Back—into the wall—find Maenad." Red froth specked her lips. "Beware all who might get power—when you slay—the Gray God—dear boy—"

She died. A blind rage burned up, flamed in Cadmus' brain. He yelled wildly as he raked the energy gun from his tunic and fired point blank at the approaching Guards.

Part of the street, with the Guards in it, erupted in a sheet of white flame. Shattered bodies, bits of uniform spread out through blazing columns like an unfolding flower. He dropped the burned-out gun and leaped backward, into the wall.

He ran blindly. Many-legged rats spilled out into the dark, ran with glowing eyes beside him. Pink, fleshy scorpions scurried before the vibrations of the blast. Later he found a wandering Venusian drug-peddlar who guided him to the trap-door leading up into the Maenad. It was only a few minutes now, until dawn.

There were no Guards in the escapeasy. Dancing girls from three worlds danced with a bored lifelessness. All except one. Zaleel. A flood of red-gold hair, flashing rust-flecked eyes, and smooth agile limbs. Her vitality failed to stir the sluggish futility clouding the Maenad. Her eyes flashed recognition as Cadmus edged along the wall and sat down in a shadowed booth. As the climax of her dance ended she walked to his booth and sat across from him. There was no applause. Apathetic eyes failed to follow the lithe swing of her gleaming body.

He held her hands, felt the animal warmth sparkle and tingle in his arms. "You made it, Cadmus," she breathed, eyes glowing. "I knew you would. I've got the microtape here. It's all you need to destroy the Machine—if you can reach it."

She handed him a small role of microtape. "Listen, Zaleel," he said, "I'm going crazy because of this amnesia Johlan threw over my brain. I tell you there's something vital to the plan I should know."

"You've got to keep blind faith. We can't hesitate now."

He told her about Old Pirri. She blinked at tears.

"Poor Old Pirri. She was in the first revolt. She was captured, had a disciplinary band put in her head, and slaved five years in one of Consar's mines. She lived only to see the Machine's end."

"She died too soon," said Cadmus.

"Your memory will return if you succeed, Cadmus. Johlan planted a threshold-response word in your subconscious mind. When you hear that word your full memory will come back. I heard him make the posthypnotic suggestion. But I can't tell you what it is. If you were captured—"

"I know. How and when will I receive this word?"

"It will be on millions of lips—if you succeed."

Cadmus said quickly, "All right. Give me the details, and let me get at it! Now what's the microtape for?"

She leaned forward. The fragrance of her hair was a promise.

"You know how the Machine's mechanical brain operates. But because of your amnesia, maybe I'd better refresh your memory. Now—any question, social, economic, individual, is submitted to the supreme council in the council tower. On the top of the tower is the question submission chamber. There are big digital panel-boards with facilities to receive the questions and problems which are submitted on microtapes.

"These microtapes are placed before the photoelectric analyzing eyes of the digital panels. From there, the problems or questions are carried by electron beam tubes directly into the Machine for solving. The Machine's answer comes back through the electron beam tubes and is recorded on answer tapes. Audio tapes are recorded and broadcast from the tower. Also the broadcast is received in every Martian city and is conveyed to Venus and Earth by ethero-magnum. You remember all this?"

"Some of it," said Cadmus, frowning. "Go on."

"The Machine's doom is in that microtape I've given you, Cadmus. It contains a highly complex problem which Johlan has worked out during all these years of isolation on our asteroid. You have only to get inside that question submission chamber in the council tower. Get that tape in front of those analyzing eyes. That's all. Get the problem on that tape into the brain of the Machine."

He looked at her steadily. "And then—is that the end of the plan?"

Her hand trembled. "There's you and I, after that."

"I remember that, Zaleel. If I succeed, it's you and me together, in a new System of progress and change and hope. If I fail—"

"If we fail, Cadmus, there'll be nothing for you and me. Nothing for anyone, ever again."

He got to his feet quickly. "Zaleel, what's your part in it? Why are you dancing here?"

Red flushed her face. "I knew that one of Consar's scouts would find me during the worship. One has already found me. They'll be here to pick me up before dawn."

He gripped her shoulders, hard. His face worked with unvoiced emotion.

"I've got to do it, Cadmus. My father died in one of Consar's Lunarian mines. He died—horribly. I'll settle with Consar myself. I have an explosive lithium capsule which...." It would be easier to do it than to talk about it.

She finished. "Everything will be dead then that threatens our System. The Machine, Consar, the Guards—they'll die when the Machine goes. The council tower will be the next center of governmental operations, no matter who handles it. The people have grown accustomed to receiving all their commands from the Tower."

"I'll see you then," said Cadmus. "If we succeed." He went quickly out into the Street of Shadows.

He flattened against the wall as the five Guards came past and turned into the Maenad. A civilian was among them, a grotesque little man, like a spider. His garments were studded with jewels and precious stones which could only signify that he was one of Consar III's personal slaves.

Which, in turn, signified that they had come for Zaleel.

A bitter hate burned in Cadmus as he edged past the Maenad's entrance toward the policejet the Guards and the civilian had parked in the street. He unsheathed his sword. He turned the little force-field unit to full power. This was it. Dawn was about to break.

He had the advantage of surprise and here was a way. He knew he could never get into that council tower from the ground levels. It was too heavily guarded. He might manage it from the air.

He ran straight out of the shadows, taking advantage of the surprise that froze the two Guards standing outside the entrance panel of the policejet. Deimos blinked as Cadmus' sword struck. Its light was red. The slain Guard sank wordlessly in a fresh warm pool that was redder still on the worn stones.

Cadmus laughed tonelessly as he struck again.

III

The second Guard's face lost its sharply disciplined mask for an instant, then he, too, died in the shadow of his glistening plane. Cadmus was retrieving their weapons as two more Guards ran out of the Maenad toward him, evidently called by one of the two slain Guards before they died.

Cadmus shot the policejet straight up beneath a blast of fire. Through the pre-dawn chill, he angled it toward the council tower. He had only minutes now to get inside the Tower and get that microtape before the Machine's analyzing eyes.

Below him sprawled the spires and sharp minarets of the ancient capital city. To the east beyond the fifth cut-off from the Low Canal, was the newer modernistic plastic council tower, rearing up into the sky for a mile, directly in the valley's mouth.

Beyond the council tower was the gigantic rounded dome of the Great Machine, gleaming dully in the mists. To the right was Consar III's pleasure palace, glittering like a monstrous and evil jewel.

Zaleel would be there soon, groveling among his slaves.

Now, from various roofports all over the city, silver policejets began to dot the sky. Cadmus unhooked an antigrav belt from beneath the seat. He pressed a stud and the cowling above him slid open. He belted the antigrav belt about his waist and stood up.

The council tower was a mile distant. A parabola would allow him to reach it, if he could avoid being spotted by the Guards while falling.

About twenty policejets, in formation as usual, were coming in from his right. He raised both neutron guns, fired, simultaneously. He used both weapons' full charge.

An incredible blast ripped out, leaving paths of condensation in its wake. Radiant energy spread forth in its basest and most deadly form, heating intolerably by sudden kinetic interchange. There was a devastating fire, a supernal electronic flash. Radiant energy blinded and burned.

The pre-dawn grayness became searing light. For an instant the area was bombarded with fragments of molten metal. But Cadmus had sent his plane in a sudden leap high above the disaster even as he fired. His plane trembled, then began to burn. Its metal hull became unbearable.

Cadmus leaped out into the darkness and began floating down, utilizing the antigrav belt's angle facets to control the direction of his fall. He looked about him. A mile behind, a hundred or so policejets were converging on that spot where he had created the sudden holocaust. By lifting his own plane and bailing out, he had put himself half a mile away, a small dark speck, falling in a slow curve directly at the top of the council tower.

The policejets were swinging away in large, ever-increasing circles, searching. Far away, he saw his own jetplane burst suddenly into white flame and crash into the sluggish red waters of the canal. Most of the policejets headed for it. Apparently there was no suspicion that he had been able to escape the ship.

Cadmus struck the top of the Tower. The mile-high dome was cold and smooth as ice as he slid down its side onto a narrow ramp. He lay flat for a moment in order to get back his strength. The city was moving from its somnolence. Beings shuffling from drugged states to worship the Gray God of stability. It was eternal slavery or death to neglect the worship.

Far below he could see a balcony opening into what would be the question submission chamber. Utilizing the antigrav belt, Cadmus slid from the ramp, down the shadowed side of the Tower. He attained the balcony and crouched behind the colonnade. The sun peered over the mountains. It reached into the valley, lapping the Machine's towering skull with crimson tongues.

Streaming from the city's main avenues, a solid river of Akal-jor's inhabitants were marching to worship at the shrine of the Gray God.

Cadmus stared at the fantastic and horrible scene. Worshipping a machine that had chained them to its unchanging pattern and was killing them. A thunderous chorus of wailing and chanting rose in a moan of suppliancy.

From every city on Mars, via transmat, other rivers of worshippers were debouching into the valley. For a brief time they would gaze with trembling awe at the monstrous metal dome that ruled them inexorably, then return to their hopeless patterns.

Via huge transmats on Terra and Venus, other rivers of worshippers numbering millions were flowing across the void. They, too, would gaze upon the Gray God's face, then return by transmat sender to their own worlds. Cadmus stared in sudden shocked fear. One abruptly obvious and terrible fact left him stunned.

The great transmats on the right side of the valley were not disgorging any worshippers. Nothing was emerging from the Venusian transmats.

NO VENUSIANS WERE COMING TO WORSHIP THE GRAY GOD.

Bewildered, stunned, Cadmus ran through the panels into the vaulted height of the question submission chamber. He would worry about this other fearful emergency once he got the microtape installed.

Across the chamber were panels containing many eyes of the photoelectric analyzers—lenses which must focus his microtape. Receptacles in front of the eyes waited for the microtape to be inserted. A red light indicated that none of the eyes were being used at that moment to analyze a problem for the Machine.

A problem scanned by these eyes was carried into the Machine by electron beam tube. The Machine, a colossal mechanical brain, was the result of the final achievements of the finest scientific minds in the System.

It could think. It could think, but its answers could never vary. The Gray God.

Cadmus ran across the chamber, inserted the microtape on its spindle shaft and moved a small switch. The eyes glowed. The red light dimmed into green, signifying that the Machine was now handling a problem.

Cadmus stumbled back toward the windows. There was no feeling of triumphant release for having fulfilled his destiny. Now that the problem Johlan had devised was submitted to the Machine's vast mechanical mind, the Machine was supposed to destroy itself.

But the big problem now was why weren't those transmats bringing Venusians to worship the Gray God? Why should only streams of screaming psychopaths from Terra and Mars march out of transmats to their pathetic worship?

What had Old Pirri said?

"Beware of friends and patriots who are such only to achieve selfish ends. Remember history, and recall that when the Great Machine God was spawned and stopped all progress, wars were brewing between the worlds. Remember that was the reason the Machine was made—to halt progress and social evolution that might lead to another atom war. If the Machine is destroyed, remember that the old hates will return...."

Cadmus shivered as he hesitated before the panels leading onto the balcony. The sun was higher now. The area about the valley was a sea of surging humanity marching out of transmat receivers.

And the Machine lay there in its vaulted silence. That mass of thinking apparatus was preparing now to solve the problem which Johlan had prepared and which Cadmus had succeeded in injecting into its mechanical brain. It would take a few minutes at least before any results appeared.

But Cadmus knew something was terribly wrong. No Venusians were yet emerging from those transmats!

A number of policejets were circling the areas about the non-functioning Venusian transmats. A greater number had landed and Cadmus could see Guards running in and out of the powerhouses.

He turned quickly as he heard the panels of the doors opening behind him. He dropped to his side, dragged frantically at the neutron gun in his belt. He caught a smearing glimpse of many faces and acted too late to save himself.

He tried to activate the force-shield unit Old Pirri had given him. But paralysis beams reached out like the fingers of a hand, gripped him, held him rigid in a slowly-fading consciousness. He thought of Zaleel. He tried to understand how their plan had seemed to succeed, but had failed.

IV

The voice penetrated through layers of pain. Cadmus lay outstretched, his eyes remained closed.

"The probers won't find anything more. I know his name. I know a little about him. But very little. He is Cadmus, the son of the first Cadmus who started the first revolt against our great System. The revolt failed of course."

A whining voice answered. "I've revived him, my ruler. He feigns unconsciousness."

"Open your eyes, Cadmus," said the heavy thick voice ironically. "Open them and look at the destruction you have brought upon our nice stable order."

Cadmus sat up, blinked back nauseous fog. An unbelievably fat man sat before him on a golden throne, studded with precious stones. A cloud of metallic birds piped a strange subdued song. Cadmus' eyes shifted to the spidery little man standing beside the throne. But Consar III gestured, and the spidery little man bowed out.

The room was bare except for several mind-probing machines, and wire mesh cages with graph screens. There was little on the screens. Johlan's amnesia injection had been very effective, thought Cadmus. Too effective. He was helpless now unless he got his memory back. He knew part of the answer. His father was the first Cadmus. And there had been a reason for calling himself that. It was of vast importance. But that threshold response word. The key word—it might never be heard now.

He was fully clothed but he was without weapons. The force-field generator was gone. His antigrav belt had been taken from him.

Cadmus said, "I never expected to meet you alive, Consar."

Consar's mountain of flesh trembled in a rumbling laugh. "So many unpredictable games the jester Chance plays, eh. It doesn't matter now what you did or didn't expect."

Cadmus started. He knew that Consar was mad with power. He knew nothing else about Consar III, except that Zaleel was to have killed him with a lithium capsule, and that she had failed.

"We tapped your mind, Cadmus. I know a great deal about you, but so little, too. You submitted a problem to the Machine—we shall refer to it as a Machine as neither of us are quite convinced that it's a god—and your purpose was that the Machine was to have destroyed itself."

Consar laughed. "It was a ridiculous purpose. You rebels with your high ideals of progress and change! Progress and change are the great errors of entropy, Cadmus. But it's too late to discuss that now. You submitted the problem but the Machine still functions."

Consar smiled. "You have driven the Machine insane!"

Cadmus' throat was dry, thick. He didn't understand.

"Come, I'll show you." Consar III pressed a button. The throne carried his bulk across the marble floor to the wide windows overlooking the council tower and the valley of the Machine.

"You see, Cadmus. The Machine is insane. You submitted a problem to it. I don't know what the nature of the problem was, its details, but it was planned to be unsolvable to the Machine. Although the Machine isn't organic, it functions much like an organic brain. Faced with an unsolvable problem that nevertheless must be solved, a human mind goes insane. Our Machine did the same thing. Insanity is a decision of a sort. Sometimes it's the only logical answer to a dilemma. That seems to be the case this time."

Cadmus stared, but he still found it difficult to grasp the scene below. What he saw and heard through the opened windows was horrible beyond the maddest nightmare. The Venusian transmats were still dead. No Venusians were emerging into the valley. But vast rivers of humans from Terra, and Martians from all the cities, were spilling in great masses into the valley—

And to their death!

Wailing, crying in sobbing ecstasy, these rivers were pouring directly into that half-mile deep area of deadly radioactivity surrounding the Machine.

Cadmus murmured in sheer horror. Millions were dying. Millions more would die. The valley was a gigantic pit of carnage. Unless it were stopped every living person on Terra would march out of those transmats and die. So would every living Martian.

"Like the lemmings," said Consar III absently. "A suicide drive. See what you Cadmeans have done with your foolish revolt. Listen to the voice from the council tower."

Cadmus was listening. A decision from the Machine was automatically transcribed and broadcast from the Tower.

"Listen to what the Tower is saying. The voice of the god. It couldn't solve the answer it was forced to answer in any other way except by this extreme and apparently insane way. Yet if this is the only way it could answer the question, then it's logical isn't it? Logical that its answer should be one of defeat, futility, abandonment of all hope."

From the Tower the public address system thundered out over the wailing shambles of destruction in the valley. Its waves of sound bludgeoned the helpless, milling hordes into an ecstatic suicidal rush.

" Life has no meaning. All is futility. There is no hope. The only way out of this problem is death. Death is the final and complete escape. "

Consar said, "Few are ignoring the Machine's voice. That's natural. They have long since abandoned hope. Without progress, with no goal, the Machine's answer is logical to them. It's very interesting, this end of System life, isn't it, Cadmus? Look at the rabble. Look at the bawling cattle you dedicated your life to save. What have you done but pushed them on down into the slime where they belong?"

Cadmus hardly heard Consar's cynical humor. His head throbbed. Blood rushed his temples as he tried to break that web of amnesia. It was there, the answer, the solution.

Johlan! He was Venusian. And no Venusians were dying in the valley. The sudden clarity of the monstrous truth hit him like an explosion. Johlan had formulated a problem to submit to the Machine. True. But not to destroy it. Only to cause its reaction to be analogous to those of an insane brain.

Now it was directing the suicide of its worshippers. But not of Venusians. The old hates still smoldering....

A few inhabitants of Terra and Mars might remain alive when this ghastly massacre ended. But Venus would be untouched. Johlan had brought about a monstrous suicidal drive that would decimate the Terran and Martian population. And leave Venus the unchallenged ruler of the System.

And Consar III laughed. Cadmus lunged at his throat. His hands struck an invisible barrier. From behind the shield surrounding his throne, Consar smiled.

"You're helpless now, Cadmus. I see you've noticed that the Venusian transmats are dead. The Guards have investigated. The power generators have been destroyed so they won't work anymore without being repaired. You've taken the rule of the System from the unchanging Machine, and have given it back to the people. Therefore you've destroyed the System. Already the Venusians are trying to wipe out Terra and Mars."

Cadmus pounded against the invisible barrier.

"You can't touch me, Cadmus. And what would it gain for you if you did? We probed your girl comrade's brain, too. She came here to kill me, but she had hidden the explosion somewhere and the Guards couldn't locate it. She's gone now. She was taken to the slave quarters. But none of the slaves are in their quarters now. They have all gone into the valley to march into the Machine.

"You see, Cadmus, everyone is conditioned to carry out the Machine's dictates. Those who do not follow the commands of the Machine will be driven into the valley and to death anyway by the Guards. The Guards, too, will walk into the Machine to their deaths when everyone else is dead. Including me. The Guards will force me to my death, too, Cadmus. I have utilized the Guards only within the limitations of the Machine's laws, you understand. Everyone will die except the Venusians. Let them have it! I've enjoyed myself. I'm ready to make my exit."

Cadmus ran back to the window.

Policejets were circling above the marching hordes of suicidals, raying those who fell out of the surging river. Thousands of Guards were circulating at the edges of the human tide, keeping the lines solid, threatening stragglers with neutron charges. There were few stragglers. In that hopeless, un-evolving system, the majority had wanted to die. The Machine was sanctioning their psychotic desires.

And somewhere, perhaps in that horde, Zaleel was trapped. Or she might already be dead.

Regardless of the amnesia, his hopeless position, Cadmus saw one thing he could do if he could escape. Try to destroy as many of those transmats as possible and stop the flow of doomed Terrans and Martians. Johlan had stopped the Venusian transmats by destroying the generators. He could do the same.

From the Tower the thunderous voice of the mad Machine still called:

Life has no meaning. All is futility. There is no hope.

Cadmus tried to shut out the sound. He knew that if he had to listen to it very long, its suggestion would overpower him.

His own voice buried the voice of the mad Machine momentarily.

"It isn't over yet, Consar. You're a victim of unchange like every other poor suicidal out there. The blood of millions who have died in your enslavement is on your hands. Your only excuse is that there never was hope for humanity anyway. But there is, Consar. And I'll prove it to you. You'll die, but I'll prove the truth to you before I kill you."

Consar laughingly waved a flabby white hand. "The magic shadow show still goes on. Join it. I'm not holding you here. See—the doors are opening for you. Without the rigid discipline of the Machine, System life will destroy itself. Every institution contains the seeds of its own destruction. Even the Machine. Blind tropisms, rabble, robots, cattle. Those are the stupid dolts you Cadmeans dedicated your lives to save, to set free. Freedom! Hah!" Consar broke into a rumbling laugh. But Cadmus didn't hear it.

Freedom.

FREEDOM!

Cadmus leaned against the coruscating wall. A thrill of returning memory flooded him.

Freedom! That was the key word. Zaleel had said that if the Machine were destroyed the word would be on millions of lips.

Ironic that Consar should have spoken the word unwittingly and set Cadmus' mental fountain of memory free. Behind closed eyes, in a brief flash of recollection, Cadmus' memory, his destiny, his potentiality, returned.

He knew why he was called Cadmus.

His father, the first Cadmus of the newer myth. The greatest hero of the System. For years, since the Machine had been placed in power, his father had worked toward its destruction. A shadow, a mystery in the starways. He had gotten scientists and had constructed secret arsenals. He had constructed small matter transmatters and installed a secret transmat underground between the three worlds and the asteroids.

In the asteroid belt had been thousands of free men who hadn't had the disciplinary bands installed in their skulls because they had been born there in the belt, away from all legislative control, of mucker parents. Men and women and children who were inaccessible in the thousands of uncharted little worlds between Terra and Mars.

Led by his father, they had attacked through the transmats and had marched on the council tower and the Machine. But they had been defeated, slain and taken into slavery. Only a few escaped. Only three. Two children, Cadmus and Zaleel. And Johlan. They returned to the asteroids to plan the second revolt.

But they had marched on the Machine, knowing it was surrounded by half a mile of deadly radioactivity. And now Cadmus knew how his father had expected to overthrow the Machine in spite of this barrier. His father had planned the direct assault on the Machine—alone. His father had trusted no one. He had lain the groundwork, had accomplished the whole preparation himself. He had been intending to launch the direct attack on the Machine by releasing the armed men.

... slew a dragon and sowed its teeth. From these sprang armed men ...

Young as he had been then, Cadmus still remembered starkly. His father had given him the information and directions. No one else knew. Johlan had suspected. That was why he had blanked out Cadmus' mind until his own terrible plan had been achieved.

Cadmus could hear his father's words now, plainly, after the many years. As his father lay dying in a hidden cavern after having failed to reach the other great cave on the side of the valley facing the Machine.

"I've worked it for almost a century, son—the armed men—transported them one by one from Terra by transmat ... an underground filled with armed men ... ready to march into the Machine ... ready to blast its accursed heart ... the lever is under the roots of the komble-plant at the mouth of the cavern ... when the doors are opened...."

His father had given him the directions, how to reach that secret cavern where the armed men waited. Then he had died. The three survivors had been waiting for Cadmus, and they escaped, returned to the asteroids via transmat. Johlan, the leading scientist, had raised and educated Zaleel and Cadmus.

Cadmus was running across the room. He heard Consar's laughter fading behind him as he ran into the hall. But the pattern was clear in Cadmus' mind.

V

Cadmus dodged into a doorway as Guards came down the hall pursuing three Martians. Behind him he caught a glimpse of a huge pleasure pool in a lethean garden. Vacant now, its hedonistic lovers caught up in a grisly destiny.

The two Guards were chasing three Martians who hadn't digested the idea of suicide, evidently. As the Guards raised vibro-guns, Cadmus hurled himself through the doorway. His leap carried one of the Guards to the floor. One desperate blow knocked that Guard senseless. Cadmus raised the Guard's vibro-gun and brought the other man to the floor in a paralyzed sprawl.

The Machine's voice still thundered from the Tower as Cadmus ran from the palace, into the street toward the valley's mouth. The city was almost deserted now, except for a few Guards and policejets circling, hunting out deserters from the suicidal march.

Cadmus ran frantically, straining, along the street, keeping next the shadowed wall. But no Guards bothered him now. To them he was another suicidal lemming who had gotten the call belatedly.

His breath came harshly, burning fire. His muscles groaned as he forced himself up the steep rocky slope leading up and along the valley's rim.

His father's directions were vivid in his mind now as he staggered along the wind-whipped trail. Higher and higher until the mid-afternoon winds were a thousand icy lances driving through his sweating body.

He finally dropped in a gasping heap at the base of the flowering komble-plant. To his right was the high flat wall of granite. Huge doors were behind the red clay and dust, waiting to open. A high wide door.

His hands clawed at the red clay. His fingers bled as the hard cracked stuff came away in reluctant layers. His fingers grated on metal. Frantically he tore at the clay binding the small lever.

Below him in the vast valley, the carnage continued. The radioactive field was piled with uncountable bodies. Only deep within the radioactive field did the gamma rays have the intensity to kill quickly. But much further out, thousands were dying as the radioactivity spread through the bodies of comrades. Masses behind kept moving, surging, pressing forward, hurling walls of humanity into the deadly field.

Cadmus shoved the lever. The massive doors broke through the years of clay camouflage behind him. A grinding roar shattered the thin air. Startled, Cadmus cried out, and leaped away. He was running desperately out of the field of the armed men who came darting in deadly ferocity from the silence of their ancient crypt.

Huge, glistening, streamlined metal monsters. They shot from the dark opening. A line of twenty, they glowed with a deadly field of gamma radiation and death-spray. And Cadmus kept running away from them. His heart pounded with a deathly fear and awe as he hurled himself down the steep trail. He glanced back a few times. That was enough.

Those great metal tanks were deadly to any living thing near them. They sped from the cavern, headed in a grim straight line directly for the Machine. Once set as his father had set their automatic robot controls long ago, nothing could divert them from their objective. Straight down the slope they plunged in silent, ferocious intent.

Cadmus remembered other things now. Of how his father had installed secretly a transmat sender in a Terran museum where such curious mementos as giant robot tanks were no longer of interest to Terrans. One by one, via transmat, the tanks had been transported to this hidden cavern on the edge of the valley.

In that last ghastly war, robot tanks and drone planes had been employed almost entirely in place of human beings. Atomic engines were built and used to drive these drone planes, tanks, ships. But no living thing could pilot them, nor come within a quarter of a mile of them, and survive.

They were robot controlled. Man's final contribution to annihilative warfare. Equipped with raw, unshielded atomic engines, the tanks were deadly beyond imagination, with atomic bombs as warheads, and giving off a sheet of robot death-spray. They were impervious to any kind of atomic weapons for they were the ultimate in robot-controlled atomic weapons. Silent, implacable, they rushed down the slope, over rock and through brush, and finally over mounds of dead and dying. The human lemmings rushing to their death didn't notice the tanks. They did not notice anything.

Up and up over mounds of clawing bodies and hills of dead the terrible robot weapons climbed. Over heaps of human lemmings, red and yellow and black Terrans, and yellow Martians. And then they struck the smooth gleaming side of the Machine.

The machine exploded!

The valley was suddenly a seething boiling cloud of chaos. Bits of Gray God rained for miles over the desert, mountains and ruins of Akal-jor. Boiling dust clouds rose blackly, flung by a tremendous flash like a ball of fire the size of the setting sun. Churning debris climbed thousands of feet in the air, while smoke climbed higher. The dying day was relighted by a searing light, golden, purple, violet, gray and blue. Then came the first of a series of air-blasts, to be followed almost immediately by the sustained and awesome roar.

Cadmus stumbled to his knees. He crawled, managed to regain his feet, lurched blindly through clouds of choking dust. His clothing hung in strips. Blood seeped from his ears and nose. Somehow he managed to deactivate the rest of the transmats. For although the Machine was now utterly destroyed the great crater that remained was even more deadly in its neutron and gamma radiation than before.

The last of the matter transmatters stopped working. The rivers of desperate beings were dammed. On Terra and in the Martian cities, waiting worshippers were wondering what had happened as their own transmat senders stopped functioning.

They waited for a long time. They waited until it finally occurred to them that the transmats might never function again. They wondered, and kept on waiting. But three quarters of the Terran and Martian population had been saved from suicide.

Cadmus dragged himself up the sweeping steps of the council tower. It was dark now. And silent. On three worlds, people waited, not yet aware of the full significance of what had happened.

Phobos was a hurtling curse in the sky. Deimos was edging up into the night like an afterthought. Cadmus stumbled. He staggered to the elevator and inside. He watched the lights blinking as he climbed to the Tower's top. He went into a hall leading to the large audi-chamber.

A massive bulk lay sprawled in the shadows. Consar III. His flesh was charred. Even the brilliant jewels that had bedecked him seemed exhausted of their luster.

Cadmus paused. Consar hadn't wanted to die, not really. He, too, had come to the Tower. He hadn't given up his position of power and wealth easily. He had come to the Tower to attempt to assume the direct power that the Machine had once controlled. Someone had prevented him. Johlan?

He peered through the opening into a large, gloomy chamber. It contained the transcription and audiocasting facilities of the council tower. Somewhere, the ten council members, aged children conditioned to voice the dictates of the Machine, were crouched in blank fear.

A large audiocasting set was humming in the far corner of the room, a strip of tape running beneath its electronic needle.

Cadmus stopped in the shadows. He had made his way to the Tower fast. He had heard that voice from the Tower, and it had changed. He knew whose voice had replaced the voice of the Machine. Johlan.

Cadmus' eyes adjusted to the gloom. The Venusians preferred gloom. Then, beside a recorder across the large chamber, Cadmus saw the greenly iridescent body of the Venusian crouched over a microphone, recording more tape for the audiocaster.

Cadmus listened to Johlan's voice coming from the loudspeaker atop the Tower.

"The Great Gray God of stability was only a Machine. It has been destroyed. The Venusians destroyed it to save the System from disaster through the Machine's static pattern of unchange. But a tri-planetary government of organic agency must replace the Machine. There cannot be a return of old inter-world antagonisms. There must be a united System. A tri-planetary government will be established here on Mars. Directives will soon follow from the council tower that once voiced the machine-dictates of the Gray God. The Ven—"

Cadmus fired. Not at Johlan. The Venusian's recorded message stopped as the blast from Cadmus' gun melted the audio unit. The thundering voice from the Tower's summit died. Johlan turned quickly.

"That was enough of that speech," said Cadmus. "So far, you spoke very well. There'll be a new tri-planetary government, but the Venusians aren't dictating terms from this Tower. No one world will dictate any terms from anywhere."

"Wait," interrupted Johlan. "Don't fire, Cadmus. We can rule together."

Cadmus' voice was brittle as steel. "You're worse than Consar, worse than the Machine. Millions have died today because of you. Because of old greeds and ambitions you couldn't bury—dreams of Venusian imperialism."

"The Venusians never got fair representation from the System," cried Johlan. "They never will. Fishmen! That's what you call us!"

His lidless eyes gleamed as his hand flashed. Cadmus yelled once, then fell to his knees as a ray of neuron-shattering force from a paralysis gun swept across his knees. His legs crumbled him to his side. Another stream soaked into his arm. His neutron gun toppled from nerveless fingers.

The fingers of his other hand crawled toward it. That arm went dead. Only his torso was still capable of sensation. Cadmus turned fevered eyes on Johlan. He waited, his heart pounding. The little Venusian's scales glinted with triumph as he padded forward on webbed feet.

"You did a fine job, Cadmus," he said, looking down. "No one else but you could have accomplished it. No one else had the will, the courage, or the strength and audacity. Nor the human gullibility. That's why I used you."

Johlan paused. He looked away from the window. A splash of white moonlight flooded down, rippled over the mosaic floor. It glinted from Johlan's scales and danced in his lidless eyes. His voice was dreamy with power. "My question to the Machine was simple. I merely devised a series of opposed questions, requiring one answer for all of them. In other words, the Machine was forced to make a compromise. But the Machine was fixed. It couldn't make a compromise. It had to go insane."

He looked back down at Cadmus. "That was a magnificent idea of your father's—those ancient tanks from the atom war. He was a great man. Maybe the greatest Terran who ever lived. But I'm a Venusian. I am greater, because I used him. And I used you, his son. So Cadmus slew the dragon and sowed its teeth, and from these sprang armed men!"

Johlan smiled gently. "But the dragon was never really slain, Cadmus. I was the dragon."

Cadmus heard the door open. He heard her voice, sharp and clear. It was beautiful, he thought, like music. Though music could never be so deadly.

"But dragons always die, Johlan."

The Venusian gasped as he turned. He started to die as he faced her. The death ray glowed on his green-scaled chest for a while, then faded as the Venusian stumbled across the room, the neutron gun hanging limply and forgotten in his webbed hand. He finished dying with his face pressed hard against the window.

Far away, Venus shimmered brightly in the sky.

She knelt beside Cadmus. Her kisses were wet on his face. He could feel her hands and her lips.

"You'll be all right, Cadmus," she said as her hands caressed his face. "As long as it didn't get your heart."

Cadmus looked at her hungrily.

"I managed to hide for a while," she said, "when we fled from Consar's palace. I heard that terrible explosion. Later I heard Johlan's voice from the Tower and I came here. I didn't know, until I overheard him talking to you, what had really happened." Her voice broke. "How could he have been—so fiendish—so—"

"Forget it," he murmured. "Or try to anyway. We did it. The Machine's gone."

"Yes." A glitter of faith shone in her eyes. "The System's free again. Free to evolve and grow, and reach greatness or ruin. But at least to be free."

"Zaleel—Where do we go—from here?"

"We're going again, and that's what really matters," she said. "It's us now, Cadmus. It'll be just you and me now for a while. Remember?"

Cadmus remembered.